The golden glow of a setting October sun passes its energy to sunflowers towering over the garden plots on the periphery of Old Greenbelt. Are they waving good-bye to summer? Not so fast. There’s still plenty of action down below, from pinto beans drying on their vines and five-foot okra plants still in flower to clusters of red and golden tomatoes hanging out until there’s time for canning, or a killing frost, whichever comes first. Closer to the ground sit spinach and lettuces, and chard, kale and collards, at their best in the cool of autumn. Down in the soil some root vegetables, like carrots and beets, improve in flavor after a frost. At the gardens you don’t need to pumpkin spice anything to get that fall ambience. Garden chores are choreographed by nature all year round. The complex orchestration is signaled by the days getting shorter and cooler. Autumn harvest is the big payoff after a year of soil tending, planting, weeding, mulching, watering, outfoxing rabbits and groundhogs and controlling insects and fungal diseases, troubleshooting between droughts and gulley-washers. All this can only be done on weekends or when life and family demands permit.
Greenbelt Community Gardeners Reap a Bounty in Fall Harvests
A fall migrating Monarch butterfly stops to “nectar up” at Henry’s Hollow, refueling for the long journey to the mountains of Mexico.