The Forest garden, especially on the hill, during autumn, is characterized by two things: fog and rain.

Sunny days usually don’t start with a sunrise, but with a long morning fog that sticks until the late afternoon. There are many days that we don’t even see the sun from the fog. The rest of the villages around us get beautiful sunny days, while we’re surrounded by fog. When we finally see the sky, it is usually the sign that we’ll get a rain period, and of course, as soon as the rain period stops we get the next round of fog. There have been years when we had months of constant fog and we haven’t even seen the sun or the stars for weeks. It’s like having the polar nights, only these are polar fogs. 😁

The continuous fog is one of the reasons why my garden is usually empty during the autumn and winter. There aren’t many veggies that can survive the daily fogs. The lasting fogs bring high moisture that makes the plants rot, and the lack of sun makes the soil cool down faster than on sunny days, so my garden is too cold for any normal veggie growing.

This is why during November the only thing that is left in the garden are brassicas. I don’t like to harvest them before the time, so they are left inside until I need them. Kale and collard greens will be left in the garden for next year, and I’ll slowly harvest cabbages and broccoli until December when I’ll dig the remaining beds and finish with the gardening season.

The rest of the garden has been dug during the past weekend. My hubby helped me to finish faster since the fog is making it impossible to plan the digging over a longer period of days. We have to catch at least 3 dry days to be able to dig. Luckily Friday was very windy, so the garden dried enough to be able to dig without any problems. Of course, Sunday brought another rain episode, so now I won’t be able to get to the garden at least until the next Sunday.

This is one of the main reasons why next year we’ll try to use the yard as much as we can and we’ll build as many raised beds as we can fit. Maybe this way we’ll have some autumn veggies in the yard and the garden will be left for the brassicas, tomatoes, peppers, and beans as it seems they are the only veggies that like growing here.

The way things are going, and with the forest growing, soon I’ll grow veggies in every single place but the actual garden, who knows maybe I’ll even have a roof vegetable garden. 😀