In my forest surrounded garden season is fairly short. As soon as September comes to an end, and the sun starts shining below the trees, my garden is left without the sunshine. Right now the whole garden gets maybe 2 or 3 hours of sunlight a day.

This is why my vegetables mostly stop growing after August, and this year this is a problem due to the very warm and dry summer. The plants are just starting to really grow, and I can’t be really sure for how long they will manage to grow like this.

As soon as the weather changes and we get some colder days, the garden won’t get enough warmth and will be continuously moist from the morning dew. The plants will start rotting and the gardening season will end, and there’s still plenty of veggies that need their sun.

Amaranths have just started flowering and will need at least a couple of weeks of nice rain so that I could collect the seeds. I used to have lots of different Amaranth varieties, but one very cold May a couple of years ago killed my plants, and now I don’t have any. I bought a couple of seeds to start my collection again, and now it seems that I won’t have any luck again.

The bell peppers, which I’ve sown from the seeds, are now getting big enough, but they aren’t turning red. I don’t think I will have time to collect the seeds from them. I’m thinking I will have to pull them out and transplant them to the pot if I want any chance of getting the seeds, but I’ll do that when we get frost warnings.

Brassicas couldn’t wait for the rain and have just started forming heads. Luckily they will have time to grow. Most of them don’t mind mild frost temperatures, so they will most likely grow until December, or until the digging time. Most of them will have to go before I start digging, except for the kale and collard, which I’ll leave for the next year. If the year won’t be too cold I’ll have early veggies.

Beets are also now rapidly growing, I’ll leave them for a while, there are other veggies on the beds with the beets that still have growing time, so there’s no need to harvest them. I’ll harvest them right before the digging time. 

Due to the past rain, my harvests are getting bigger again. I’ve been harvesting more and more tomatoes, beans, and collard. Even chicory has started growing again, so I’ve been harvesting it too.