Good Bye Summer, Hello Fall

Today on the calendar indicates it is the "First Day Of Fall".  The temperatures are in the 70's and it is foggy outside.

This is outside my office window.

I am looking forward to Fall.  I cleaned out my shed this week and found a SNAKE that got caught in some bird netting that I took off the blueberry plant a few months back (freaked me out).  I discovered I had more trash in the shed than I did usable items, some of the items I don't plan to use will go up on freecycle.  Next is to clean the area right inside my back door that I store stuff that I need both in the front and back yard as well as the grow rack in the garage for my seedlings.

I am also trying different techniques in the garden this season.  I hope to see if my results will improve some of the problems that I have been having.  I watched a person on Youtube who lives in a much colder climate and they have their winters early and he put row covers over his lettuce, greens, etc. and the plants were thriving (although he did it more so to obtain heat for the plants than to protect from bugs).  I put some of my winter row covers (will purchase a lighter weight fabric for the short time between summer/fall for the next year over my leafy vegetables (as soon as they were planted) to hopefully ward off the cabbage caterpillar and bugs of that nature.  I check on these plants pretty much daily, just to make sure that mold or drying out is not a problem.

My observations:
I saw that ants were taking up residencly in one of the smaller beds that is located at the front of the garden and gets more sunlight, so I put down some organic ant killer.  I also noticed that the plants in this bed were not doing as well, but still alive (I lost a brocoli and califlower plant).  I think it is because this bed gets more sun and with the "winter" row cover it gets too hot.

However, the leafy greens in the big bed at the back of the garden (where the sun sets behind the privacy fence) and it also has the "winter" row cover have grown a lot and I think I will be able to start harvesting some of the greens.

However, I noticed that my spinach is not germinating, will need to research that, I put these seeds down a few weeks ago and only saw a few sprout, which is odd because I sowed quite a bit.

Next time I will plant the leafy vegatbles toward the back of the garden, espeically becasue of the heat going into fall.   If this works, this will be a norm for me for the fall plantings.   I am also trying different vegetables such as chinese cabbage and brussel sprouts.

Well that is all for now, but more updates from the garden to come soon, with more pictures.