The recent break from the never-ending heat wave of 2010 (is it really finally over?) has us thinking about winter. Summer is barely over and yet all our thoughts are trained on that cold horizon: how much time do we have left before the end? Time is marching quickly toward vegetative slowdown and dormancy, so we have to make sure we can get the most out of the rest of the growing season.

We’ve pulled out the tomatoes, ripped up the mulch and drip lines, and tilled in a covering of rye. There’s really no rush for rye yet, though. You can plant it until the middle of October, but it does more of its good work (stabilizing the soil, absorbing nutrients and creating organic matter) the earlier you get it sown.

This week the last of the quick-maturing salad crops will be seeded in the field, but the greenhouses are empty. Our summer crop of cucumbers is long finished and our seedlings have vacated, so we can think about planting some extra late crops indoors for November harvests.  (Both of the Farmers Markets we attend have extended their season until just before Thanksgiving this year.) The warmth and shelter from wind created by the plastic covering gives us about one extra month of prime growing weather.

We are also doing some experimental plots of super late planted crops that will be wintered-over in the field. This has us thinking not just of the coming winter, but even to next spring. We’d like to have spinach, scallions, carrots and lettuce for the first market of next spring around May 1. So we’ll get the plants to about 4-6 weeks old and then cover them with fabric and sheets of plastic to hold them in suspended animation through the winter. They will begin growing again at the end of February, when the sun starts to shine again and well before we can think of tilling or planting anything new.  

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. It’s September right now and it’s beautiful: big skies, clean air, and the feeling of a fresh start. Let’s try to enjoy it, along with the last of summer’s bounty, while it lasts.