Temperature Shift

57 degrees at wake-up this morning, with an expected high of 65 degrees for the day. The sky is overcast, the breeze has a definite feeling of fall, and there's rain in the forecast. It's a good day to plant lettuce and spinach!

I pulled up the cucumber plants, cut the basil way back, cleaned up the peppers and cherry tomato plants (can't bear to pull them up yet ... still enjoying their fruit), and prepared two patches of soil for two rows each of:

• smooth leaf red cardinal spinach
• savoyed leaf spargo spinach
• black seeded green lettuce
• mesclin salad mix

The brown mulched areas shown in this photo will soon be filled with tasty salad greens. As the basil, peppers, and tomatoes play out I'll replace them with more varieties of lettuce, spinach, arugula, etc. When the transition is complete, the entire bed ... as well as my salad bowl ... will be full!

After finishing the outside garden chores, I headed indoors where I transformed the mound of fresh basil into fragrant pesto - a lush version loaded with garlic, walnuts, and parmesan cheese for immediate use and a more basic version sans cheese and nuts for the freezer.

Our son, Noah, is visiting this weekend. I gave him the job of layering cardboard, then mulch, in the paths between the raised beds. It's an effective way to control weeds and I've got a lot of weeds to control! Later, at his request, we'll have a lesson in making okra pickles.