6 Romneys in Texas: November 2010

My garden is a mess! I haven't done anything with it in months. No watering or weeding or trimming or picking - nothing. I ended up with a few spare minutes the other day and thought to myself, "I really need to pull up some of the weeds and dying plants before winter sets in." So I went out and started working and lo and behold found this:

That's right, fully grown, ripe watermelon that I didn't even know were there. By the way, I didn't even plant watermelon this year - these are volunteers!

I also found these raspberries which was a surprise since it didn't appear my 1 year old raspberry bush was producing berries, but I guess it was.

And of course I have a healthy bush of serrano peppers - again, I didn't even plant serrano peppers this year. They just came on their own.

We had many wonderful cantaloupe this summer, but I thought all the vines were dead and that they had stopped producing - I guess I was wrong!

I also had a wonderful beet crop this summer, and left some of the smaller beets in the ground when I picked the rest to can them - looks like they grew up :)

I also pulled up my 6 sunflower plants at the end of summer - they were attracting too many bees! I guess they weren't ready to go yet (the bees or the sunflowers).

All in all it was a wonderful surprise harvest. I still have more beets and carrots and tomatoes and raspberries yet to pick. I also picked lots and lots of tomatoes this day, but they didn't make the pictures.

We have obviously had some magnificent weather this fall - sunny and 80 degrees most every day. A rain shower would come through once every couple weeks to keep things wet. I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't think my garden did half as well when I was actually tending it. Next year I think I'll just toss some seeds on the dirt and come back in a couple months to see what grew. Neglect - the key to a bountiful harvest.