The Gardeners’ Landscape – Autumn has Arrived

While we’ve been enjoying balmy weather and an extended summer season here in Pennsylvania, I’ve started noticing reports of fall frosts striking gardens in other regions.

I knew the unseasonably mild temperatures couldn’t continue much longer but it sure has been nice to see tender crops like sweet bell peppers producing fruits at the end of October! The leafy greens and other fall vegetables are doing great and hopefully I’ll be harvesting them well into the winter months.

Things are slowing down and some of the garden bloggers have closed up shop for the winter, but here are a few interesting links form around the Internet:

• Being a big fan of wild edibles and unusual vegetables, I was very interested in the article and photos of Sea Kale that appeared over at Root Cause. I had read that this rare perennial vegetable grows wild in Britain, and have cultivated Sea Kale in past gardens, but discovered some new facts including that this plant is actually protected in parts of Europe.
• Emma at Today’s Garden Ideas issued a call to join in the Garden Rant Global Garden Challenge. Well, I am in and will make a donation to a classroom program that introduces urban city children to the wonderful world of gardening!
• Did you realize that one of the best backyard gardening tools never even leaves the house? Stuart explores this topic over at Gardening Tips & Ideas in a great article about the online resources available to the home gardener. The article covers everything from Search Engines and gardening forums, to the newer features of RSS and Social Media, there’s even a mention in there about my Gardening Secrets E-book.
• For those of you that don’t spend all of your time surfing the Web for your gardening information, you may be interested in this weeks airing of CBS News Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood. There will be a segment featuring Susan Warren’s new book; Backyard Giants. Susan was a recent guest garden blogger here and shared her experiences on the subject of growing giant pumpkins.
• Speaking of autumn and pumpkins, Robin’s Nesting Place is all decked out for the season and has posted some beautiful pictures of the Scenes of Autumn. I could spend all day just browsing the photographs on this beautiful gardening blog that is full of incredible images of nature.