Eating leaves, this year's garden recap

This week I took my camera on our walk and had an autumn photo shoot. Franklin was very happy to decamp from his stroller and play in (i.e. eat) the leaves while I snapped pictures. I knitted him a new warm hat which I love and which he loves taking off. Sigh. I need to make him some matching mittens so it stays on his head.

Though we haven't yet had a frost, I'm expecting it any day now. This morning before work I managed to prune back my climbing rose; for several years it climbed over the old wooden arch, but with arch's demise, I'm attempting training it to climb the garage walls instead--with limited success so far. Hopefully it cooperates this coming year, as its luxurious misplaced growth nearly smothered my herb bed.

Our potato harvest is a moderate success. About half of the potatoes are still in the ground though the plants are all dead now. The biggest spuds have been about tennis ball size, though the average potato is more like apricot size: not very big. I'm not sure why. Still tasty.

And dug up our first celeriac for dinner today: super yum. I started out with 24, and somehow ended up with a grand total of 12. Also not huge, but bigger than my biggest potatoes.

Some lessons I've learned this year:

• Vegetables need space to grow big! I tried to cram in too much.
  
• Carrots grown in the ground are likely to get carrot fly (and thus ruined). Next year I will probably go back to planters for carrots. Smaller, but edible, at least.
• Runner beans should have more than one pole to keep them upright. And the more runner bean plants, the better as far as I'm concerned. Plant more next year!
• Cabbages need to be sown in greater intervals than just 2 weeks. We had way too many all at once and lost quite a lot.
• Spring broccoli should be staked while still small. Mine are all tumbling down; it happened last year, too--I should have learned my lesson then.
• Don't bother with tomatoes.