Transitioning the Garden

Lots of stuff going on in the garden right now. First off I walked out a few days ago and found the above guy growing. My first sunflower! I've been planting sunflower seeds for years to no avail. And just when I'm about to give up/run out of seeds I finally get one. Woop woop!

And there's also this melon:

He(?) (Do melons have genders?) just showed up out of nowhere when we first did our summer plantings back at the end of March. We had no idea what he was going to be, since melons look kind of like cucumbers and we eat/compost lots of them. Squash was an option, too. But apparently it's a melon. Anybody have a clue as to type? Guess we'll find out when we finally cut him open.

It's also time for the last of the summer tomatoes. Like this honkin' Marmande:


We had zero Marmandes for months, then we got three. But somebody (our back neighbor, we suspect) stole both of them just as they were hitting their peak of ripeness! You have not met two more bitter gardeners when Noah and I discovered that tragedy. This one is finally ready (the pic is about a week old, I picked an almost fully red tomato this evening, before it got stolen).

And the Riesentraubes! Oh, the Riesentraubes... how I love thee. You just keep giving and giving and I know you'll do so up through October and into November. Check these pretties out:

They're great for roasting whole with some eggplant (as I did with the eggplants from the Farmers Market on Sunday night) in olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic.

But this weekend it was time to start buying and planting the fall/winter garden. It'll be our first non-summer garden and I'm kinda psyched. I picked out two kinds of Brussel sprouts, purple asparagus (which Jimmy the Plant Dude assured me are so awesome you can eat raw) and some scallions.

I still want to plant some spinach (gotta wait 'til it's a little more consistently cool during the days), lettuces, maybe a butternut squash. I put in some dumpling squashes about a month ago. Maybe I'll get kale and chard, if there's room. I've got a Black Krim tomato going that I planted about a month ago, he'll be our winter tomato. One of the awesome things about living in LA, you can get tomatoes nearly year round if you're strategic in your planting.

Any other suggestions?