Fall Garden In and Mulched

I planted the fall garden a few weeks back. And I went out and mulched it yesterday in preparation for an upcoming trip out of town (I feel bad about asking the neighbor, who is already watching the cats, to also water the garden for me). So far nothing has really grown (which is kinda how fall gardening goes down here...a whole lotta waiting going on).

All garlic varieties did sprout (though variety 1 (Burgundy) only has 2 out of 5 actually growing). The quinoa seems to be growing, but the plants are just so piddly, it makes me think that I should really try this again in the spring to see if it grows any quicker (it really should since it's an amaranth). The spinach never germinated, and I think I killed off the chard and beets by not watering enough. Oddly, this lack of water didn't kill off the carrots (I tend to think of carrots as some wimpy little plants, but they are proving to be tougher than I expected/remembered).

On the spring garden front, the tomato plants all have little tomatoes on them, the green bean plant is going crazy again so I had to cut it back otherwise it would have taken over my Purple Cherokee. The bell peppers finally have some peppers on them. The only plants that aren't producing are the eggplant, the habanero (though it does have tons of flowers), and the yellow hot pepper plant. I think I'll be pulling the eggplant when i get back from vacation as I doubt anything starting now will be able to be very big by the time I have to pull it because of a hard freeze, and while last year, it worked out okay, that was probably because the plant had 8 eggplants on it when we had that freeze.