October 2012, New England

Five 1/2 pints apple butter in the canner.

Margaret's October Garden Chores for Zone 5 <~~click

You feelin' a little lonely in here, Camp?

This is a very exciting time for this newb. But it's like everything in the garden is in slow-mo but me! I started my new compost pile with all the garden & food scraps over the past few weeks, added some dried grass and seaweed recently, and now I'm waiting, waiting, waiting on the leaves to fall so I can mix them all up.

My fall garden is to the point of being able to harvest micro-greens salads now. YUM!




Turnips and kohlrabi aren't doing anything but showing bug eaten leaves and stems. Sugar snap peas & beet seeds planted a month or 2 ago are growing but very slowly. Bunching onions are sooooo slow. And no spinach in sight yet. I'm wondering if all those seeds will sprout at the same time, in which case I'll have 100's of spinach babies.

The tomatoes are still ripening, but very slowly. I'll take them all in once first frost threatens, probably toward the end of this month for us. Swiss chard, pole beans & all peppers still producing, but noticeably slowing down. I may take one pot of bell peppers indoors for winter and see how they do.

My cucs & zucchini have decided to try again, but I'm not holding my breath. Not many bees around to help out. I have some carrots that I'm holding back on harvesting until first frost as I heard that makes them sweeter and mine don't seem to be very sweet, but as least they are big now.

I'm looking forward to planting my Bulgarian Purple garlic on Halloween, just don't know where yet. I have some other store bought cloves growing in the tomato bed that I planted a couple of months ago when I didn't know better. Not sure what to do with those. Btw, my carrots don't love my tomatoes. The carrot seedlings sat in the box most of the summer, but now that the toms are cut way back or pulled, the carrots are starting up again.

The 3 Egyptian Walking onions are doing great. I guess I just leave them alone? Maybe I should plant the garlic in that bed?

CC

SO, I feel pretty good about the late frost this year! It has been in the 60s during the day 40-50s at night and the summer plants are seriously winding down. I am pulling up the tomatoes and eggplants this weekend as they are calling for freezing temperatures. I may try to get a little more mileage out of the poblanos, I will have to see how the weather feels on Sunday, but those may be coming out as well.

SO, I feel pretty good about the late frost this year! It has been in the 60s during the day 40-50s at night and the summer plants are seriously winding down. I am pulling up the tomatoes and eggplants this weekend as they are calling for freezing temperatures. I may try to get a little more mileage out of the poblanos, I will have to see how the weather feels on Sunday, but those may be coming out as well.

Did some clean up, transplanting and airing out today. It got up to 72 and sunny after days of drizzle, fog & mist.

I feel ready to toss plastic over the 2 fall beds once the frost comes. I don't know how long it's all going to last but this is what I still have-

Box 1: A few tomatoes ripening by the minute today. In the same box are carrots, jalapenos, scallions, and hopefully some spinach:


Box 2: Beets, snow peas, radishes and carrots of different ages. Again, spinach seeds have been planted there but nada yet. The turnips and kohlrabi were eaten down to nubs. The only thing we're harvesting from this box right now are the snow peas:


Box 3: Fall garden stuff. Collards, mesclun, sugar peas, pak choi, romaine, buttercrunch, kohlrabi, cabbage, broccoli raab, beets.


In the 5 cupboards & 1 drawer I have kale, broccoli nubs, romaine, simpson, pak choi, buttercrunch, walking onions, mesclun, carrots, spinach seeds, bell peppers, oodles of swiss chard & pole beans. The bottom 3 cupboards I will cover w/ plastic for frost to try to extend the season a bit.


In the squash garden there's one surviving bush zucchini giving it's all having lost it's siblings to PM, 2 strawberry plants with 3 babies, a huge nasturtium, 2 loaded cherry tom suckers and in the earth box are more unsprouted spinach seeds. The black pot has my best Sungold tom top ready to come indoors for the winter bay window test.


That's about it except for 2 other earthboxes w/ cucs, broccoli & lettuces in them.

Since this is my first time, I could really use some help here please?
Should I cut the runners between strawberry parent and baby?

Also, do I wait for the threat of frost before harvesting toms, peppers and....what else?

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

CC

Bonus year! 10/6 and no frost yet (unless there was a really tiny light frost that other week, but I don't think so). My garden still looks a little lush, altho the tomato leaves are becoming yellowed and spotted, maybe that's blight, I don't know.

But I still have green tomatoes out there, and a few turn orange every day and then I just pick them and bring them inside to ripen because problems like cracking and slugs are getting to them, esp. with all the rain we've had, and several of them are lying on the ground now. They ripen well in the house. Getting a few cherry tomatoes every day still.

Picked some peppers yesterday for dinner, got a few green beans today, a couple cucumbers the other day, and there are still eggplants out there in various stages of development. In fact, the eggplants also have blossoms, and so do the squash plants. One small zucchini is growing very slowly, and one tiny squash that looks like it may not make it, we'll see. Haven't picked the mysterious white pumpkin yet. Nothing else grew on that vine.

I'm picking up a 5 gal. bucket of coffee grinds every day from the coffee shop, dropping off a clean bucket. I'm preparing 3 new 4x8 beds so I'm using a lot of coffee grinds in those, plus on top of my experimental hugelkultur bed.

My volunteer tomato plants are thriving altho I don't think they'll produce by frost.

Cut 24" of the sunflower off yesterday and it's hanging upside down in the house, drying. I tried a seed, and yummy. Want to have a bunch of those next summer. I had planted a bunch, but only one grew this year. Might have gotten stymied by slugs. Next year I hope to fix that problem with ducks.

It looks like Monday night we'll be 35 here, so I'm ready to throw the plastic sheeting over the boxes once again, depending on frost alert. (Do they give frost alerts still?)

I'm not giving up yet.

cc, about your question about the strawberry plants, they say cut the runners and thin out your strawberry bed. However, I don't know what to do with all my runners, I really don't want to throw them away, so I haven't cut them, and they're planting themselves in between my boxes and all over. So I figured, well, maybe I can keep the runners there until spring and cut them then and give them away so they aren't wasted.

As bad as the snowstorm and its aftermath was for many in Connecticut, I actually don't remember :scratch: : Did we have a first frost before the 28th of October, or not?
:fall:

Yay, we're having a reprieve, at least in so. NH, doesn't look like 30 degree temps until Friday night now.

NHGardener wrote:Yay, we're having a reprieve, at least in so. NH, doesn't look like 30 degree temps until Friday night now.

I still have my cherry type tomatoes and all the peppers are still out there. There are a few pole beans left for eating, but most of what is left on the vine is for next years seed.

I may get to making sauerkraut this weekend... A really good friend gave me a 12 gallon crock for my birthday! I have some really good, good friends.

Nice to know you guys are still at it! Me, too.

CC

Woohoo, happy birthday camprn! You hit the big one, eh?

NHGardener wrote:Woohoo, happy birthday camprn! You hit the big one, eh?

Sure did. Boffer told me I had to switch to table tops now.

Haha. I added my b'day. I'll give you a heads up when it's time to switch to table top.

Believe me, it ain't anytime soon!

CC

CC, you let me know, and then I'll let camprn know.

Another frost last night up here in the North Country...maybe even a killing frost, as it's pretty thick...and my garlic isn't in yet, waaaaaaahhhh!

Does garlic have to be in before the first frost? I believe a local farmer told me she plants her garlic by November 1st here in southern NH.

Nah, I didn't mean to imply that my garlic had to be in by first frost (if that were the case I'd be in trouble since our first one was something like 3 weeks ago), I was just venting about running out of time...first the frosts are light, then they get hard, then everything freezes solid...you know the drill...it's just Mother Nature's way of nudging me to get that garlic in soon.

NHGardener wrote:Does garlic have to be in before the first frost? I believe a local farmer told me she plants her garlic by November 1st here in southern NH.

Halloween +/- a week .

No frosts yet in my area of Maine tho they say Sat will drop to around 30*F.

Today I planted my garlic bulbs in 6 squares.

I planted 4 per sq and had a few nice size bulbs left so I stuck them in the center of a few groups of 4. I saved all the smaller cloves this year to use in my meals.
Note of interest: Last year I planted the smaller bulbs and they didn't live thru the season so no harvest. Its worth it to plant only the larger bulbs as I did the year before.

QB I have this fear that I have planted my garlic too close. I looked it up on this chart I have for SFG, and they said 9 per square, now I am seeing
that perhaps that is too many??

What are your thoughts?
I have a friend who insists that garlic has to be planted on a full moon

Full moon? I heard to plant on Halloween. Hope Halloween has a full moon this year or I'm screwed.

CC

My "garlic bed" isn't free yet - still has tomato plants, some tiny cauliflowers, you know, things that haven't quite given up the ghost yet. I'm thinking Friday night when it's supposed to be 32, which is my only hope of frost in my forecast right now , I may just let them all go. I'm getting a little anxious about getting things ready for naptime and then replanting in the spring. I want to maybe spread a little layer of old leaves and coffee grounds on the tops of the beds to revamp the compost a little.

The tomato plants are quickly turning to wilt now, and while I picked some peppers, eggplants, and a few green beans yesterday, everything has basically stopped progressing. If they're thinking frost for Friday night I may go out there and pluck everything to bring inside. Altho by Sunday it's supposed to get back up to 63, so hmm.

CapeCoddess.....I plant on the assumption that the garlic needs a bit of growth before its killed by heavy frost. The bulbs have to gain some size under the soil and even break ground on top with a bit of green. That's why I always plant around Columbus Day in my neck of the woods.
Anyway, that's what I read somewhere. Works for me.

NHGardener......I had to change my bed plan. I still have carrots in the bed where I was going to put the garlic, but then it worked out better, I think, since it was formerly home to Radicchio and bush beans. I believe I shouldn't plant another root crop in the same bed so the change of venue suits me better.

I don't follow the moon but have been thinking about it. I'm going to have to get myself a Farmer's Almanac next year.

We're expecting 30*F on Sat so I wanted mine in before then. The nites after that will be back in the high 30s so I'm hoping daylight temps in the 40s and 50s will give some growth to my new babies.