New England: October 2013

Well, I have done it. I picked the last of the edible pole beans, picked the last pumpkin and lifted the dahlias... I have one more ton of wood pellets to move into the garage..... tune up the snow thrower and plant the garlic........ I should be good to go... except for all the leaves in the yard.  

Do you all bury your plants right there in the beds, or do you pull them and throw them in the compost pile?

NHGardener wrote:Do you all bury your plants right there in the beds, or do you pull them and throw them in the compost pile?

Oh, everything comes out of the SFG beds and goes into the compost pile, if it is not diseased. all the blight tomato parts will be burned... I treat my flower gardens a bit differently. The beds of annuals will be allowed to go to seed and dry out. If I get to it before snow flies, I will run the mower over it leave all debris in place and then toss some compost and used coffee grounds atop that.  The perennial beds also get a bit of a different treatment. I cut all plants down to a few inches, clear out the debris, if I need to, divide some, than top dress with compost. Some things get a cover of chopped leaves.

NHGardener wrote:Do you all bury your plants right there in the beds, or do you pull them and throw them in the compost pile?

Mine is half and half.  If nothing else will be disturbed I pull.  If there are other things planted around the base, like carrots around tomatoes, I cut the toms at ground level and what's not composted by next spring will come out.

Wicked windy here today and none too warm.   I covered the winter garden & volunteer toms last night. Not sure if we got frost or not but the potted annuals are balking from the hitting 34 degrees.  I haven't even been out there today to see if the rest of the green peppers and maters are still going or not.  The garden needs watering, outdoor furniture and geraniums need to be brought in and the leaves need mowing to build more compost, but the 35 mph gusts just aren't inviting.  Stuff is blowing all over the place!  The poor cat keeps getting bombarded by leaves and chairs, and then runs back in.  

The latest harvests minus some more toms that went into the freezer:


So it's a good indoor day which is fine since my motherboard crashed.  I spent the day piecing together 2 crippled desktops to make this one and am now test driving.  So many adjustments and 'growing pains'.  It's like getting new computer.  What a lot of hooey, but great brain exercise.   Now I gotta figure out why the sound won't work... 

It's always something...

What cha'll up to?

CC

Here's my last haul: 
 
(a little dark)

I do still have one section of a field that might have potatoes in it, will have to check.

We haven't had rain in a really long time. Local nursery said to water your garlic if you've planted it. I will be planting mine in the next week, if it doesn't rain by then, then out with the hose again.....

mmm...yummy taters.  What kind are those, NHG?

CC

That's a good question. I had about half and half red potatoes and whites. Looking back on a group NOFA order we made in the spring, I ordered Yukon Golds. So where did the reds come from? May have been left over from the prior summer (could that be?). I can't remember where the reds came from.

Part of the potatoes I planted were from the grocery store, a 10# bag of "Maine Potatoes" that I kept too long and they started sprouting, so I just planted them.

I was a little disappointed tho at the size of many of the potatoes -- too small. The tiny ones and the green ones I threw into a separate pile, I may just throw those (now) into next year's potato bed. Next year I am doubling the potato bed size. Another thing that hurt the potatoes was that was one of the beds that the volunteer tomatoes really overtook. Next year I will be ruthless with volunteers. I haven't checked for potatoes thoroughly in the field that I tried some in, tho. We'll see if those made it, and what size they are.

Speaking of the volunteers, besides tomatoes, it occurred to me that some potatoes volunteered too, so that's an option to try overwintering, And the lettuce volunteered from last year. I think you had mentioned here CC about seeding lettuce/spinach in the fall for next spring? 

5:30 and it's almost dark out. Next week we turn clocks back, so get ready for dark at 4 p.m. (here anyway) pretty soon........

Hi, all!

Good to see what everyone's been up to.  I've just come in from being out in the garden for a few hours trying to do some clean-up, etc before the ground freezes.  We've had a bunch of seriously hard frosts so everything is pretty much done, except for the BS, whose sprouts are still nothin' worth braggin' about.  It feels like snow tonight, so I might have to be content with pea & marble-size sprouts.

And speaking of dark at 4, I'm having a thought about next year's garden that I wanted to run by you-all up here in the Northern latitudes: do you find that the suggested spacing for the squares is a bit too tight for our particular locale?  I'm wondering if it's because we get sooooo much more sun in the summer that our plants grow much larger than what the seed packet states (well, that and the MM) and end up spilling beyond their designated SF.

I'm thinking that I'm going to take up some of the length-wise grid and "cheat" my squares from 4 to 3 per row, while keeping the same number of columns.  Does that make sense?  So in my 16 x 4 boxes, whereas the footprint will still be 16 x 4, my actual # of "squares" (more like rectangles) will be 16 x 3.  If I change it from 4 to 3 it might give the plants a wee bit more elbow room and they might behave better.

I mean, my carrots grew to almost 4' tall and totally shaded out the onions I'd planted next to them.  Same with the black beans.  I'd put in some herbs in the squares next to them and they were not only shaded out but covered by the foliage, even with me trying to keep them contained with string like a corral.  And some other variety of dry bean was supposed to be a 3 foot "bush" yet it also grew up to beyond 4' tall.

Anyone else ever have this thought?

Wow Molly, I had no idea things would be so productive up your way. I've thought about spacing mine out a little too, but your idea of modifying the square size sounds like a good one. I never thought about our climate producing larger plants tho... hmm. Something to think about.

I just looked at the garden for the first time today, and saw that after our night in the 20s last night, all the tomato plants, eggplants, and pepper plants have totally died. Just like that. Yesterday they were still green and vigorous, today they're brown and lifeless. The celery still looked good, the strawberry plants don't seem to have cared, and the broccoli plants are still alive I think.

That means it's officially a go on the cleanup and getting the beds "new and improved" for next year! I'm adding some raised mounds to my fenced in garden area too, I was just waiting for the tall weeds to die. I have a pile of seaweed ready to be spread. Funny how that pile has shrunk since I got it a week or so back! It seemed like such a huge amount when hauling it to the car, but once it dries out here, it's lost a bunch of volume.

Mollie, good to see you!  Snow, huh?  Gruesome.  I, too, am totally not looking forward to 4PM jammie time, altho mostly I'll be driving home from work in pitch black at 5:30.

As far as spacing, your idea is a good one. Some of my boxes are odd shapes and I round down when figuring the squares.  It works well, and if there ends up being extra room, I can always plant more even if it's something else due to seasonal changes.  Also, I have no qualms about removing my grids, which are only bamboo stakes, and moving crowded plants over or transplanting them to any other open area.  I guess that's why I have pak choi all over the place now.  

Can't get the sound or video to work on this dang makeshift computer...back to the drawing board.

CC

Gorgeous day today, hit 60 w/ sun and light breeze!  Planted some garlic - only the newly purchased ones, not the ones save from last year yet.  Spread a layer of compost, watered, then re-covered the 8 sqs with pine needles & chicken wire to keep out the squirrels.

Mowed some more leaves & grass and continued layering my compost pile.  It's so beautiful!   Then watered the SFGs.
Tired & hungry now so heading for a salad and some Traders veggie lasagna.   

CC

After our 27*F nite on Friday, my basil and tomatoes turned dark brown.  The chard and parsley and new lettuce is still going outdoors.  I'm glad I brought my other things indoors.  No more nice evenings here expected.
I'm saving my parsnips to pick next month for Thanksgiving dinner.

Yes, tonight I pulled some garden broccoli out of the fridge and put it in boiling water. Then I went to put it on the plate, and guess what. There must be 10 cabbage worms floating in that water. Yuck!

The weird thing is, I never saw those worms. I picked the broccoli, put it in the fridge, put it in the pan, and no sign of them, until they boiled out from their hiding places!

Those cabbage worms give me such fits I may just end my broccoli career.

How do you prevent cabbage worm defeat?

Whenever I bring in brassica plants from the garden, usually kale, I soak it in water 1/2 full sink with 1/2 cup vinegar for about 30 minutes. That gets most of the worms off.

You might try rinsing the brocs THOROUGHLY before refrigeration or cooking. Also, while the plants are growing, you may want to cover the plants with insect cloth. The culprit typically is those black/purple-and-white cabbage moths, which many people think of as harmless butterflies.

Tonight, I wanted to add a miniscule amount of broccoli fleurettes to a salad. I rinsed and rinsed and rinsed until I saw little or no evidence of tiny bugs.

Ew. I guess cabbage worms are a fact of life then.

I can hoop them next summer, but I don't know if that would do the trick. Seems like they could just get caught inside the netting.

I'll have to research options over the winter.

Plant carrots. LOL. 

Yup. We also had potatoes from the garden tonight and my thought was - they're safe. They were under ground.

I find it wise to soak fresh-picked broccoli in a bowl of water with some vinegar added, for about 10 minutes to make sure all the critters rise to the top.

My veggies, tomatoes & corn included, made it through the mid 30's last night without covers.  I think the saving grace was the high humidity.  Now we're home free for a little while.  My breakfast was fresh picked beans, sugar snap peas and cherry toms.

Did you folks north of MA get snow?

CC

It was spitting snow earlier today.