Canada - October Garden

Hello my fellow Canadians!

I can't believe it's October already. Of course, being in the Great White North, it won't be long until we all get our first frost. How is everyone's garden doing? Has anyone packed it in for the season yet? Anyone trying to extend their growing season as long as possible? What are your late harvests?

I have one eggplant growing on the plant right now. I'm hoping it gets big enough before the frost hits here. My broccoli that I planted in the spring and never really did anything is finally starting to get bigger and has started growing new leaves. I'm going to leave it as long as possible to see if I get anything out of it. I'm waiting until after our first frost to harvest my carrots. Should I cover my SFG now or wait until there is a risk of frost?

Blackrose wrote: Should I cover my SFG now or wait until there is a risk of frost?

Frosts will make your carrots sweeter, and they can handle mild freezing a time or two. I don't know how much frost broccoli can handle.

Blackrose wrote:Hello my fellow Canadians!

I can't believe it's October already. Of course, being in the Great White North, it won't be long until we all get our first frost. How is everyone's garden doing? Has anyone packed it in for the season yet? Anyone trying to extend their growing season as long as possible? What are your late harvests?

LOL! Here in central British Columbia we had our first frost almost a month ago....about the 8th of Sept. to be exact. We have had a couple of weeks of frost every night. The coldest so far has been -5C. I have been covering my precious tomatoes on the nights when the forecast is for +2 or lower. But lately we have had a streak of over a week of beautiful weather with almost no frost. So I am glad I left them out. They are really starting to ripen fast now with the extra sunshine and they taste SOOO good. The strawberries are still blooming and producing. Go figure. I have a cover I scrounged from a building here that is being renovated. Since they seem so bent on producing I may just throw it over the strawberries for a few weeks to see what happens. The morning it was -5C they were all frosty and I figured they had had it. But as soon as the sun burned off the fog and the frost they were fine. Thursday when I got home from work I picked two handfuls of them and there are still more. My fall radish crop is coming along slowly but is nothing to brag about for sure.

I have put a lot of the garden to bed already. I've harvested all the onions, dug the potatoes and planted a couple of kinds of garlic besides supermarket garlic. The beets didn't amount to anything at all and I have left the carrots in the ground for a couple more weeks yet. They don't need to be covered as the frost doesn't hurt them. I leave them in until the ground just starts to freeze. They are sweeter that way.

Something new I am trying this year is planting a manure crop. I planted Hairy Vetch in the potato patch. It is supposed to put lots of nitrogen in the soil as well as organic material when you till it under in spring. I planted it a week ago but so far nothing has sprouted. We will see how this turns out.

Yesterday after I got home from work I raked all the leaves and bagged them. When I put my roses to bed I will use some of the shredded leaves for mulch around them and other tender perennials. If it doesn't rain tomorrow I will screen the compost and put it in buckets so it will be ready when I make my new batches of MM. Then I can start layering stuff in the bins to start the composting process again before winter sets in.

Still have lots of things to do...bulbs to plant, the shed to clean out, etc. etc.

GK

boffer wrote:Frosts will make your carrots sweeter, and they can handle mild freezing a time or two. I don't know how much frost broccoli can handle.

I'd be interested to find out about the broccoli. I'll do some research online. I also have a lettuce mix, radishes and beets in my SFG. They are all cool weather crops too, right? So, they should be ok. I'm hoping they at least start doing some growing soon. Something munched them right after they sprouted, but I'm hoping with the cooler weather the pests will die down too and they may have a fighting chance.

Wow GK, you always impress me when you are describing your SFG. Have you figured out how to post pics yet? I'd love to see some.

Old Hippie wrote:Something new I am trying this year is planting a manure crop. I planted Hairy Vetch in the potato patch.

I do hope you mean a compost or cover crop.... the mental image that phrase created was quite interesting!

Don't be too impressed. I talk better than I garden. LOL!

I did actually learn how to download pics from my camera to my computer and then post them. I did post some too. So very proud of myself for that.

Check out this thread for a few of them.

https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/general-sfg-talk-f5/cold-t4137.htm?highlight=cold

GK

Megan wrote:

Old Hippie wrote:Something new I am trying this year is planting a manure crop. I planted Hairy Vetch in the potato patch.

I do hope you mean a compost or cover crop.... the mental image that phrase created was quite interesting!

LOLOL! Yes, whenever I read that in Mother Earth News or some other gardening publication, it always conjures up images of huge fields of cow pies or horse apples. Sometimes it is called a "green manure crop" instead of a cover crop but again that brings back some pretty graphic images from time spent on my grandparents' farm as a child . Perhaps it is referred to as green manure, as opposed to animal manure, because it is basically just grown to put nutrients back into the soil.

To avoid any further disturbing images to anyone, I will only call it a 'cover crop' from now on.

GK

Yep, I grew up across the lane from two dairy farms, and we had horses. I know all about pies and apples, lol. (Of course, my next question for you was going to be, how do you know when your manure crop is ripe? Oh, it just goes on and on.... )

I do find your posts very entertaining and also quite educational, too, GK. I grew up in northern New England; not quite the same I know, but enough similarities that I feel a sense of being there when you discuss growing things that far north.

Megan wrote:(Of course, my next question for you was going to be, how do you know when your manure crop is ripe? Oh, it just goes on and on.... )

By the smell!!!!!!!

GK