tilling time

So have you cleaned up your garden, or at least some of it? If so, till or turn over the soil with a shovel for next year's planting of peas, carrots and spinach. After tilling, put up fencing where the peas will be. Next year you can plant peas on both sides of the fence, right up close to the fence. I plant my carrots, lettuce, beets and spinach in wide rows, but you can plant them in single rows. I leave space around the area I will plant the peas so that I can plant cucumbers on each side of the fence, and when the peas are finished producing, then I train the cucumber plants up the same fencing. Double duty fencing, course I have removed the used pea plants and bag them for the dump. Try not to plan planting the crops where you planted them last year, rotate your plantings each year.

Squash treasures

Taking up all the tomato plants and the squash plants is always a nice surprise, as underneath them are some winter squash that I had previously missed. Just that much more to store for winter! I still have kolrabi, brocolli, turnips, beets and carrots growing, but they too will soon have to come in. The weeds still need some more pulling but soon even they will succumb to the frosts. I could cover my carrots with bales of hay and harvest them all winter (if I want to walk through snow that is). All in all the garden is 3/4 cleaned up and soon will be tilled and fences put in for next year's peas! With the ground previously tilled I could plant the peas during a January thaw, however I will wait until early April when I will also plant my spinach. Already looking forward to next year's peas and spinach!

Frosty arrived

And frosty will be back tonight, so any squash, cucumbers or tomato plants that survived, will die tonight. However it is October! I've experienced frosty at the full moon in August a few times. Now, most of the pollen that gives us hayfever will go away too! So, get out your wheelbarrow, pull up your plants, harvest your pumpkins, squash etc. and protect them from the frost tonight. I know that you see alot of vegetable stands leave them exposed, but I like to cover them. Why take a chance? Your pumpkins can be cut up for pies or you could just make faces on them and display them. Don't you just love this time of the year, beautiful colorful trees, cool nights, warm days, and especially right now, warm sun in the days. Course, frosty will be here for probably one or two more nights, just long enough to end most of the garden, then leave till the new moon or next full moon. (I put a frightened black cat on one of my pumpkins!)

Technical Gardening

My son said the other day that I don't give enough technical information. He's right, but I am not a technical gardner. I grew up walking through my grandfather's garden and seeing all the wonderful and plentiful vegetables growing in his garden. My mother and father had a few gardens when they had a place to plant them, and my mother and her sister canned up at least 300 jars of produce each year. If they didn't grow it they bought it from those who did. My fondest memory is going down (the creepy) cellar to retrieve a jar of pears she had canned in pineapple juice! Anyway, my gardening has 30 years of untechnical experience, hit or miss you might say, but with advise from anyone who was serious about gardening. The years have been productive! Much has landed on my shelves in jars and much has been given away to neighbors and friends. This winter I will take you through my process of deciding what to plant, what to prepare for, what to start as plants on my windowsills, plus my personal favorites (and my neighbor's) for vegetables, the brands and the types. I don't really care if this blog is terribly popular, if I can help one or two people start to grow their own vegetables, I am a winner!

Flower girl

Mostly I am a vegetable Northern gardner, however I inherited a flower garden. I'm in the process of changing it to all easy to manage perinnials, with longer lasting blooms, and some re-bloomers. I like all kinds of lilies, shasta daisies, hosta's, iris, phlox, balloon flowers, foxglove to name a few. I am in the process of "learning" about each plant, and being fall there is work to do to them. What I learned this year is some need to be cut half way down, some need to be left to die without cutting down, some need to be pruned, and some need to be cut right down. If you don't want them to spread more than the amount you planted, you need to deadhead those flowers. Lilies need to be left alone, except to take the seed pods off until they turn brown. Shasta dasies will reseed, but if you want merely to have a second flowering, deadhead them. My second flowering was shorter and smaller, but still pretty. Hosta's, if they have gotten too large, need to be split. There are two ways to do this, one you could cut through the roots with a bulb planter on the roots that have eyes, or I just slice down through the plant with a sharp shovel and plant that section of hosta in another area, mainly my neighbors yard! Iris I let the tall leaves turn brown and then cut off. Check for diseased or rotten areas on the bulbs, and remove any bulbs that are infected. Phlox you merely cut off the spent flowers if you don't want more phlox, and when it is dead, cut to the ground. Baloon flowers will reseed too so if you have enough, cut off the seed pods and they will rebloom. Foxglove will also rebloom if you deadhead the flower stems, then remove the stems completely to ground level. One additional flower I have is purple coneflower. They rebloom with or without deadheading, but they also reseed. If you leave the seed pods for the winter birds, they'll be happy! Soooo much work, soooo little time. Make sure you take out weeds from the bed! Remember if you have small children, they need to be warned about certain plants like foxglove and delphinium, as they are posionous (so are the leaves of rhubarb). Check your local nursery for more information on posionous plants.

Water without additives

No one really likes to look out the window and see rain. Snow bothers some people but not as much as rain. However, for fall clean up, rain can be an asset. First of all, wait until it stops raining, go outside and pull out all the garden you want to remove, including weeds! They come out much easier after a rain, the roots get softened in the soil making pulling out a cynch. Also, bulbs and plants settle in much better and are healthier to withstand the winter months,so plant them now. Also, it is a natural water, not water laced with chlorine, like most drinking water is. Happy fall planting

We missed frosty

Yes, the full moon has come and gone and down by the lake frosty by-passed us, however 5 miles away from the lake frosty hit with a vengenance, all is gone! So if you did get frosty, it may be time to remove your carrots, they should be sweetened by the frost. It is also time to pull all dead items from the garden, course it takes much more for weeds to succumb to frost, but pull them also. Bag these items and take them to the dump. If you have a tiller, you can till the garden area that didn't survive, and if you like garlic, plant them now for next year. In the Spring you will see the new growth, make sure there are not weeds around them, and put some compost or fertilizer around them. It is also time if you love flowers to do your planting or transplanting. From here on out there should be enough natural water to sustain them, but if we do get a dry spell, use the sprinkler. Happy fall gardening!