The October Garden

Here it was October, and I finally felt like I was in the harvest season. Tomatoes and summer squash were really coming on.  I had plenty to eat and extra to freeze and dehydrate for the winter.  

Picking summer squash became a daily event.

Tomatoes were getting ripe.  I was enjoying them fresh in salads and on tacos.  I had extra so I blanched, peeled and froze them to use in soups and stews.  I also dehydrated some.  

The broccoli plants began to bolt!  I tried to eat a few of the bolted stalks and flowers.  They were tough, fibrous and not very tasty. So I cut all the flowering stalks off and hoped that they would produce a few more edible heads before hard frost.  

If you look really carefully, you can see a tiny butterfly in there!

There it is!  Brephidium exilis, the Pygmy Blue!
(picture taken on October 10)

The September Garden

There is always something interesting about how the weather changes on September 1st!


It is almost like magic. 

The last week of August can be sweltering hot, and then... over night.. on September 1st... the weather changes and we have milder temperatures.  It happened just like that this year.  It was obvious that the garden plants were doing better in the more moderate temperatures!!  Finally, my summer squash began to do well!  

Benning's Green Tint, a patty-pan scallop-type squash, is ready to pick!

Yellow Crookneck, one of my favorite summer squash, is blooming and developing fruit like gangbusters!

Ronde de Nice, a french zucchini variety, is very tasty!

Sweet Mama, a buttercup-type winter squash is setting fruit.

By mid-September I could see that my idea for using the concrete reinforcing wire for garden fabric support was not the best idea after all.  The breezes caused the fabric to rub and snag against the wire.  Eventually, the fabric tore in multiple places and became almost ineffective.  I say "almost" ineffective, because it did offer some shade to the broccoli plants.  I realized that I was going to have to come up with another solution if I wanted protection against insects and cold weather.

The tattered row cover

At the same time, I had decided to try a fall crop of kale, chard, lettuce, carrots, beets and peas. 

The Swiss chard (Bright Lights) and kale seedlings ready to go into the garden.

I dug in about 2" of compost and then planted the seedlings.  Then I sowed lettuce, pea, carrot and beet seeds in between the rows of chard and kale. 

The seedlings looked very spindly.  I was not sure that they would survive.

I know that planting all of these things in September might be too close to the first frost date.  I had no idea if it would even make a crop, but I decided to try to extend the season with a better row cover.  I looked online and found that several gardeners in different parts of the country have used PVC pipe, bent in an arc, as the framework for low grow tunnels.  I decided to try that method.  

So I bought the 10' lengths of 1" PVC pipe from my local home improvement store. Then I dug holes, 5' apart, down the length of both sides of the garden beds.  I pushed one end of the pipe into the 1' deep hole on one side of the bed, then gently bent the pipe over to the other side of the bed, and pushed it down into the soil.   

I had to special order some frost blanket fabric, because the local garden store did not have the size that I needed.  Meanwhile, I had some of the other fabric leftover, so I just laid that on top of the seedlings and rows of seeds I had planted. 

The August Garden

Some Pictures From my August Garden

The garden looks pretty good!  Everything is starting to grow and recover from the heat we had in July!

At the beginning of August the broccoli was doing well under the row cover. 

The beans I had planted came up and were growing.  

Then we had another blast of heat.

 Then I noticed that something was eating the broccoli leaves.

It turned out to be hordes of earwigs munching away!  They would  hide under leaves and bricks during the day, and would come out at night and enjoy my broccoli!  I did not want to put insecticide on the broccoli plants, so every morning I would go out and pull back the leaves, lift up the bricks and scoop up the earwigs and go throw them into the chicken pen.  The hens loved to gobble them up!

Then, I discovered that the bean plants were slowly disappearing.  The earwigs were eating them, also.  However, I also noticed that little divots were appearing in the soil, and the beans were dug up and/or nibbled on.

Diligent observation revealed that the cute little quail that frequented my yard, were enjoying the garden soil for a dust bath, and also nibbling on the bean plants.  

 On a hopeful note, by the end of August my winter squash was beginning to thrive.  A small Delicata squash on the left, and an immature Spaghetti squash on the right.

June and July Garden

The garden in June and July

I finished constructing the raised bed frames and filling them with soil.  By mid June, I was picking broccoli, peas and radishes twice a week!















I planted the squash and cucumber seedlings that I started in May and hand watered them diligently.  Then we had hot weather!  Nine days of temperatures over 100 degrees.  

We had nine straight days of triple digits.  Yikes!

  

Everything in the garden suffered in the heat.  The cucumber and squash seedlings had looked good, and then began to wither away in the heat.  It seemed like every time I looked at the plants they were wilting!  I was hand watering everything in the garden twice and three times a day.  

The squash plants were hanging on, but most of my little cucumber plants that I had raised from seed just withered away.  I did not want to give up on cucumbers, but I knew it was too late to start more cucumber plants from seed.  I decided to buy transplants from the local farm supply store and try again.   And the heat of June segued right on into July!

That heat wave abated on the 4th of July.  The evening of the 4th was quite pleasant. Weather on the 5th of July was total overcast with a few rain showers in the afternoon.

I decided to plant green beans.  I had two variety of bean seeds leftover from 2012 as well as new seeds that I had purchased this spring.  I did not know if the older seeds would germinate, but I decided to give them a try.   I soaked all the bean seed varieties overnight in water.  The next morning I dusted them with legume inoculant before I planted them in one of the new garden beds.

I had some seeds left over from 2012 and I had the new ones that I had purchased this Spring.  

I made a furrow approximately 6" wide and 1" deep.  I sprinkled the inoculant-covered seeds in the furrow, allowing about 2" space between the seeds.  I used a popsicle stick as a label, and wrote the variety on the stick and placed it at the end of the row.  Then I covered the seeds with about 1" of soil, and watered them gently and thoroughly, with the hose nozzle on a fine mist. 

Bean seeds in the furrow.

Labeled row

A rainstorm on July 8th convinced me that the garden would survive!

Constructing Potato Boxes

Or... How I Built A Potato Planter Box

Potatoes are really fun to grow.  It is always so amazing to me that from a few small "seed potatoes" a whole basket full will develop.  All summer long the potato plants grow above ground and the new tubers develop, hidden, underground.  I wanted to plant potatoes because, if for no other reason, I look forward to harvesting them.  It is like digging for treasure!  Also, of course, freshly dug potatoes are so delicious!!!

Potatoes need a soil that has good drainage so that the tubers don't rot.  They also need a deep soil so that there is plenty of room for the tubers to develop. As I have stated previously, the soil in my yard is mostly clay and rocks, a combination which is not great for growing potatoes.  So, some sort of "raised-bed potato-planter-box" was in order!

Since I had decided to go with wooden framed raised garden beds, I wanted a potato planter box that would look similar to the wooden frames that I was using for the rest of the garden.  I know that as the season progresses I will have to "hill up" the potato plants....add more soil to encourage more potatoes to form underground.  I envisioned the potato planter box would start out as a shallow frame, and then I would add on another shallow frame on top of the first one and perhaps another shallow frame on top of the second one, etc.  The frames had to fit one on top of the other securely so they wouldn't topple or tip over.  I also remember that in the Fall when I dig the potatoes up, I'm going to have to take this potato box apart.  So, the finished box layers needed to be sturdy, fit together well, yet be lightweight, and easy to take apart.    

I searched on the internet for ideas.  In the end, I think I combined several different ideas for my potato planter box.

It took me a while to figure out the materials that I would use.  I settled on unfinished 6"X6' cedar fencing.  I also used 4" pieces of 2"x3" pine to secure and support the corners.

I cut the cedar fencing in 3' lengths.
I also cut the 2"X3" lumber into 4" lengths.

I drilled pilot holes.

And then fastened the corners together with screws.

The bottom frame looks like this.  It sits flat on the ground.
The corner supports are offset from the top edge so that
the second frame will fit snugly on top.

On the second frame, I fastened the corner supports so that
they would extend down into the first box.

I made sure that the two frames would fit on top of each other.

Like this.  

Then I made a third frame to go on top of the second one.  

And I made sure that it fit together well.

It fits!

Here is the finished potato planter box.  

You can see, in the picture below, that weeds grow pretty well in this rocky clay soil.  I did not want the excess water that I would use in growing the potatoes to encourage more weeds to sprout up through the potato planter box.  So, I first pulled all the weeds in that area.  Then I raked it smooth and laid down a layer of pavers with landscape fabric underneath.  

I put frame #1 and #2 in place on the pavers.

I put in some of the soil from that huge pile of soil that I had purchased.
You can see frame #3 in the background.  

I made a shallow trench and put the seed potatoes in the trench.

I covered the seed potatoes with soil.

  

I raked the soil smooth, and I watered it gently
until the soil was good and damp.

I watered the soil every day.
Two weeks later, the potatoes are coming up!

I am looking forward to freshly dug potatoes in the Fall!

Re-framing the Garden

Yes, it is June 1.  Warm weather has arrived and I am lagging behind on my gardening.  After much deliberation and much physical effort digging out and removing rocks, stones, boulders and building debris, I finally decided that it would take me years and years to dig garden beds and develop a good/deep soil profile.  Several friends had suggested that I simply build wooden frame raised garden beds like I had in Vermont.  Initially, I did not want to incur the expense of buying the lumber and then the soil.  However, I realized that I was already purchasing some garden soil, compost and peat moss by-the-bag and it was costing me quite a bit to do that.  So, I bit the bullet and bought some lumber, had a dumptruck deliver some garden soil, and began constructing my garden beds.

Six cubic yards of garden soil (70%) mixed with compost (30%).  

I had thought that I would make my garden beds 4'X8'X6".  When I went to Home Depot to purchase the lumber, I found that they were out of 4'x8' lumber.  As I stood there contemplating "Plan B" (I didn't have one), the nice young man who had told me they were out of 2"x6"x8" boards told me that he would substitute 2"x6"x10' lumber for the same price!  Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I immediately knew what my Plan B was, and decided that my garden beds would be 4'x10'.  

It seemed a simple matter, but as I looked over my yard I could see that the yard was actually a trapezoid and not a rectangle as I had thought.  The trapezoid shaped yard was creating a lot of puzzlement in my mind.  Everything seemed very uneven.  Those who know me will appreciate this "dilemma".  Should I run the beds parallel to the fence or to the patio???  What would I do with the little leftover triangle-shaped beds that would result from either plan?  I measured and graphed everything out on paper and sketched out several different plans, and finally decided on this one.

2015 garden plan - second iteration

I ran a string to indicate the line that would parallel the fence.  After sawing lumber and drilling pilot holes so that the boards would not split, I began to assemble my garden beds.  Then I placed them along the line and made sure that they were straight.  

Beds are aligned along the green string.  

Then, I lined the beds with corrugated cardboard (leftover boxes from my recent cross-country move).  Then I filled each bed with the soil.  You may recall that I already had broccoli, peas, radishes and tomatoes planted.  Of course the previously planted beds were off center and out of line with my new plan!  I took the row cover off and admired the broccoli, radishes and peas.  Beautiful plants.  

The row cover not only insulated the plants from freezing temperatures, 
but it kept the insect pests away! 

I could also see how far "off" the bed was....

I did not want to disturb the plants, if possible.  I only had to dig up a few of the broccoli plants, align the beds, fill the beds with soil and transplant the plants into the newly aligned beds..  

  

I know my rows are slightly angled, but this is a temporary situation as the broccoli, radishes and peas will soon be harvested.  Once I plant the next crop, I will have straight rows once again. 

I used this opportunity to thin the radishes!

A convenient benefit that I had not realized would happen, is that my row covers fit the ten-foot long bed.  The concrete reinforcing wire which I use as the framework of my row covers is five feet long.  So two row covers laid end to end, fit perfectly inside the ten-foot long bed. 

Row covers are back on.  They fit perfectly

This process took me about two weeks.