October Potager Ramblings

Happy Thanksgiving weekend. This post was supposed to get out a week ago but when new puppy happened, finding office time became quite the challenge.

Hubby got an emergency call to head back to work early, so now it is down to me to deal with the pups and all the garden chores. Eek! However, rolling with changes has become the new norm, we have all done a lot of it over these past 19 months, so we just re-evaluate, adapt, and move on ; ) 

Here is the information packed October post.... 

Here we are well into October (already!) and we just cleaned out the beds. Hubby and I work on it together so make short shrift of it all. He pulls out all the plants, I go behind to clean up the beds and pathways. 

I weed the beds, rake out any leaves or plant debris, making sure that there is no over-wintering places for bugs in the food garden. The only things left standing in the beds are perennial veggies, herbs, and winter veg. 

In the food garden, I remove anything that may harbour pests or diseases to cause trouble next year. The winter veggies will be harvested throughout the coming months, so anything overwintering in them will be pulled out at the same time. 

This is a bit like proactive disease and pest control. The cleaner your garden is now, the less issues you will have in next year's garden.  

We have this lovely wide strip of land with all the native trees and shrubs growing in it running down the entire west side of the acreage. 

If you are wondering where the ladybugs and other good bugs will hibernate, where the frogs, lizards, snakes and such will hide out for winter, the answer is ... everywhere else on the acreage. The only area that I clean meticulously is the food garden, the rest of the yard is left pretty au naturel. We leave most all of the perennials standing, let the leaves fall as they may, and the entire west side strip of the yard has been completely left in it's native state with mahonia, salal, cedars, firs, arbutus trees.   

There are so many things to mention this month... Will try to keep them brief. 

Herbs - Prune the dead bits off of the thyme plants (found some snails hiding in there!), shear off the dead bits and clean them up a bit, plus trim your lavender back, too. We cut the oregano and lime balm (like lemon balm) really hard and cut back the new growth around the edges as they tend to triple in size each summer.

Bottom of empty pot cracked off when the rain water froze in the gravel bed that this pot was sitting in. 

All the gardening accessories are put away into the shed or greenhouse for winter, things like trellises, tomato cages, garden decor, the weeping hoses, birdbaths and fountains. 

Put clay and ceramic pots into the garage or shed or greenhouse for the winter so that they do not crack if we get freezing rains. They can also be stored under the eaves, but if you have gravel there, place a stepping stone under them to make sure the frozen rainwater does not crack off the bottom of your pots. 

Hanging baskets and potted plants will get dumped out into either the compost bin or on top of the potager beds. If you dump yours into the compost, no need to pull out plants. If you dump it onto the beds, smoosh it down, pull out the plant material, rake out the potting soil to help feed your soil. 

Cut down your asparagus fronds when they start to yellow. Top dress them with a good layer of compost or manure. I also toss a few shovelfuls of manure on my rhubarb plants. 

After the garden is cleaned up, we feed the soil by top-dressing with manure or compost. Any sort of manure is great, just keep in mind that some are weedier than others (horse). We switch things up from year to year, adding different manures, fish composts, and composts for soil diversity. Adding variety to your soil conditioner adds new, different organisms, bacteria, and nutrients to the soil for better, healthier garden soil. Want to read more about winterising the food garden? Find that post here. 

Do not dig the compost in, just layer it on top of the bed like a mulch. Want to read more about no-dig/no-till gardening? Check out Charles Dowding from the UK, with similar weather to ours here on the west coast.  

Bulbs/Tubers/Corms - The dahlias are loving this cooler weather and flowering up a storm.

Your cannas, callas, glads, dahlias, etc.. can all be lifted this month. Some say to leave them till the first frost hits them so they wilt and begin to turn brown, however, this is not a necessity. 

Lift them, hose them off to clean them up, place in a warm, airy spot for a week or two to dry and cure. I use the greenhouse tables, but you can place them on newsprint in the furnace room or laundry room, a bright shed or garage. Do not place directly on concrete or you may get rot. Wooden surface, cardboard or newsprint is best.

After curing, you can prune the tubers now or store them till spring when the eyes are bigger and easier to find. To prune tubers, you want to get rid of any bruised or damaged bits, the string-like bits, toss out the old tired mother tuber (it will not flower again), and then divide for more plants next year. Place in a box or bin with vermiculite, peat moss, or potting soil, label, store in a cool-ish (+5°C), dark spot till spring.

I toss mine into a cardboard box with some potting soil, water lightly, and stick it under one of the greenhouse tables for the winter. Real dahlia growers/sellers will be more particular and will often store them in vermiculite in plastic bins. 

If you leave them in the garden, cut them back right to the ground when they are finished and then mulch them up with straw in November or December, when the ground has cooled. 

Do not leave your heirloom plants from grandma in the ground as you are taking a risk of losing them to weather, rain, or bugs. I left six Cafe au Lait dahlias in the ground last year, mulched with pet bedding, and only four came up this year. I rooted around in the soil to see what had happened, one tuber had pretty much disappeared and the other was just skin, the insides had all been eaten by bugs (likely pillbugs or earwigs).  

If you do leave them in the ground, you want to lift them every few years as the centres will begin to die out.  

Lady Jane species tulips, also sometimes called Peppermint Stick. 

Plant lots of spring bulbs! You will love that early season colour after the long, drab winter. Pot up a bunch of tulips bulbs in every pot, pail, and planter for a lovely burst of colour in spring. 

Plant things like crocus, muscari, and species tulips in the lawn or flower bed as they will slowly spread and perennialize.   

Plant garlic, of course! Super easy to grow but make sure that you are planting into nice, rich soil! Here is the garlic planting how-to. 

So, here is what we have in the garden and what we will be doing with them... 

Carrots, lots of carrots - they stay in the ground and get harvested as needed throughout the winter. Will sometimes grab a bunch of them and bring them in to the crisper so that they are ready when I need them. 

Beets - We will be canning up most all of the beets over the next week or so. We have about 15 to 20 feet of beets of all sorts so lots of canning. Will also roast some up for the big Thanksgiving dinner. You can, if you wish, leave your beets in the ground to harvest when needed. 

Celery - Left in the garden all winter. We harvest as many stalks as we need at a time or to keep some in the crisper but leave the plant in the garden bed. It thrives all winter long but if we get a hard frost it turns to mush. Will start to regrow from the center though, as soon as we get a few sunny, warmer days. 

Tomatoes - we harvested the ones with a hint of pink a week ago and placed them in the greenhouse to finish ripening. This keeps the fruit flies out of the house but you can bring them into a warm, sunny window, too. This is the last of the tomatoes, except the lovely Long Keepers that are nicely boxed up and hanging out in the pantry.   

If you have a lot of green tomatoes still hanging in there, you can leave them in the garden till towards the end of the month, or till blight gets them. You can also pull them all and make them into Green Tomato Chow Chow or mincemeat.  

Brussels sprouts are also left in the garden, harvesting some now for Thanksgiving and the rest at Christmas time. Make sure to prop them with a stake to prevent them from rocking in the wind. 

Wishing you a Happy Harvest & Wonderful Thanksgiving ~ Tanja