Mario Bautista
Spring is typically planting time, but right now may be a good time to think about things you want to grow next year. I get ideas from gardening friends who bring me things that have never been in my normal repertoire.
Turnips and tomatillos have been praised and offered by others, but never grown by me. I’ll leave some space for them next year. Leeks are my suggestion for people to try next spring if they aren’t on your plant-every-year list already. They provide fresh produce all winter long.
I’m doing something I have never done in October before – watering. The heat of this month has evaporated the August and September rains and the soil is dry. Keeping fall greens, over-wintering broccoli, and just-sprouting cover crops happy means keeping them suitably moist on these weird 80-degree October days.
Summer broccoli is leggy and aphid covered right now, but leave it in. If – I mean when – the weather cools down the aphids will be more controllable with Safer’s Soap and the plants will deliver a trickle of broccoli all winter, and a flush of rabe next spring.
Cabbage plants that were harvested months ago are putting on single serving size heads. They can make a nice addition to fall salads, and are good for making small batch designer sauerkraut.
As nights get cool, picking tomatoes green, and letting them ripen indoors will give you a more flavorful harvest. Test the idea for yourself. Let some ripen on the vine- some in the house. Then have a BLT fest to see if you can tell the difference.
To reduce slug damage on the late season tomatoes, I pile the vines on top of the cages so nothing – especially the fruit – touches the ground. Even though it is dry now, the slugs can sense that it won’t stay that way forever and they are on the prowl.
I’m John Fischer with Good Gardening.
