October Garden Tasks

October 3, 2023 Sarah

Garden Tasks for Zones 7-8 In The PNW

October is a pivotal month in the gardens for me. In zones 7 and 8 in the Pacific Northwest, we still get warm days in October, but the nights are cool. So while it might hit into the mid 60’s on some days, it’s only that warm for a few hours, often between 11 am and 4 pm. The sun rises far later and dips quickly in October, as the amount of daylight decreases quickly. We start with less than 11 hours and 45 minutes, and will end in the 10 hour range. With this loss of daylight, plants start shutting down quickly. We have already dipped down to 49° at night though overall we are still in the low 50’s in general.

The milder days are some of my favorite ones, to be in the garden working, cleaning up for the year, but also putting in next year’s ideas. This is the perfect month for garden tasks, where you can get a lot of work done, and sweat less. And it isn’t dark at 5 pm! Just dark by…oh….6:30. But hey, every minute counts, no?

Often by early October we have had some good fall rains where the earth gets well soaked. Depending on where you live, the burn bans may have been lifted, so if you have a pile of broken tree limbs and noxious weeds and such, you can finally burn it. And having sat there for months, it’s bone dry and will go quickly. The ashes can be added to your compost pile (once cool for a couple of days) or added into a field and worked in. Nothing gets wasted.

Links To Check Out:

Chickens:

Expect molting to happen if it hasn’t already started.
Expect a lot less eggs many days (if you don’t add supplemental lighting, which I do not). Chickens need a rest as well.
Clean their coops and runs, and start laying the wood chips a bit thicker for the coming cool weather.
We let our chickens out of their run when we are working so they can get time on dry ground (as in grassy areas). Often the fall rains lead to a mud pit in the coop. Sunny days help it, as does buying or chipping wood chips (the durable kind) to lay in walk areas in their runs to control mud.
Toss your chickens as many scraps from the dying back garden to get variety in their diets.
Stock up a couple bags of feed to have on hand in case of bad weather, so you don’t run out.

Garden & Greenhouse Tasks:

Make sure to bring in delicate citrus trees if you haven’t. We keep ours in the greenhouse. Also bring in pepper plants that are still producing, if in pots.
Clean your beds of dead or dying back plants.
As bean and pea plants die back, cut the plants to the ground, leave the roots in, to help with nitrogen. You can blend this in in spring.
At the start of the month, it will be time to pull most of the tomato plants, as they will be done and you might have tomato blight to deal with.
Place a clean board or brick under pumpkins, to keep them off the soil, as they finish ripening. (If they haven’t been harvested yet)
Cut back leaves over pumpkins and winter squash, to let in light. (If they have not been harvested yet)
Plant cold friendly annuals for a pop of color in fall. Nurseries will have plenty right now, and they often bloom into November and December. They will often come back in Spring, unless we have a very harsh winter.
Start prepping your garlic and fall onion beds. Amend the soil as desired and mark the spots. Don’t plant till end of the month, but working the soil now is easiest.
Buy garlic and onion to plant, if needed. (Plant time is end of October thru mid November here)
Trim back herbs, and save to dry. Do this in the early morning and stash in new brown paper bags to air dry slowly. Mark each bag with what is inside. Once dry, store in mason jars out of direct sunlight.
Do a fall fertilizing of blueberry bushes and trees, water well after, if you didn’t in September.
If building new beds for next year (the cooler weather makes it a nice time!) lay down a lot of cardboard to help smother weeds. Place rocks or bricks on top to weight down from winds.
Clean out your garden shed (If you have one).
Sharpen tools and clean them for winter storage.
Clean your greenhouse (if you have one), removing dead plants and giving it a good sweeping out.
Take any leftover soil mix (if you have any) and fill 4″ pots with it, to be ready for next spring. I store them in our greenhouse. This way the soil doesn’t get water logged outside.
Wash and dry empty pots, stack for fall storage, out-of-the-way, so fall storms don’t blow them away.
Water and turn your compost piles/bins.
Should you find any deals on berry or fruit trees, get them in the ground in the next few weeks.
Avoid any desire to prune trees. Wait till it is winter! Trees and bushes are starting to go into being dormant, and need their rest.

Garlic ready to plant (or mostly ready).

~Sarah

Gardening · Homesteading · Urban Homesteading

Garlic Growing Revisited: Tips from a Lazy Homesteader

September 22, 2023January 28, 2024 Sarah

I have mentioned before how bad this year (2023) was for growing garlic. It was a couple things for us I feel. The long, cold spring into early summer didn’t help.

So lets get to the backstory first. Garlic is always a 2 year project for nearly everyone growing it. You plant the “seed” in mid-fall and walk away, to when it awakens in the spring. And you harvest it in the middle of summer, saving back some to plant the next year. (How to grow? See here.)

Last year my garlic had been amazing. It grew so well, and was as big as my palm.

As usual I had saved garlic to replant. It went into the root cellar after I had cured it, to await for the fall.

In late October or so last year, I had the boys bring up the garlic and get the beds ready (plunking in the holes they punched). See here for how we plant it in fall from a few years back.

Fall came and went, and winter showed up. Then spring came, and it grew in that it did shoot up and produced garlic scapes. But it never got thick. It was very anemic in size on the upside.

Then I found another issue. As the garlic came up in spring…I realized my numbers were not right. My son was supposed to have planted a certain amount, but the numbers didn’t match. I then realized in our root cellar sat an ENTIRE box of garlic he had not planted in November. His older brother had never brought it up.

So suddenly in spring we were out there planting another 2 full beds (which was 4 cloves across each row). Yes, you can spring plant garlic. It will just take longer to mature.

I also grew it in a new bed we had carved out last year. It didn’t have irrigation built in yet, and I’d forget to water it enough in late spring into summer (I had a sprinkler on it….but I had to remember to do it – the bed is on the other side of the driveway and out of my mind). The soil wasn’t great I found out either. After the scapes came, the garlic just seemed to stop growing. I was so angry over it I stomped off and quit watering it. Even the younger spring garlic. I was frustrated and turned my back on the new bed. Let the weeds over take it.

So, it’s partially my fault, partially not. Lessons learned for next year, as always.

But there was something I learned this year. And it was huge.

A couple of weeks ago, as the weather has been slightly cooling off (and the sun isn’t so bright), I started my long list of fall farm chores to get everything ready for winter.

So I went out and, with a sour disposition, pulled all the garlic, which seemed mired in concrete-like soil. I spread it out on the grass to dry for a day, so we could knock the massive dirt clumps off of the bulbs, then I shoved all the stalks into a large pot to stash for a bit.

A few days later I was going to cut the stalks off, to just be bulbs when I realized….this garlic was cured.

It had self cured in the ground as I had my hissy fit. Sometime from end of July on.

The youngest boy started processing it for seed yesterday. The cloves just fell off. Yet, it was perfect garlic. Maybe on the smaller side for bulb size, but the cloves were firm and fresh.

In years before my garlic grew with irrigation for the other items in the beds, and so didn’t have the chance to dry out. Here, alone, it could dry out. And dry out over time, without the bulbs baking in summer heat in a greenhouse or shed. Instead the earth simply dried out as it would normally over the length of summer.

I will never pull my garlic to cure in a shed again unless we have a cold wet summer. I will be the lazy homesteader from here out, and let nature do the work for me.

~Sarah

Gardening · Herbalism · Preserving

The Fleeting Season of Medicinal Flowers

September 21, 2023 Sarah

The past few weeks every time I was in the gardens – or out on walks in the woods, if I saw flowers popped up, I was picking them. This is a yearly thing for me, in late summer as we approach fall.

I played it right, and got a lot picked before the rains showed up this week. Just a day of rain – but very heavy at times. The sun will come out till end of the week, which should promote the final blooms for me to pick even more.

Heavy rain for a whole week, next week, is predicted. So I know I am almost done for the season.

Why should you pick medicinal flowers?

When you buy online, you are taking a gamble of where the item was grown, and how it was grown.

If you are interested in making body care products, you might see crunchy mamas talking about making infused calendula oil to use in salves, soaps and more. Which is a great use for calendula and an excellent intro to herbalism. But it also takes a lot of flowers to do it. And if you buy online, you have no idea how they were really sourced – or if they were grown in the USA (or your country as it applies to you). I do not want to be using Chinese grown flowers in my herbalism!

If you grow your own (and if do this, most flowers will self seed and spread on their own by year 3) you win in two ways: you have a source to pick from, and you provide for the native pollinators amply. You also will get free seed yearly to store for the next year, if you choose to.

I let the flowers grow randomly amongst the vegetables. It’s a win win for pollination.

Strawberry Calendula.

Strawberry Calendula. As you can see it comes in a varying range of colors.

Orange Calendula. This is the version most think of when they buy the flowers dried. It’s often pale yellow due to being exposed to heat while drying.

White Lavender. Lavender comes in many shades, not just lavender the color. Find a good grower and find a vast world you didn’t know about. Some of these types you can grow from seed, others must be started by plugs.

Native wild rose petals, to be carefully plucked. These are Sitka Roses.

And no not forget to take some rose hips. From Nootka Roses.

For best results pick once the morning dew has gone, but before it gets warmed up (so midday from say noon to 3 pm is a no-go). You want dry blossoms to pick.

It’s a simple process. I have a small picking basket lined with cardboard baskets. As I walk along the rows, I pluck and put in by type.

When I get done, I get out paper lunch sacks and add each particular flower to a bag. I fold over a bit, to keep out light and dust. Then every day or two, I flip the bag over. Don’t overload the bag of course, if you have lots of flowers, and if they are heavy, such as Calendula, better to only have a dozen blossoms in each bag.

The flowers will slowly dry naturally. They won’t lose their color nor their essential oils deeply hidden in them. It’s far better than drying flowers in a dehydrator with heat. You pay for it by the flowers losing aroma and color.

As for rose hips, I cut them in half, scrape out seeds and pith, then air dry – you can leave them on a paper towel lined plate, or do the paper bag method.

Once everything is fully dry, or you remember about all those bags loitering around, transfer them to dry mason jars. Store out of direct light and use within a year for best results.

~Sarah

Gardening · Homesteading

August On The Homestead

August 31, 2023August 31, 2023 Sarah

August started off like July. Colder than normal, where if it did heat up, the nights were well under 60*. Chilly for the plants. Some thrived well, some didn’t. Eventually we got a week of heat mid month, which helped the harvest later on.

I finally after YEARS got white Burbank blackberries. But they just never got good. I’d say mealy was the best term for them. Not good eats. I will keep up hope though, I really want to master this berry.

Marshmallow in bloom. It doesn’t last long, so I treasure it yearly. The plant got at least 12 feet high this year (yes, it is a water hog). It collapses when the heat ramps up, so 3rd week of August it plopped down for the year.

Taunting me, but nope.

Where as the Boysenberry crop this year was off the charts.

White strawberries.

Catnip in bloom.

Boysenberries.

Rusty the Rooster.

A random lily a squirrel planted for me.

Potatoes straight from the Andes Mountains growing.

One has white flowers.

The other has purple flowers.

An August harvest.

And another nights harvest.

Our Frostline peach tree did amazing this year and we had a huge harvest in mid-August. Very juicy and sweet, but they bruise very easily. Not one to store, they must be eaten quickly.

The Lily opening up.

When a cucumber hides on you. The chickens eat well with these.

Having survived July’s freak windstorm, the giant Sunflowers fought on and started opening. The bees were very happy.

Strawberry Calendula.

Sunflower.

Native Twinberry Honeysuckle, growing in the berry bed.

The pear tree gave over 40 pears this year. That was a great crop for this tree.

Herbs that have spread and spread. I let them grow randomly, as it brings in pollinators.

Right before we harvested the peaches.

The Olympian Fig tree grew a lot this year and put on its best harvest, with over 50 figs.

Baby Kiwi growing.

In late spring the boys and I planted Lupine seeds and 12 plants took. This one was getting ready to open. We gave a couple of them away, and will plant the rest into the berry bed.

Boysenberries ripening.

Grapes slowly growing.

Rusty spends his days with us, when we are working.

August brings the start of the second crop of strawberries, on the ever bearing types.

Moving the strawberry plants into a large cage has really helped with getting a better crop.

The swimming pool bed growing lots of food.

More grapes.

Elderberry ripening. It was also a good crop this year, but I am letting the birds eat them this year. The tree has reached at least 14 feet high.

A harvest every night.

August is the height of tomato picking.

Lupine opening.

Which leads to canning.

I love creating jar after jar of salsa, for the winter.

Peach harvest.

The figs ready to be picked.

As August wound down, the strawberries ripened.

The strawberry cage has filled in nicely.

The dual crop red raspberries are putting on the start of the second crop.

And at the end of the month, the first ripe grapes showed up.

Four videos from August:

And as August wound down, we had a freak day of intense thunder/lightning storms (not very common here), with a lot of rain. The temps in the last days dropped into the low 60’s as well, and low 50’s at night. It rained overnight and is still raining today. An odd way to end a month.

Fruit and berries did great this year. Everything else was hit or miss, due to the cold temps.

I am actually looking forward to fall. We are going to rip out all the fences, turn the beds over for the first time in years, then tarp the beds to kill the weeds. Once the cool weather and shorter days arrive I will be busy getting it ready. I need this I feel, to reset everything.

~Sarah

Gardening · Homesteading

Fall Gardening: Sow Right Seeds Fall Sale

August 11, 2023August 11, 2023 Sarah

If you see gardening as a 3 to 4 month time period, you are missing out on the fun months. The months where it is cooler, not baking in sun. Where we live in the PNW, we can actively garden from often March to November, and if we put in extra time, we can extend it even farther under high tunnels/greenhouses.

Which brings me to that I have been planting seeds the past few weeks for fall items. I just go out very early or after the sun settles down into the trees, so I can work with less sweating. Lots of lettuce, new kale (it’ll go thru the winter and get big next spring), swiss chard for the chickens and yes, radishes for some early fall crunch on salads/

I started using Sow Right Seeds awhile back, adding them into the rotation of my favorite go to companies to get them from.

Sow Right sent me this great Fall Crop Collection of seeds to try out this season:

Of the seeds, the first to go into soil was the swiss chard. I cannot emphasize enough how much chickens love fresh swiss chard. So yes, we don’t get a lot ourselves to harvest (I like it in soups, chopped fine), but it sure provides rich eggs for us to enjoy. It’s cost prohibitive to buy fresh greens on our island for our girls in fall/winter, so growing them has to happen year round. But the other part? I love the vivid color of swiss chard – it is visually pleasing and few pests bother it. If I cover it with frost fabric when snow is predicted, it comes right thru.

Now of course…we sit and wait, giving the cups fresh water daily, till the seedlings pop up. By end of August they will be in the ground growing quickly in the waning month of high season.

If you’d like to check out their seeds, visit Sow Right Seeds. Use code: SARAHK10 to receive 10% off your order as well. They are having a Fall Sale as well, from 8/11 to 8/18 with 15% off and if you order $25 and up, free shipping comes with it. They are also on Amazon if you prefer shopping that way.

Fall Giveaway! Starting today, August 11th through August 18th, enter for a chance at winning 1 of 5 seed packs. Winners will be announced on August 21st. US only.

Click here to enter.

~Sarah

FTC Disclaimer: We are an affiliate of Sow Right Seeds, and receive a small amount if you choose to buy from them. This helps support running the website. We were sent seeds to grow, but all opinions and reviews are ours.