I’ve been adding a lot more content to my YouTube channel. Orginally, long ago, it was only for backpacking and trailcooking videos, but then I got busy in life and left it behind. I came back this past year and started making reels on Facebook about gardening, homesteading and prepping. Out of that I started adding some of those to YouTube, and that encouraged me to add more content this past summer.
For each playlist (section) I have picked a video to check out.
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.
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.
This was a fun adventure with our Harvest Right freeze-dryer. I made up 2 chocolate cakes, 2 gluten-free pumpkin breads, and 1 of my favorite sugar-free cheesecake to freeze-dry. We run on a Large size unit, with 5 trays.
With the cake and bread I replaced all the oil with unsweetened applesauce, to keep the fat content down (oil isn’t your friend in freeze-drying). The cheesecake I do is crustless, but due to the cream cheese I won’t keep it for long-term food storage. It will make a great trail snack though to take along, and as well for treats this winter at home.
How To:
For all three items bake as normal, then let cool to room temperature. I used a 9″ x 13″ pan for the cake, an 8″x4″ bread pan and for the cheesecake a standard glass pie pan.
Use unsweetened applesauce to replace the oil called for, to keep the fat content lower.
Cut into small portions, thin sticks or cubes works well. If there were crumbs, toss those in as well onto the trays.
Place the items on each freeze-dryer tray, I found one cake or bread fit perfectly on each tray. It’s OK to pack it in.
Keep each flavor separate.
I then put the plastic lids on each tray and froze till solid.
Then I sent them to the freeze-dryer, using the auto settings.
Due to the cheesecake being a more dense item, we added 10 hours extra on top of the auto setting.
This came out right and all items were ready to store.
We used glass mason jars this round, so they wouldn’t get crushed, then sealed the jars with our Avid Armor chamber sealer. Every container got an oxygen absorber and a desiccant packet added.
I’ve included the recipe I used for the cheesecake. It is super simple and tastes great. I make it sugar-free but you can make it regular of course.
Sugar-Free Crustless Cheesecake
Ingredients:
2 8-ounce packages cream cheese
¾ cup milk
2 large eggs
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
½ cup Bisquick mix or similar baking mix
1 cup sucralose (or granulated sugar)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°. Lightly oil a 9″ glass pie pan.
Add all the ingredients into a blender, mix on medium and then high until mixed.
Pour into the prepared pan.
Bake for 45 minutes.
Let cool fully before cutting.
Makes 1 cheesecake.
I made the chocolate cake with mixes I got on a huge sale on Amazon. Because why not? Fun and easy. Yes, I could have made it from scratch. Now then, only use cocoa powder if doing chocolate. Do not add in chocolate chips. Actual chocolate doesn’t freeze-dry. Just don’t try it!
For the gluten-free pumpkin bread I used King Arthur mixes. I am not a master of GF baking, so honestly, a mix means it’ll turn out and our youngest will love it later on.
This Fall I am back to making bread, but I have also decided I need to use our bread machine less, and work on my handmade bread skills. The bread machine I can always use on the really busy days when we need a loaf of bread, but I am busy. The other days, it’s time to try new recipes out and enjoy all the flavors.
Baked
Sliced
Oatmeal Bread
Ingredients:
360 grams bread flour
89 grams old-fashioned rolled oats
3 Tbsp packed brown sugar
3 Tbsp dry milk
1½ tsp fine sea salt
2 tsp activated dry yeast
2 Tbsp unsalted butter, diced
1¼ cups water
Also:
1 large egg white
1 Tbsp cold water
1-2 Tbsp old fashioned rolled oats
Directions:
In a stand mixer, with a kneading hook, add the bread flour thru water.
Start on low and work up to medium, letting it knead for 7 minutes. It may look sticky, do not add more flour. The oats take on moisture more slowly than the flour.
Lightly oil a mixing bowl, knock the dough into it, then flip over. Cover with plastic wrap or a clean towel.
Let rise for an hour.*
Lightly oil a work surface. Knock out the dough, and gently flatten the dough into a 6″x 8″ rectangle. Fold over a third, then the other third on top (like folding a piece of paper into thirds for a letter). Reshape into the rectangle and repeat again, and it looks like a dough log of about 9 to 10″ long.
Lightly oil a 9″5″ bread pan, place into it. Cover it with plastic wrap misted with oil, let rise for 1 hour 30 minutes*.
Preheat oven to 350º 15 minutes before the dough is ready.
Whisk the egg white and water together in a small bowl. Brush on gently (you won’t need the entire amount), then sprinkle on the remaining oats.
Bake for about 40 minutes until the top is golden.
Loosen and knock out, let cool on a wire rack.
Once cool, store in a bag to keep fresh. Can be sliced and frozen as well.
Makes 1 loaf.
Notes:
*Our kitchen/house is often on the cool side. I put a heating pad on to medium heat and place the dough onto it to keep it properly warmed and rising. I do this method for both rises.
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.
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.
