3rd week of October 2008
The first killing frost happened over the weekend. I was ready for frost to finish off the summer crops and didn't cover anything. The only thing I felt a bit sad about losing were the nasturtiums which were looking glorious. Now we're gathering seeds from beneath the wilted plants in anticipationg of more beautiful nasturtiums next year. Soon, we'll need to get the cold frames in place as the temperatures start dipping lower than the lettuce and greens can handle gracefully. Another way we can tell the seasons are changing is that the popsicle molds have been stored away and the tea kettle is getting used more frequently. I'm anxious to start using my supply of dried teas and experimenting with some different blends. This week we dug up some of the perennial tea plants that need to be stored in pots in the basement. Lemon verbena, pinepple sage and stevia aren't hardy outdoors in our zone 5 garden but are quite happy living in a dark, cool basement till it's time to wake them up again in March.
This is the season for planting garlic and with rain forecasted later in the week we quickly got in gear to put the crop in the ground. It took some organization to keep an accurate map of the dozen varieties we planted. New ones for this year are Chilean Silver and Georgian Crystal. This summer I was slowly selling from my crop of 2000 bulbs to regular customers and sending the pictured display to the farmer's market with friends. I was actually considering reducing my planting a bit until I was able to sell 60+ pounds to a nearby farmer with a produce cooperative. Growing garlic is fun and it isn't a crop that needs to be sold immediately upon harvesting so I was excited to find a good outlet for it. So I scrounged everything I could use as seed garlic and increased my planting to 3000! I was thankful for the assistance of the tractor and disc to prepare the bed, our son's compost hauling and the help of a friend to plant the 3000 cloves in two days. After helping, our son drew up a mechanized garlic planter that automatically adds the compost!
With garlic being a crop grown so easily in our region, I'm befuddled as to why so much garlic is imported from China. I'm doing my best to make that unnecessary and can think of at least five friends who bought seed garlic from me to try planting some for the first time. I also had several market gardening friends get seed from me, one begging for all the Music garlic I would spare. Even our daughter saw the potential of garlic as a cash crop and wanted me to save enough seed for her to buy and plant a bed of fifty. Now she just needs to pull the weeds in the area I'm letting her use.
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