October is a month of change. It's time to clean out the summer garden, spent crops and flowers, and to get the last of the fall/winter sowings in the ground. The leaves are changing color and the weather is becoming more stormy here in western Washington.
October is also a time to reflect on what worked well and what you would like to change for the coming year. For instance, I realized I planted too many peas. My family loves to snack on peas, but forty feet of peas was just too much! Root crops take *forever* to mature at our farm. Are they worth growing in the spring when ground space is at a premium? or should I focus on growing them in the fall and winter as space opens? Do I need to focus on preventing any pests next year (like those pesky earwigs that devoured all my white dahlias...)? I try to take notes throughout the season, but often find myself too busy to actually write down my thoughts! October is a slower pace (thank you, rain) and allows time to put pen to paper so I don't forget what I wanted to change or keep once the alluring seed catalogs begin arriving in the mail.
What's going on in the garden this month?
I harvested the last of all our outside tomatoes (I still have three plants in my unheated greenhouse as an experiment), peppers, eggplant and basil. Most of these plants were in pots in 2020 as I *ahem* over estimated what I should be growing and could grow in the garden! I'm harvesting beets, broccoli, lettuce, herbs, greenhouse cucumbers, field cucumbers and the last gasp of flowers this month.
Near mid-month I'll begin the process of cutting back and then digging my dahlia tubers. The last/final round of transplants will go in the ground after the dahlias are dug. I decided to seed the final plantings in the greenhouse and then transplant them instead of seeding them directly into the ground. Sometimes we have already had a few killing frosts by early October. Since this fall has been on the milder side, my dahlias are still in the ground and the space is not ready yet for winter greens. I have been cleaning out the summer flower beds in preparation for replanting with cool/hardy annuals! This will be my first attempt at overwintering many of these varieties - snapdragons, cerinthe, bells of Ireland, nigella, Icelandic poppies, foxglove, columbine, dianthus and rudbeckia. The hope is that they will bloom earlier than even their early-spring seeded counterparts. I'll keep you posted!
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