Fall Garden Update: After Frost
The farmer’s almanac this year had us anticipating a 6 October frost. With everything we had going on just before that, I was really banking on having that long. Nope! Frost came early, and it was a quick scramble that morning to harvest what we could that was still out in the garden. Thankfully, we had collected our “last harvest” the last week of September, but I had left quite a few plants hoping we’d still get maybe someone else to eat from them. Just one more tomato or pepper!
Last harvest of the summer garden!
I say early, but the frost was barely early: 2 Oct. However, when you’re planning day by day, sometimes things just have to wait a day or two. On the frosty morning, I cut the baby basil, and we had basil pasta for supper! We lost some little kale and cabbage, but the bigger plants were fine. Everything in our covered raised beds were, covered, so they were fine too!
We set up the Premier One fencing in the garden, and set the chickens out to do some work! And they sure did! After just a couple days, they kept hopping out to go back to their chicken run, so we just moved the fence back. So excited to have all the extra nutrients in our eggs from the work the girls did clearing the summer garden.
After that, My Love mowed everything down. This will help our lasagna gardening. The grass will shed the roots, and we’ll cover with compost to keep all that light, loose matter right where it is!
Ready for compost to start again next year!
The seedlings inside under the grow light did well transitioning to the outside, but now that they’re in the raised, covered bed… We needed more space than just the two covered, raised beds, so we added compost to two rows, and covered with hay.
Then we harvested a bunch of turnips and radishes from our fall garden. We had so many, we roasted them up, and blended them to make a roasted root roup. I mean soup. : )
We ordered a bender frame device so we could bend hoop covers with EMT electrical conduit. We had initially thought about doing one hoop cover for the two rows, but decided that each row with its own cover might be better for planting, watering, and harvesting. To dig the holes into the ground for the hoop covers, we pounded rebar in with the t-post pounder, rocked it side to side with the t-post pounder, and wiggled the rebar out. Then we repeated with this scrap piece of angle steel pipe I nabbed from Grandpa’s shop. It worked like a charm! The hoops dropped right in, and then we leaned on them to stick them further into the clay.
But the row cover we ordered… wasn’t wide enough. Womp womp. So we measured how wide it needed to be, cut strips of that length, and sewed them all together! This took a couple hours, but it saved us from having to order new materials. We already had the materials, we just needed to find a way to make them work!
To keep the row cover in place, we placed scrap boards along the rows to hold the material in place, with weights on the ends. This worked really well to start, and seems really easy to pull out sections at a time, and tuck back under the boards. The winds will blow right through you in the winter, so we’ll see if this will really get us to the dates of harvesting everything from our last tray of seedlings. We transplanted the seedlings on 17 October, so we’ll see how far into the year we can be eating our own food!
Held up to the (now melted) snow!
Since the rows seem a little high, I’ve cut small 30” strips of row cover to lay directly on the plants, under the row cover. If the wind blows them off, the anchored row cover will catch it, so I’ll just spread it back out again. Not sure if this will do anything, but it’ll help me feel better about the height of the rows vs the little baby plants still growing under there! So far, so good!
