Harvesting

Wednesday evening, I harvested a large container of lettuce, kale and chard. It looks like slugs are taking a heavy toll on the 300 seedlings that were transplanted last week. Eliot Coleman recommends keeping ducks for slug control. Does anyone have a duck I can borrow?

Planting and covering

Over the course of the month, I have realized the genius of using spun-fiber row cover to protect garden beds. The wonderful thing is that it breathes enough that it won't overheat on a sunny day in the 70's, at the same time it holds some heat in at night, allows sunlight and rain through, and provides a protective micro-climate against drying, cold winds. All of this adds up to a very low maintenance way to extend the growing season. We had one night with extremely high winds and I expected to find all of the covers blown off, but everything was fine the next morning.

Last Friday evening (10/12), I was out in the garden using a 500W halogen lamp to see, covering the rest of the garden beds. As I was working, I noticed ice crystals forming on the strawberry leaves. Soon, I will be placing a layer of plastic over each garden frame to protect from deeper frosts.

On Sunday, we had wonderful 70 degree weather. Youngest daughter and I transplanted about 300 seedlings of mizuna, cress and pac choi, and planted about 40 spinach. That pretty much covered all of the available garden soil.

I discovered a new weather site that shows the forecast in a novel way. It is an hourly temperature infographic including cloud cover and precipitation. Check it out at: Time and Date: Buffalo Hourly

Racing against the dark

On October 3rd, I started several cold-weather crops inside including mizuna, cress, and pac choi. Yesterday afternoon after work, I tried to get these planted, but quickly ran out of daylight. Looking at the sunrise/sunset schedule for the next week is disconcerting, we will lose more than 15 minutes of daylight (wish I had found the time to setup garden lighting this year...).

I also harvested tomatoes and beans along with lettuce, kale and chard. The beans seemed to be at a good stopping point, but there were quite a few tomatoes that had not yet ripened.

I will be bending hoops later today. This will allow me to cover seven of the garden frames with ag-cloth before the expected freeze Friday evening.

Update: I did bend ten more hoops today, but only got four planted before darkness fell and it became apparent that I wasn't going to make further quick progress. Some plants will need to be harvested to fit under the hoops. I will be out there Friday evening with a halogen lamp covering everything ahead of the expected frost.

Time to Cover

According to tips I gleaned on the Johnny's Seed site, now is the time to plant winter greens and cover them with agricultural cloth. I will start several things tonight inside and move them under cover this weekend.

I am planning to use PVC pipe or electrical conduit for the hoops. Using AutoCAD, I was able to simulate a 10' PVC pipe and see that if placed 12" from the sides of the 4' square garden frames, it will clear the edge of the frames including the protective fencing. The other layer of 6' hoops will be placed inside the frames and fencing.

Leaves are beginning to fall from some of the trees while most are still green overall.