Well, as much as I hate to admit it, the gardening season is quickly coming to a close for 2024. With daytime temps not expected to be above 70 after this week, and nighttime temps projected to be in the 40’s,our warm-weather-loving vegetables are not really going to be producing much more, and what there is will slow down (or even stop) maturing and ripening. So, if you’ve got any tomatoes left on the vine, you might start thinking about picking them and either try to ripen them indoors or make fried green tomatoes –or pickle them, which is one of my absolute favorite things to do with green tomatoes!
Jennifer
This month’s issue of Let’s Get Gardening
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Aside from harvesting your vegetables, there are lots of other things to do in your yard and gardens this month, and with the temps starting to head down, you might want to get started sooner rather than later. October will be gone before you know it, and with it our warm weather!
In the vegetable garden:
- Along with tomatoes, other warm weather veggies like zucchini, peppers, beans, and eggplant, and herbs like basil are not really going to produce much more given the temperatures, so it’s getting to be time to start cleaning out the garden, once you have done final harvesting. Anything that is diseased should be put into garbage bags and tossed out with the trash, rather than put into compost. Some diseases won’t overwinter in our climate, but for others, you can’t count on the heat of a compost pile to kill the disease.
- Though there doesn’t seem to be any danger of frost in the forecast so far, we are almost guaranteed to see frost at some point this month, so if you’re holding out hope for some of the plants in your vegetable garden to continue producing, keep fleece row covers handy, just incase. Some crops, such as kale, cabbage, and broccoli can take a bit of frost and may actually have improved taste, but others that like cooler temps, such as spinach, peas, lettuce, and radishes will not survive a hard frost. When I’m looking at the forecast for overnight temps, I use 36° as my alert to cover things up.
- Once we do start getting frost, it’s time for one of my favorite fall chores – planting garlic! Garlic gets planted in much the same way as spring-blooming bulbs in Michigan – in the fall, after the temperatures have cooled down but before the ground has frozen. Fall is the best time for planting garlic in Michigan because garlic planted in the spring doesn’t generally get as big and often just doesn’t do as well here as the varieties planted in the fall. If you are growing garlic, I don’t recommend using the stuff you buy at the grocery store, since you have no way of knowing if it is a variety that is meant to be planted in the fall or spring, and you don’t know whether it will even survive our winter. You can get great fall-planting garlic at the Garden Mill, though! We have five different varieties available, ranging from mild to spicy, that were all grown organically in Wisconsin. The fact that they were grown in a similar climate means they should do well in our gardens in Michigan. If you want more information on growing garlic, please feel free to come in and talk to me – it’s one of my favorite topics!
- Take some time now to write down your thoughts about how things went with your garden this year for use in deciding what to plant and how to deal with issues when you get started with next year’s garden. Did you plant too much or not enough of something? Did diseases or pests get out of control? What control measures worked or didn’t?
- The final chore of the gardening season, when everything is finished outside, is to clean and sharpen your tools. Doing this at the end of the season means they will be ready for you to use right away come spring – as long as you remember where you put them!
In the flower garden:
It’s mum time! We still have beautiful mums available at The Garden Mill, but they’re going fast (probably because they are so big and beautiful!), so don’t wait too long if you want some. If you are hoping to have your mums come back next year, there are a few things you should do. First, make sure you buy locally grown garden mums (different from florist mums, which will not return in our cold climate), and get them planted as early as possible so that the roots can get established before the ground freezes. Give them a good layer of mulch and keep them well watered, then when the ground is frozen, cover the roots and crown of the plant with about six inches of mulch.- Once we have gotten at least a couple of good frosts, it’s time to plant spring-blooming bulbs including tulips, daffodils, alliums, crocus, and more. We have some of our fall-planting bulbs in now, with more arriving soon. However, we won’t be getting our usual array of tulips this year due to flooding this summer in the Netherlands, where they are grown. The flooding came at the absolutely worst time – when the tulips had been harvested and were left to dry in the fields – leading to a pretty catastrophic loss that will not only affect this year’s tulip availability but also next year’s. On the good news side, if you regularly have issues with critters digging up and eating your tulip bulbs, we have a number of varieties of daffodils – and are getting more soon – which deer, rabbits, and squirrels don’t like. Allium and hyacinths, which are critter resistant, are also in stock. Our gorgeous amaryllis and paperwhites will be arriving in about a week as well.
- If your perennial beds are as overgrown as mine are this year, you still have a little time to dig up, divide and relocate plants, but do it soon so that they have time to get roots settled before the ground freezes. If you don’t have time to get them planted, you can overwinter them in pots, as long as they are well protected from the freezing weather. I have had a great deal of success doing this by cutting the plants back to just a few inches above the ground, digging them up, potting them up and then burying the pots in my raised vegetable garden beds and covering them with mulch. Don’t have a spare raised bed? No worries, put the pots close to the house and cover them with a thick layer of mulch – straw piled about 10 inches thick works beautifully for this.
- After the ground is good and frozen, mulch your perennials really well. Just like with the herbs overwintering in your veggie garden, mulch will help ensure that your flowers make it through the winter.
- More and more, the old advice about cleaning up your perennial beds in the fall is no longer the recommended practice. That’s because we have come to learn that leaving ornamental grasses and many other perennials up for the winter is good for birds and beneficial insects, and in some cases, better for the plants themselves. Different plants have different requirements, but for most, it’s really up to you when to do cut them back. There are some plants that do better when cut back in the fall, while others rely on their foliage to help them overwinter, and it’s always best to cut back diseased plants in the fall, to reduce the chances of disease next season.
For the Birds:
If you stopped feeding the birds this summer, start again now – just be sure to keep feeders well-cleaned to help prevent the spread of disease. Providing extra protein and fat, above what they can find in the wild, will help migrating birds as they journey from their summer breeding grounds to their winter homes. It also provides extra calories to the birds that are sticking around, which helps them survive the winter.- Keep your hummingbird feeders out for a little while yet, too – just remember to bring them in at night if the temperature is predicted to go below freezing. There are still some hummers hanging around, as the temps are still pretty mild.
- Keep your bird baths clean and full, too. Both the local birds and the migrating ones will thank you.
Read More
More info on all of these tips can be found in our monthly newsletter: Read the full October 2024 issue of Let’s Get Gardening
Happy Gardening!
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