Fall Gardening Harvest

[blissful]

I'm in zone 4, and one of these nights it will fall in temperatures to freezing.

My late planting of lettuce is coming up perfectly now. I had a wonderful sandwich last night with new lettuce.

The chard is beautiful and I'll harvest it any day now for a casserole dish with white beans.

The tomatoes have been coming strong for more than a month and there's at least another couple hundred green ones out there. I'll wait to the last minute before taking them off the vine.

Peppers are almost all harvested, chopped for pizza, frozen.

Some crops didn't do so well this year, so eggplant, turnips, beets--not much to show for them. Corn--one good meal and we don't know what we are doing with corn.

The melons are too small to harvest, we just pulled the cucumbers, we still have some winter squash ripening.

The garlic won't go into the garden for next year, until October and that is fast approaching. Herbs are doing okay in pots so far.

Harvest menu: BLT's tonight, vegetable soup very soon, tomato bread salad, fried green tomatoes, sushi rolled in seaweed w/cucumber slivers, dill, cream cheese, pickled ginger.

Anyone else approaching fall and working on their gardens?

 

[Timothy]

Hi Blissful, WOW, you're having a great harvest!

Congrats! "Hundreds of Maters" sounds great to me!

 

[blissful]

Hi Blissful, WOW, you're having a great harvest!

Congrats! "Hundreds of Maters" sounds great to me!

Thanks Timothy, kind of you to say.

I'm thinking, fried green tomatoes (dipped in buttermilk, corn meal/and flour in olive oil), ripening them under newspaper in the garage, canning them, dehydrating them (which is mostly what I do) and we are eating as much as we can eat--they're so much better this time of year.

Chopped up with feta and bread cubes, ranch style dressing.

Fresh off the vine with a little salt and the juices running to our elbows.

Chopped with a little italian dressing, maybe salt.

Hollowed out and filled with cottage cheese and french dressing.

And my favorite: Toasted wheat bread, mayo, thick slices of tomatoes, salt and a liberal amount of pepper for a sandwich.

Tonight though, for the meat eaters, it's BLT's, toasted wheat bread, slathered in mayo, thick cuts of tomato, fresh lettuce, 3 slices of almost crisp bacon topped with another toasted wheat bread. We can't get enough of them.

 

[Timothy]

OMG, that all sounds absolutely delicious! Also, one of my own favorites is a nice large tomato hollowed out and then take the inside meat and mix it with either chicken salad or tuna salad, layer around the inside with lettuce strips that extend from the tomato to the edges of the plate in a flower pattern, then fill the tomato with the salad and top with hard-cooked egg, drizzled with blue cheese dressing. -To-Kill-For -

 

[babetoo]

i am green with envy. i tried planting veggies in pots one year. didn't do all that well for the work involved. i really should hit the farmers market or grand ave on tuesday.

 

[blissful]

i am green with envy. i tried planting veggies in pots one year. didn't do all that well for the work involved. i really should hit the farmers market or grand ave on tuesday.

Babetoo, with 4 gardens and a half dozen pots (for my herbs), I'd say my pots did much worse than things I planted in the gardens. I don't know if I just didn't pay enough attention to the pots or that pots just don't do as well as regular gardens?
My rosemary took forever to germinate so they are small. The basil is scrawny and gone to seed.
I might try bringing some pots indoors and see what happens berfore the first hard frost.

So did you get to the farmers market or grand ave? Any good things found there?

 

[sparrowgrass]

Most potted plant problems occur because the pots are too small--if you find that your plants are wilty after a day or two without watering, they don't have enough soil to keep them happy.

Size matters!

 

[Timothy]

Most potted plant problems occur because the pots are too small--if you find that your plants are wilty after a day or two without watering, they don't have enough soil to keep them happy.

Size matters!

Very, very true sparrowgrass.

To add a little more explanation as to why potted plants sometimes tend to dry up faster, consider this:

When plants are put into the ground, the root mass is under ground in the nice cool, damp dirt. The dirt is all around the roots and is endlessly deep.

Unless you've planted into a raised bed, the dirt also goes endlessly to the sides.

A potted plant has dirt that only goes a few inches to the sides and below the top of the soil.

A healthy plant can use all the moisture in a pot within a few hours when it's warm outside. If its hot out, the sunlight on the top and outside of the pot can actually "cook" the dirt and the roots contained in the dirt.

The soil in the pot can reach temperatures that will kill a plant quickly.

There are ways to make a potted plant thrive. As sparrowgrass has said, you can increase the size of the pot. This gives the roots more dirt to stay cool in, and makes it take longer for the sun to heat the dirt and root mass.

You can also add a sun barrier around the pot. Something as simple as another larger pot with the planted pot inside it. This will allow the heat from the sun to hit the outside pot and not the pot with the plant in it. This will make the plant MUCH happier.

Another method I've used is to build an inexpensive "trough" for your potted plants. Using 1/2" x 10" or 1/2" x 12" cheap grade lumber, build a trough that is as long as several pots and paint it flat white.

Flat white paint reflects better than any other color. Even glossy white won't reflect as well. The white paint will reflect most of the suns infrared light from the outside of the trough and will radically help reduce the heat that affects the pots within the trough.

This, in turn, will lower the heat on the soil inside the pots and lower the evaporation resulting from the heat. This leaves more water for the plants to use and keeps them closer to the optimal temperatures needed for great growth.

 

[betterthanabox]

My garden really didn't do very well this year. Between the rabbits getting in my fence, my neigbor putting his weeds in my garden, and the wet spring and summer, things have been a little blah. I was able to get a large patch of carrots out of the garden and a few tomatoes and cucumbers.

 

[Timothy]

My garden really didn't do very well this year. Between the rabbits getting in my fence, my neighbor putting his weeds in my garden, and the wet spring and summer, things have been a little blah. I was able to get a large patch of carrots out of the garden and a few tomatoes and cucumbers.

Mother Nature sometimes makes it as difficult as can be to grow our veggies! Here in North Florida, there are so many critters that love the veggies too, that sometimes I feel more like a zoo keeper than a veggie grower!

It's a major reason I love hydroponic gardening a thousand times more than traditional gardening. Pests, rain, and super hot summers are no longer a concern. I can even extend the growing season for an extra month or two very inexpensively.

 

[betterthanabox]

Mother Nature sometimes makes it as difficult as can be to grow our veggies! Here in North Florida, there are so many critters that love the veggies too, that sometimes I feel more like a zoo keeper than a veggie grower!

It's a major reason I love hydroponic gardening a thousand times more than traditional gardening. Pests, rain, and super hot summers are no longer a concern. I can even extend the growing season for an extra month or two very inexpensively.

I've never really given much thought to hydroponic gardening. I guess I was always worried my house would get raided after buying a bunch of grow lights and hydroponic growing medium. Not to mention I don't have a lot of space for a garden like that.

 

[Timothy]

I've never really given much thought to hydroponic gardening. I guess I was always worried my house would get raided after buying a bunch of grow lights and hydroponic growing medium. Not to mention I don't have a lot of space for a garden like that.

Pound for pound of produce, an outside hydroponic garden takes much less space than a traditional garden.

You don't need lights or any special growing medium.

The myth of hydroponics and illegal drugs is overblown. Sure, people who grow illegal stuff will use the best way to grow it. That is hydroponics. However, hydroponics was, and is being used for FOOD production billions of times more than the druggies use it for their habits.

Hydroponic gardening goes back more than 2000 years.

 

[Timothy]

The myth of hydroponics and illegal drugs is overblown. Sure, people who grow illegal stuff will use the best way to grow it. That is hydroponics. However, hydroponics was, and is being used for FOOD production billions of times more than the druggies use it for their habits.

Hydroponic gardening goes back more than 2000 years.

Plus, to equate hydroponic gardening with drugs is much like equating drugs with automobiles or kitchen matches.

Cars *are* used by people to transport drugs. Kitchen matches *can* be used to light a marijuana cigarette. Hydroponics *is* used by some people to grow some drugs.

However, billions of cars have nothing to do with drugs.

Kitchen matches are used by the billions to light everything from furnaces to BBQ's.

Billions of pounds of food are grown using hydroponic gardening every single year.

Hydroponically grown food can be as much as 10 times as nutritious as soil grown produce and has a much better meat-to-pulp ratio than soil grown veggies. It also tastes WAY better and has a much longer shelf life.

 

[blissful]

Timothy, I saw a video on one of the Disney properties, where they grew things hydroponically.

What kind of a hydroponic operation do you have? (how do you do it?) Could it be done in the northern states?

When I grow things hydroponically, it means, I turned on the sprinkler... (apparently I don't know hydroponics)

 

[Timothy]

Timothy, I saw a video on one of the Disney properties, where they grew things hydroponically.

What kind of a hydroponic operation do you have? (how do you do it?) Could it be done in the northern states?

When I grow things hydroponically, it means, I turned on the sprinkler... (apparently I don't know hydroponics)

Ha! Well, you're on the way with your sprinkler! It's a large part of hydroponic gardening!

I've been using hydroponic gardening for growing my own veggies for going on three decades.

During that time, I've used almost every type of method that exists. My favorite for vine crops is called "Fill and Drain" or "Ebb and Flow". For plants that take up less area, I use "Nutrient Flow Technique" or "Nutrient Film Technique".

I'm currently building a new greenhouse in my front yard that will enclose my hydroponic garden within a screened enclosure with a clear panel roof. This will keep rain and critters from being a concern and allow me to grow without using any pesticides at all.

You can use a screened in hydroponic garden anywhere that you can grow outside, and usually for a month or two longer than you can using traditional methods.

If you use pesticides, (I don't), you don't even need a greenhouse. All you have to do is cover the nutrient reservoirs and create drip-loops on the stems of the plants that grow to each side of the nutrient reservoir.

Soil temps are meaningless, so by heating the reservoir water, you can greatly extend your growing season and planting dates for most crops.

I don't want to start slapping my web-page link all over DC, but all of these techniques can be discussed in depth on my Hydroponic Site that is listed in my profile. It's free, it has no spam and there are no hidden costs or fees. Ask any question you have and someone, (probably me), will answer you in depth.

Most of the Disney Epcot Center Hydroponics are very old methods dating back to the 1950's. Cool systems and they still work, but many advances have been made that aren't shown at the Epcot Center.

I've been studying and using hydroponic gardening for most of my life. As of the year 2000, I had read every book ever written on the subject. The only book I update now is Dr. Howard Resh's book; "Hydroponic Food Production", which is considered by many in the field to be the "Bible" of Hydroponics.

 

[Fabiabi]

Green tomato chutney with the unripe ones