What Did You Do In The Garden?

[ducks4you]

Pruned tomato plants. Frost predicted for next Tuesday----and I want the plants to focus on developing fruit ONLY.

 

[digitS']

Dug the Canna Lilies and Elephant Ear. Once nestled in peat moss and in pots, carried them down to the cellar room in the basement.

Dahlias may be next week. As long as the roots are thoroughly protected, I'd like the frost to have zapped them good before digging.

The above was written yesterday but I decided to save it until I had actually carried them down to the basement. Well, I did that ... light compared to the 2 Lemon Verbena pots that I moved into the greenhouse today.

Temperature tomorrow AM may be colder than the sprinklers can deal with. So, the cucumbers, peppers and beans were picked, the squash moved to the carport, and all the dang green tomatoes were moved into the garage. Waiting until about 2 weeks ago to have more than a handful of slicers to go with the cherries meant that we have had a avalanche of ripe tomatoes since. Cannot crowd them so much in 2025 and maybe the weather gods won't torment the plants with wind during the early weeks of the season. And no, I don't care much for fried green tomatoes. Hoping that ripening of these greenies will happen over a number of Fall weeks without too much of a loss of flavor. And, I'll be eating some fried green tomatoes, also .

digitS', okay, that's a green apple emoji

 

[heirloomgal]

Pruned tomato plants. Frost predicted for next Tuesday----and I want the plants to focus on developing fruit ONLY.

Amazing to me ducks that you are SO south of me, and yet we're getting frost at almost the exact same time. It hasn't hit here....yet.

 

[ducks4you]

Our average frost is on the 24th, but we have had snow on October 11th before. I suspect that it's all due to the Canadian low that has kept us in a mini drought, with virtually no cloud cover for the past few weeks.
Gonna move some plants inside today, and then on Monday, since my yearly Salsa Party is THIS SATURDAY!!!
and I'm not quite ready.

 

[Dahlia]

Our average frost is on the 24th, but we have had snow on October 11th before. I suspect that it's all due to the Canadian low that has kept us in a mini drought, with virtually no cloud cover for the past few weeks.
Gonna move some plants inside today, and then on Monday, since my yearly Salsa Party is THIS SATURDAY!!!
and I'm not quite ready.

Salsa party! How fun! Are you good at salsa dancing!?

 

[digitS']

If DW puts too much hot pepper in her Salsa Sauce, @Dahlia :

Don't even need to fly south to Cuba for that . Earth, Wind & Fire!

@heirloomgal , I'm wondering how far north you are. Wikipedia provides the latitude for towns .

Steve

 

[heirloomgal]

I'm at 46° 30' 0" N. My town is considered the last outpost more or less before the upper wilderness, 'heart of the north' and all, but really, on a map we aren't even halfway to the mid point of the province, more like 1/4 of the way up. Most of the population is in the absolute lowest piece of Ontario which hugs Lake Ont, Huron & Erie.

 

[digitS']

Yes, those Canadian provinces and territories stretch far, far into the north, @heirloomgal .

I wasn’t asking for a precise location. Haven’t used it for a map search but I was just curious about the latitude if’n you want to delete the east/west.

And, as I thought, despite having considerably milder Winters by comparing your posts on temperatures – I live a little further north.

…

digits’

 

[digitS']

The carport fridge fired up for the 1st time in 2024.

Smaller gardening enterprise this year, I thought that we may not need it but there are just too many things coming out of the greater outdoors right now. It has a tiny freezer and served an important role for many years. It can't be of use for long because things will freeze in there as outdoor temperature drops. We•will•see if we go the usual route of coolers on the deck during the day and in the utility room at night but that's fairly likely in November. The kitchen fridge is fairly large for a 1 door set-up but it can't accommodate everything. And, mid-70's (21+C) afternoons for a few more days won't work well with the coolers.

Long nights here at 48⁰ North and plunging temperatures with less than 20% humidity during those afternoons. I don't think I will ever adjust to the amount of Winter darkness — growing up at 42⁰N aannnd further south .

Stevie

 

[flowerbug]

i went out with the best of intentions to dig a decent sized trench down the middle of the tomato patch so i could bury all the garden debris plus anything else i could come up with to throw in there that would keep the worms happy.

without much rain the past two months the ground was not at all cooperative and it took me several hours to finish weeding and picking some gravel out of there and also to dig a two shovel width trench down about a spade and a half. in lighter soil gardens such a trench would take me a half hour or so.

i enjoy digging in gardens and it is interesting to me to see how the soil is changing and to find previous amendments in various degrees of becoming garden humus. today was no exception to that as i did find some spots where i'd previously used worm compost plus down deeper i found an old deposit of garden debris that had been turned into dark peaty like material. i did not see a single worm anywhere... there were some bees feasting on the tomatoes.

i got about half way and got six of the twelve tomato plants cut off and all the debris and left-over tomatoes raked in the trench and left it at that. it was time to come in and take a break. except i decided to scope out the bean patches that still have pods in them and found plenty that needed to be picked so i grabbed a few boxes and got to work picking. filled up one box and the sampled the back part of the garden which i didn't think had much dry pods in there but there were some so i did sample through just to see if they are worth picking more. they may not be the best of condition with the frosts we had so we'll see what those look like (Monday task - tomorrow i'm scheduled with non-garden stuff).

i also went around the house and used a clean broom to take down some of the spider webs and egg sacs. did not see a single hornet or wasp nest, but a few of the mud types of bees did have a few places - i leave those alone if they're not a problem (plus trying to get them down without doing it from a ladder close up makes a mess against the darker color of the house stain). that was something i've needed to do for the past few weeks. it's nice to get some of these projects off my list at last.