October Garden Notes from Jill

In the middle of the dog days of this past summer, I went up to visit my dear friend Jill Allford in North Austin. It seemed like everywhere I looked there were sad looking tomatoes and people praying for rain - or even just a little bit of shade. Jill has a green thumb a mile wide - with a thriving landscape company called Taproot Landscapes to prove it - so, I guess that I shouldn’t have been surprised that her tomatoes looked like they’d been vacationing in temperate California for the first part of the season. When I expressed my surprise over her thriving plants, she laughed and said, “Oh, honey, I’m just good at this.”

This is true: She is very good at making things grow. Her knowledge has been earned through years of study and stewardship of her land. Jill has graciously agreed to take time out of her busy schedule to chronicle the work she does in her garden and to share this knowledge with us.

Here’s what she has to say this month:

October is a wonderful gardening month. Seeds that you planted in September should be well up and be ready to be thinned. Old summer plants like peppers, eggplant, and okra have a new burst of energy and are making plenty of fruits.

Winter gardens are my favorites because there are few insects, plenty of rain, and not as many weeds. I find a whole new crop of gardening patience has germinated too due to the pleasant weather.

Now is the time to complete planting your garden, if you haven’t done so already, and to start amending the soils that you will leave fallow for the winter. But, before you do this, take time to draw a map of the garden that you planted in the summer. Even if you think that you will remember where you planted last summer’s crops, trust me, by next spring you will have forgotten. Crop rotation is as important in the home garden as it is on a farm, and a map will be a big help as you plan next year’s summer garden.

Hmm you say, crop rotation? Brothers and Sisters, this is a very important practice used to keep gardens productive year after year. This summer the root knot nematodes infested my tomatoes, beans and cantaloupe. They live in the soil and attack the roots of the plants forming knots in the roots and reducing the plant’s nutrient and water uptake resulting in a smaller harvest. If tomatoes are planted in the same area of the garden next summer, it is most likely that they will be infested again. Therefore it is important to know where everything has been planted, and to move things around. Peas need three years before they can be replanted in their original bed, maybe even longer for carrots which get wire worms over time. There are some ways to foil the nematodes: turn a lot of manure into the affected plot and turn it several times throughout the winter, or plant things that they will not attack so that they starve and go away, principally the members of the brassica family. (Some of the more popular types are broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, mustard, radish, kale, bok choi, kohlrabi and cauliflower.) If you just can’t do these things this fall and will have to plant in the same place next summer as last, fertilize and water heavily and regularly next summer, and pull the plants as soon as they have passed their prime production, add the manure, turn it in, mulch well, and allow that area to rest over the summer.

Winter Amendments: Compost, Composted Manure, Green Sand, Red Sand and Soft Phosphorous turned in well.  Plant winter rye over the top and allow to grow until just before it makes seed heads.  Mow down the grass, turn into the soil, and allow it to decompose for about 6 weeks before you are ready to plant.  That would be sometime in January for planting after the last frost which is March 15^th to 20^th  in Travis County.  And while you are spreading that rye seed, consider this.  Rye grass makes a beautiful winter lawn.  It needs little water, lives for up to eight months, October to May, and although it needs to be mowed, the mowing is done in the cool weather, when you won’t be so uncomfortable doing it.  So perhaps a good way to do the lawn thing is to have a nice green winter lawn, and give it up in the summer. 

What’s in my garden? Several types of lettuce, radishes both red and icicle, English peas, carrots, pac choi – a dwarf variety called pac toy, beets, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, onions and garlic. If you like beer, and who doesn’t, try a real German treat. When you crack open your next bottle of frosty wheat beverage, munch on some fresh radishes. MMMMMMMM good! Pulled right from the garden friends, those radishes are creamy with a bite. A far cry from those store-bought red wooden balls that you have to convince yourself are of course peppery, because after all they ARE radishes. And if your soil is deep enough, leave the icicle radishes to grow to up to 3 feet long. Really, they are called daikon radishes and are sold in oriental markets. Just wonderful in oriental and vegetable soups and can also be braised as a side dish. Your Asian friends will love you if you give them a couple as a gift. Those huge 3 foot deep radishes also break up the soil way down without much work on your part. It chops, it slices, it dices, it baby sits your kids…….

I still have from last spring some peppers, egg plant, tomatoes, Swiss chard, oh yes, and mammoth sunflowers. They are just plain cheery and you can feed the birds or roast and eat them yourself. Here’s a tip though, cut the heads off before they drop their seeds or, cheery or not, you will be cursing them in the spring when they come up everywhere.

Cool weather makes it easier for your plants to use nitrogen, and Fish Emulsion is my nitrogen of choice. Yes, you and your yard will smell like a chum line on a hot August afternoon for a little bit, but that is the smell of success. I mix ¾ cup fish emulsion and ¾ cup molasses in a five gallon bucket of water and pour it on the rows about once a month with an old plastic juice pitcher. The molasses activates the microbes in the soil and seems to chase off the fire ants.

Lowe’s sells the molasses in one gallon jugs, and fish fertilizer in quarts. Take it from an old organic gardener, it is wonderful that there is no longer any need to travel far these days for organic supplies. Your local farm supply store sells 55 pounds of dry molasses as cattle feed, and you can just spread it and turn it into the soil. Pick a nice dry day and use the whole bag or the leftovers will harden into a chunk of candy the likes of which may have never before been seen. Heavy too.

Well, I have to trot out to my garden. I have just opened a beer, and there are some French breakfast radishes whispering my name.

Jill