Fall gardening tasks

Hard to believe it's fall and time to do some fall and winter gardening chores. We dug our potatoes a while back, and I spent one morning separating them by size and getting them into the cool room. Also, we are picking our squash as they mature and getting them in the cool room. Our next project is to get the onions into the cool room. We have them hanging in the shop. When we built our shop, we made one room super easy to cool or heat. Six inches of insulation in the walls and 10 in the ceiling. We use a regular AC, but it sure feels good on a hot day.

I always try, and sometimes succeed, to get my turnips planted by the middle of August. That gives them enough time to come up and make bulbs, but time also to grow some tops for turnip greens. I like the bulbs better than the greens. I like them raw with Lawry's Seasoning, but I also like them fried like potatoes or boiled with butter. A good friend of mine can hardly wait for the first mess of turnip greens. If I had to choose which greens I like the best, it would be lamb's quarter.

I get an email from a seed supplier pretty much every week, and this past week the topic was starting fall and winter carrots. Never thought about growing carrots in the fall or into winter, so I ordered some carrots that are supposed to be good for fall or winter, and they should come this week. We'll try to get them in the ground as soon as they arrive. I went through their carrots online, and they carry a round carrot that looks a lot like a small turnip. So I ordered some of the Parisienne Carrots. They are about 55 days to maturity, so plenty of time to mature.

We have a good bunch of winter veggies coming up in my work room, so they should be ready to plant in the small tunnels. I'm using those Jiffy 7 starting pellets. Up to this year I had terrible luck getting them to work, but this year they worked better than starter trays and starter mix. I've been debating about ordering a whole box of them for next summer. They are available now and might not be next fall. Working on cleaning out both of the small tunnels with the tomatoes in there getting tired and don't look too good.

Once clean we'll begin working the ground and planting in them.

One thing we are planning is to plant a couple rows of peas. Our spring peas simply got too hot and died of heat stroke. We have a row of carrots from last spring that are growing and the tops look really good. We hope the bottoms look as good as the tops.

We have pole beans on two sides of the small tunnels, so every now and then we have a mess of green beans. Not a lot, but enough for us.

Between the bugs and the heat, our spring-planted cucumber plants have croaked or are in the process of croaking, so we went along a few weeks back and planted some more cucumbers. I need to get up early one morning and start them on the cattle panels. Also, I need to pull some dead cucumber vines and plant some more cucumber seed. At times I wish the bugs and worms tasted good. We could have a feast!

It's super hot right now as I write this article, so when the days cool down we need to get the garlic bed ready to plant garlic. Best time to plant in my opinion is some time in September. I plant mine about 2 inches deep and then cover with 4 or 5 inches of straw. If it doesn't rain, you can go ahead and water it. Garlic is a neat plant, so stick it in your flower beds or wherever you can. It will come up this fall and should have one or two green shoots up several inches up to a foot.