Getting ready for frost

As winter approaches an important date for the gardener to keep in mind is when the first frost will occur. The date is only an approximation so should be close give a week or two. What I do is Google or DuckDuckGo when the first frost will be in my area zip code. Normally ours occurs around mid-October. Back where I grew up in Arthur, Nebraska, the first frost could be as early as the second week in September.

Given this date, we can figure here in our area we have about 6 to 8 weeks of growing before frost. One other interesting tidbit is the length of daylight gets shorter and shorter. By the end of September the daylight hours fall below 12 hours and by the third week in October the daylight hours fall below 11 hours. Some plants can tolerate the short days, but tomatoes can't. As we get into October the daylight hours are simply too short for tomatoes. They won't ripen good nor will they taste as good.

I just planted a row of green beans in one of the tunnels. I planted two rows side by side about 6 inches apart. Down the middle is a drip line so the one line will water both rows. The beans have about two months to mature so they should be good. Green beans are hard to find at most farmer's markets. They are fairly easy to grow, but they are really time consuming to pick. Marge and I've talked about growing green beans and for us the price would have to be high enough it would seem ridiculous. So we grow for ourselves and not to sell.

I am also going to plant a row of about 30 tomatoes in the one tunnel from the slips we started about three weeks ago. We'll put cement cages on them so we can cover them, if the temp falls too much. Most of these are small Stupice tomatoes that will produce fruit even when temps get down towards 50 degrees at night. I've never tried to grow Stupice tomatoes in the fall, so this will be a first.

We are also going to plant a row or two of beets. If they grow big enough, we'll pull them this fall. They can stay in the ground through the winter, if we want them to. We also want to plant a row of Swiss chard. It does really well in the fall and through the winter. I had ordered some small hybrid turnip seed so we'll plant a row or two of it in the tunnel. The turnips are mighty tasty, but so are the greens. They are milder than purple-top greens.

We have never had good luck growing carrots, but now is a good time to plant fall and winter carrots. Also some winter radishes and such. If you haven't planted your turnips, I'd get them planted. We planted ours about the first or second week in August. Some of them are three or four inches tall. Won't be long till the greens will be big enough to eat. They can winter over here in Missouri. If you want, scatter some straw on them when the temps get below freezing. I've never done this, but I bet it would work. My brother digs some of his radishes and turnips and stores them in sand on his porch. He says they are good clear up to spring. When we planted our turnips, we also mixed in some deacon seed, some beet seed, lettuce seed and some hybrid turnip seed. It will be interesting to see what comes up. A couple years ago I did the same thing and got a good stand of beets. We did this on our hill garden which is about half an acre or more.

A few thoughts about growing tomatoes in our area. We had so much rain and with the humidity and dew point being so high, most of the tomatoes were a failure this summer. Somehow you have to be able to control the amount of moisture around the tomato plants. We planted a few in our hill garden, but we planted them through a real thin layer of plastic. This plastic was a yard wide so with say 6 inches covered with soil on each side there was at least 24 inches exposed. This prevented all the rain water getting into the soil around the tomato plant. The only issue we had was being able to water the plant under the plastic. I used a low pressure dipper line. The kit to get started with this dripper system is about $180, which is sizable for a small home garden. The only other alternative would be to somehow bury the end of a two liter soda bottle by the tomato plant and fill it. We are growing a special tomato plant this way this summer. It is called an Ivan Tomato. It has done very well considering everything. Tastes pretty good as well.

If your memory is like mine by next spring you will have forgotten what you intended to change in your 2020 garden. Take a few minutes to jot down some of your successes and failures. Maybe jot down what you intend to plant next year. I make a list of plants I want to plant next year and store it in the computer. This year when we planted our veggies, I made notes in the note section of my phone so I've been able to go to these notes and jot how they did and which ones we want to plant next summer. We are also making a list of items we want to cut back on or quit growing. Our plans are to have a much smaller garden next summer. Don't forget to get your soil tested. That's the best way to know what fertilizer to add to your garden to get it ready for next summer.

Coffee update

It has been so hot this summer, coffee doesn't seem as appealing by the end of the day as it does in cooler weather. The past week or so with the cooler temps I've been enjoying a cup of coffee towards evening. Been sitting out by the picnic table. If there weren't as many bugs, I'd enjoy it even more. I've been enjoying coffee from Ethiopia here recently, and it's an enjoyable cup to drink. About every six or seven days I have to roast up a new batch of coffee or I'll be without. That's on my agenda for this morning. I need to roast some green beans.