Timely Gardening Tips for Where You Live

(Page 3 of 3)

October/November 2004
By Carol Mack 
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Pacific Northwest
Fall is garlic planting time, and this year, why not add some top-setting onions such as ‘Egyptian Walking’ or ‘Catawissa’. Plant the onions 5 to 6 inches apart and 1 inch deep in rows spaced 12 inches apart. Next summer, harvest the underground bulbs using a garden fork and pick clusters of hazelnut-sized bulblets on the seed stalks for future crops. Both are delicious! A few seeds of corn salad scattered around the salad bed will become fresh greens early next spring. Perennial herbs establish easily from October plantings. Clean up garden debris, making sure all the potatoes are harvested to keep late blight and scab from gaining a foothold. Check soil pH and add lime if needed. A mulch of leaves will keep weeds from getting off to a fast start in early spring. Add coffee grounds (often free from local coffee shops) and you’ll really attract the worms to your garden. Enjoy the fall harvest — and share the surplus bounty with your local food bank. — Rose Marie Nichols McGee, Nichols Garden Nursery, Albany, Ore., and Josh Kirschenbaum, Territorial Seed Company, Cottage Grove, Ore.

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Southwest
October provides ample time for harvesting and curing vegetables, and for concocting big pots of interesting curry squash soups or fall root mixtures, including parsnips, carrots, potatoes and onions, to fill our kitchens and our stomachs. When the fall roots and squashes come out of the field, garlic, hardy greens and many cover crops can go in. A u-bar digger (sometimes called a broadfork) comes in handy not only for double-digging beds, but for greater depth and spacing for garlic plantings. Adding 6 to 12 inches of straw mulch on top of garlic plantings produces great results. Oilseed radish, rye and winter wheat can be seeded into open plots to provide cover and protect the soil while also preventing any early spring weeds. Cutting back perennials allows us to get a better jump on the next growing season and stay in the fields that much longer! — Erica Renaud, Seeds of Change, Santa Fe, N.M.

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