happy halloween!!!

Here are some pumpkins on the doorsteps in my neighborhood.

wooley bear caterpillars predict a mild winter

My dad and I have been watching for wooly bear caterpillars this fall. We've seen several and they've been nearly all orange, with only small tips of black at the ends. The addage is that the smaller the orange stripe, the worse the winter will be. Sure looks like it will be a very mild winter.

weathering hurricane Sandy

We were fortunate with almost no storm damage, though it was WINDY!! The garden is wet and leaf-strewn.

Many houses nearby fared worse, though nothing like NJ. Here's a slideshow of my neighborhood after Sandy.

adjusting my chicken's lighting

My chickens still aren't laying any eggs. I came across this article: Why Aren't My Chickens Laying, from McMurray Hatcheries. I will follow their advice and set my light timer to come on early in the morning, before dawn, to give the chickens 14 hours of sunlight.

Near Boston, we're getting 10.5 hours of sunlight now (and decreasing fast!). Sunrise today was 7:15 MA, so I should the light to come on at 3:45 AM!! That's early!

I had my light coming on at 6:15 AM and after dusk until 6:45 PM. That was only giving them 12.5 hours, and most of the extra in the evening. McMurray suggests its better to have the extra light in the morning. So 3:45 AM it is. I just went out and adjusted the timer.

I sure would like at least one of the four hens to lay me some eggs.

today's harvest

cutting greenhouse plastic to cover hoops

I got my roll of plastic out and brought it down to the garden today. Its standard clear 6 mil greenhouse film from Greenhouse Megastore. Its the first time I've used this. Its 12 feet wide, so seems perfect for covering my 1/2 in PVC pipes, which are 10 feet long. There will be 1 ft at each side for anchoring.

I suppose I could have measured the tunnels, figured out the length of plastic I needed to cover the 12 foot bed plus the two edges and then added 1 ft for anchoring. Instead, I laid it out (still folded) over the bed and cut it in place. I secured the plastic with clips to hold it in place.

Once cut, I removed the clips, unfolded the plastic and laid it out over the bed. I secured the edges with the boards my husband cut earlier for me to use to walk across the beds. I have six, 2x6", 4 foot boards and a couple of 6 foot ones. These seem to work perfect to secure the plastic. I don't know how easy they will be to remove mid winter when I want to harvest from the bed, but I'll find out.

I left the plastic on the bed for a only a few minutes, then peeked in on the plants. Hot!! Its 60*F ans sunny today, so the greens do not need to be covered. I took the plastic off and got a good whiff of warm humid air flowing out. I'll wait til temps drop to cover again.

digging sweet potatoes

Yesterday I dug about half of my sweet potato bed. It was drizzling on the eve of Hurricane Sandy's arrival. I told myself I wouldn't get my hands dirty as I planned to shop afterwards. I often fail at this plan. My hands got really muddy. I dug a nice pile of sweets.

hoops ready for covering

My winter bed is ready to be covered. The weather has been beautiful so far this month. Perfect for growing a bed full of greens. Today, we are expecting more warm sunny weather, but Thursday, temperatures are going down. I'll get out the plastic and cover the bed today.

Not sure if I should put the gnomes in the winter tunnel. They've worked so hard all summer - may be ready for a rest from gardening.

what happened to this Romanesco cauliflower?

What happened to my mom's Romanesco cauliflower Veronica? It grew into a giant plant and now it has leaves between each floret. We've never grown this before.

filming how-to videos

Yesterday I made a series of "How To" videos in my garden for E-How. It was perfect weather and I was lucky to have a great video producer, Alan from Spinning Horse Video Productions, do the shooting. Skippy and Alan's cute little female black lab Coby hit it off immediately, ran all over the garden and gave us lots of great dog-in-the-garden photo ops. Alan is putting our videos together now. We did: "How to harvest perennial bunching onions", "How to save seeds", "How to plant peas in the fall", "How to store dahlia tubers" and a bunch of other topics. I will post links here when they are available.

butternut squash harvest

My squash box is FULL!

From 6 plants that I trained up and over my trellis, I got a total of 17 squash, adding up to 44 lbs. That's about 3 squash per plant. The biggest squash is 4.4 lbs and the smallest is 1.4.

Marian's visit

Writing a blog is an interesting thing. Usually it's just me, going on about my garden or photos I took. "I did this, then that". But the best part for me is getting comments. Sometimes comments come from gardeners on the other side of the world.(OK, it can be really hard to hear about summer in Australia when we're under a foot of snow.) Sometimes I get comments from gardeners with more experience than me, or who have a good idea to describe. Sometimes a new gardener comments with a question.

Soon after I first began blogging in 2006, Marian from London UK added her comments. A bit about her lottie, a note of support, a quick hello. Over about 5 years, we've virtually gotten to know each other.

Well, this past week, Marian and her husband John traveled to Boston and I was very pleased to become a part of their travel plans. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, we met at my community garden plot. We talked, we walked. It is really an exciting experience, to put a face to someone I have known for so long.

I enjoyed hearing how Marian's experience of a community garden in the UK is different from mine here in the US. And of course there are lots of UK and USA politics that make for good discussions these days. We chatted as we walked through the gardens and then back around and through the fields with fall colors. We talked more at my house, over garden fresh pizza and fresh cabbage slaw.

bluestone patio

When I published a photo of these great bluestones that I recovered from someone's trash earlier this year, a reader commented that he/she would lay them in a pattern with stones between. This sounded like a great idea to me. I've never done this, so I am experimenting. I loosened and racked the soil, laid the bluestone and then piled on extra dirt. After stomping it down and working in more soil under stones that wobbled, I swept the extra soil of off the patio. I'll gradually work in more small stones to complete the pattern. Its a work in progress!

fall vegetable garden

These are photos of my vegetable garden plot today. "Before" the storm. I am hearing reports that we may have a "super storm" coming our way in a couple of days. Wind and rain.

I think most of my vegetables will be OK with this. There's really not much left to blow around. The tall sunflowers and trellised squashes are gone. Today I cut down my asparagus ferns and laid them flat on the bed to protect the roots during the winter. Tomorrow I will dig the dahlia tubers, harvest the big cabbages, and the last of my broccoli. I haven't finished digging the sweet potatoes, but they will be fine with wind and rain. Most everything that's left now is pretty well hunkered down under a layer of hay. I will stack the chairs and put a big rock on them and lie my garden tools flat.

I am hoping the storm doesn't do much damage to anyone.

carrot martini

This is a giant purple-skinned carrot that a friend of my mom grew. Perfect for a martini!