Organic Gardening Tip of the Week

The air has a fall chill to it and the leaves are starting to turn, but there is still plenty to do in your garden and yard. Harvesting the last summer veggies and flowers, planting flower bulbs for a spring bloom and putting in your garlic and onions are just a few things that can be done in October. Here are just a few ideas to add to your "To-Do" List. Tricia talks about some things she is doing in her fall garden in our video, October Gardening Checklist.

Things to Plant in the Fall – Spring flowering bulbs like daffodils and tulips, garlic, shallots, native plants, cover crop, wildflowers, annual flowers like mums or pansies, cool weather seeds like lettuce, kale, beets, greens and more! Read the full article, 20 Great Gardening Tips for Your October Garden for more information.

The summer blooming “bulb” is a term used for plants that develop from structures that are not true bulbs but rather tubers, corms, rhizomes or tuberous roots. The difference is that true bulbs planted in the fall (tulips for example) actually require cold temperatures to develop properly. Summer planted “bulbs” are tender and cannot over-winter in the ground where harsh winters (where the ground freezes) are a norm. If you have flowering summer plants in your landscape and live in an area with very cold winters, continue reading. Some beautiful summer flowers/plants like dahlia, gladiolus, tuberous begonia, canna, calla lily, and Elephant Ear are actually either subtropical or tropical plants. Their bulbs, corms, rhizomes or tubers will not survive if your ground freezes and they should be lifted before that happens. These can be dug up after the plant is killed by frost or after the foliage has dried up. After curing or a drying out period, place in sphagnum peat or vermiculite and store in a cool (45–50°F), dry location over the winter. If you have problems with rodents, protect your “bulbs” by storing in a rodent proof container. Monitor over the winter and remove any rotting pieces. You could also transfer to soil in a pot and move into a greenhouse or shed, but do not allow soil to freeze. Read more about lifting tender “bulbs” in our article.

Garlic is easy to grow but follow some simple steps to make sure you will get the biggest bulbs the following summer. Plant at the right time; October is a great time to plant garlic in your garden, November is a late for roots to get established. Select the variety that is right for your growing region. Hardneck garlic makes the biggest bulbs if grown in colder winter regions. If you want to grow hardneck garlic in a mild winter area, you should place your garlic in the refrigerator (vernalization) for about 4 weeks before planting. This will give the garlic the cold treatment that it needs to produce big bulbs. Softnecks are more suited to mild winter climates. Another tip is to plant the biggest cloves, they will produce the biggest bulbs. Don’t toss out the smaller cloves–grow them to use as garlic scallions. Next, don’t plant them too close together, give them at least 6” between cloves (don’t break apart your bulbs into cloves until you are ready to plant). Gophers love garlic, so if you have gophers, use gopher baskets or gopher wire to protect from hungry pests. Keep your garlic bed well weeded, garlic does not like to compete with other plants. Add a thick layer of mulch to your garlic bed, 6-8” if you live in a very cold region. For more information about growing garlic, download our Garlic Growing Guide.

Whether you are growing vegetables on a large scale or as a home gardener, planting cover crops is a good thing to do for your soil’s health. Cover crops not only increases microbial activity, but helps prevent soil erosion, increases water infiltration, provides weed competition and if your mix includes legumes, it will add nitrogen to the soil. Cover crop seeds can be easily broadcast, raked in and covered with a thin layer of compost or a mulch like straw. Cool-season seeds can be planted in the fall and allowed to grow over the winter and turned under in the spring. The seeds will need to be watered until the fall rains arrive and allowed to establish before freezing temperatures arrive.

Get the Most out of Your Cover Crop

Raw legumes in your cover crops need to be inoculated (coated) with rhizobia bacteria in order to fix nitrogen on their roots. Inoculate your seeds right before you are ready to plant. Put your seeds in a bucket or big bowl and either moisten with non-chlorinated water or a mixture of milk and molasses (one quart and 2 Tbs, respectively). Adjust the amount of liquid you add to just moisten the seed. Sprinkle the inoculant over the seeds and stir to coat. Don’t skimp on the inoculant, more is better than not enough. Plant the seeds right away. The bacteria on the legumes’ roots in your cover crop will take atmospheric nitrogen and fix it in small nodules on the roots. When the roots break down, the nitrogen will be released into the soil.

Read our full article for more information on the benefits of planting a cover crop and watch the video on how to plant it in the fall.

We all love the beauty of a field of wildflowers and so do all the pollinators. How do you prepare your site for planting and when is the best time to plant? Wildflowers do not compete well with weeds and the area you are planting should be weed free. So you want to encourage germination of surface weed seeds by watering the planting area. Once the weed seeds sprout, remove them with a hand weeder or spray with an organic herbicide. This process may need to be repeated to remove all of those weeds. If your soil is very compacted, incorporate some compost at this time.

Now when to plant–most areas can plant in the late fall but you can wait until the spring to plant but flowering will be a little delayed (some seeds should be stratified prior to planting). Some wildflowers need to go through the winter in order to germinate, so this is why late fall planting is a good practice. In the West where fall rain is spotty, you may want to water, but if seeds start to germinate, you will need to continue watering until Mother Nature takes over. Wildflowers will grow just fine in native soil, so no need to fertilize or amend. Unless specifically buying a shade-loving mix, wildflowers like full sun. But they don’t like soggy, wet feet, so a good draining location is a must. Many wildflower seeds are very small so it is best to mix with an inert material like sand (not sea sand) or vermiculite in a 1:10 ratio and add to a seed spreader to broadcast. After seeding wildflowers, roll area to get good seed-soil contact, or you can press down with a piece of plywood.

Garlic is one of the easiest veggies to grow, but sometimes those big green tops yield a harvest of disappointingly small heads. After nearly a year of patiently watering, weeding and fertilizing, we all want large flavorful garlic for our favorite recipes! We suggest following these 9 steps from selecting the right type of garlic for your growing zone, soil preparation before planting, clove selection for planting, spacing, watering, keeping garlic cool in the summer, weeding, trimming those scapes and when to harvest. Read the entire article, pre-order your garlic and grow the biggest and best crop of garlic yet!

There are two basic types of garlic available to plant–hardneck and softneck varieties. So how do you decide which one to grow? If you live in a region with very mild winters, the softneck garlic will perform better than hardnecks. Softnecks store much longer and have a milder flavor. Hardneck garlic requires colder winter temperatures to make large bulbs, so plant this variety if you live in a region with very frigid winters. If you live in a warm winter region and want to grow big hardneck bulbs, you will need to vernalize them first (place bulbs in a really cold refrigerator for a minimum of 3-4 weeks).

So now you have settled on either a hardneck or softneck, how do you choose within those groups. Well, hardnecks can be mild to very, very spicy. Read the description before buying to get the flavor you desire. If you want something really mild, and you live in a mild winter region, plant some Elephant garlic. It is not even garlic but a member of the leek family, but it smells and tastes like garlic. If you are unsure about what to grow, consider ordering our Garlic Combo Pack. It contains a mix of hardneck, softneck, and elephant garlic along with French Red Shallots.

Summer is a wonderful time for eating homegrown melons, but sometimes it is hard to tell when the melon is ripe. For cantaloupes and other melons with netted rinds, the color under the netting (ground color) will change to a golden color. When ripe, the melon easily separates from the stem (slipping). They will also smell sweet and the end will be slightly soft. Honeydew melons are a little different, they don’t easily detach from the vine or develop a strong aroma. The rind will change from green to a creamy yellow. Don’t try to pull the honeydew from the vine, remove it with snips. For watermelons, look for when tendril and the spoon have dried up. The tendril is a curly part of the vine that emerges from the stem and the spoon is a small, spoon-shaped leaf (looks different from the other regular leaves). Also where the melon sits on the ground, this spot remains green, as melon ripens it turns a yellowish color (as long as you don’t turn the melon). Watermelons also don’t slip off the vine, they need to be cut off.