Can you believe it’s the first day of Autumn already and almost October? The stores are filled with Halloween and Autumn decorations and quickly filling up more with Winter/Christmas decorations. Crazy!

If you live in Oregon, OSU’s Extension Service has a great calendar to let you know what you should be doing each month.

Here’s October:

Planning

• If needed, improve soil drainage needs of lawns before rain begins.
• Register to become an OSU Master Gardener volunteer with your local Extension office. For more information, check online.

Maintenance and Clean Up

• Drain or blow out your irrigation system, insulate valve mechanisms, in preparation of winter.
• Recycle disease-free plant material and kitchen vegetable and fruit scraps into compost. Don’t compost diseased plants unless you are using the “hot compost” method (120° to 150°F).
• Use newspaper or cardboard covered by mulch to discourage winter and spring annual weeds or remove a lawn area for conversion to garden beds. For conversion, work in the paper and mulch as organic matter once the lawn grass has died.
• Clean and paint greenhouses and cold frames for plant storage and winter growth.
• Harvest sunflower heads; use seed for birdseed or roast for personal use.
• Dig and store potatoes; keep in darkness, moderate humidity, temperature about 40°F. Discard unused potatoes if they sprout. Don’t use as seed potatoes for next year.
• Harvest and immediately dry filberts and walnuts; dry at 95° to 100°F.
• Ripen green tomatoes indoors. Check often and discard rotting fruit.
• Harvest and store apples; keep at about 40°F, moderate humidity.
• Place mulch over roots of roses, azaleas, rhododendrons and berries for winter protection.
• Trim or stake bushy herbaceous perennials to prevent wind damage.
• To suppress future pest problems, clean up annual flower beds by removing diseased plant materials, overwintering areas for insect pests; mulch with manure or garden compost to feed the soil and suppress weeds.
• Cover asparagus and rhubarb beds with a mulch of manure or compost.
• Clean, sharpen and oil tools and equipment before storing for winter.
• Store garden supplies and fertilizers in a safe, dry place out of reach of children.
• Prune out dead fruiting canes in raspberries.
• Western Oregon: Train and prune primocanes of raspberry
• Western Oregon: Harvest squash and pumpkins; keep in dry area at 55° to 60°F.
• Western Oregon: If necessary (as indicated by soil test results) and if weather permits, spade organic material and lime into garden soil.
• Central/eastern Oregon: Prune evergreens.

Planting/Propagation

• Dig and divide rhubarb. (Should be done about every 4 years.)
• Plant garlic for harvesting next summer.
• Propagate chrysanthemums, fuchsias, geraniums by stem cuttings.
• Save seeds from the vegetable and flower garden. Dry, date, label, and store in a cool and dry location.
• Plant ground covers and shrubs.
• Dig and store geraniums, tuberous begonias, dahlias, gladiolas.
• Pot and store tulips and daffodils to force into early bloom, indoors, in December and January.

Pest Monitoring and Management

• Monitor landscape plants for problems. Don’t treat unless a problem is identified.
• Remove and dispose of windfall apples that might be harboring apple maggot or codling moth larvae.
• Rake and destroy diseased leaves (apple, cherry, rose, etc.), or hot compost diseased leaves.
• Spray apple and stone fruit trees at leaf fall to prevent various fungal and bacterial diseases. Obtain a copy of Managing Diseases and Insects in Home Orchards (EC 631) from your local Extension office.
• If moles and gophers are a problem, consider traps.
• Western Oregon: Control fall-germinating lawn weeds while they are small. Hand weeding and weeding tools are particularly effective at this stage.

Houseplants and Indoor Gardening

• Early October: Reduce water, place in cool area (50-550F) and increase time in shade or darkness (12-14 hours) to force Christmas cactus to bloom in late December.
• Place hanging pots of fuchsias where they won’t freeze. Don’t cut back until spring.
• Western Oregon: Check/treat houseplants for disease and insects before bringing indoors.

Doesn’t seem like the end of summer is just around the corner, but then again, the gray and rain we’ve gotten the past few days helps get over the weirdness of it. Garden clean up will commence this week, we’ll get it all ready for winter and spring planting just in case we do end up staying here.

I made zucchini bread yesterday with frozen zucchini from last year. It just needed to be thawed and well drained. The bread ended up cooking for 80 minutes, but I used half applesauce, half oil instead of all the oil, and 1 cup brown sugar for part of the white sugar. Since I’m now out of frozen shredded zucchini, I’ll concentrate on perfecting the recipe with fresh. To the farmer’s market next Saturday! I need strawberries too, these guys are going through jam like there’s no tomorrow.

Today I’m making pumpkin bread. My 14 year old daughter is going to HIGH SCHOOL after being homeschooled since 6th grade (long story, too long for a gardening/food blog), starting Wednesday, and I want to send homemade goodies with her to help the transition.

I’m also looking for a good pineapple upside down cake recipe that doesn’t use corn ingredients (Alton Brown’s does) or boxed cake mix (cake mix has a place, pineapple upside down cake isn’t it). Anyone know a good one?

I just harvested enough green beans for dinner tonight. I didn’t even know we had more than a few because of all the weeds, but on the 4th we managed to get out there and get a lot done. It looks a lot better but still has a ways to go. The husband unit wants to plant a short winter crop, I’m thinking about it! We’re not making plans for spring because I’m not sure if we’ll be here like I’ve mentioned before, but a winter crop would be ok I think!

Here’s one of the plants before picking:

Cherry tomatoes (the romas are doing good too):

Cucumbers! I don’t remember now which is which – one is of the pickling cukes, the other is the slicing cukes.

I hope everyone is having a good Memorial Day (and weekend)!

We ran out of homemade jam early May and I could not find storebought that didn’t have HFCS (we have corn allergies) or red food dye (sensitivities). So on the 18th I picked up some strawberries and made a batch for everyone else (I’m allergic to strawberries). Everyone was going through that batch quickly so I picked up more strawberries and found frozen blackberries on sale, so I grabbed enough for a batch. Yesterday, I canned. 4 pints strawberry jam, 2 quarts blackberry jam, and a quart of blackberry-strawberry syrup with the leftover fruit (2.5 cups fruit, 3.5 cups sugar and 1.25 T pectin). Now we’re all happy munching away at peanut butter and jam sandwiches and not getting rashes, migraines or hyper from the store bought crap.

Once berry season really gets going (and I can get local fresh berries instead of store bought/frozen), I’ll be making lots more. Lots more.

I really did mess up with the tomatoes :lol They’re all falling all over the place and planted so close together that a lot are falling into the middle of the whole mess and ripening and I can’t see them. There’s hundreds of tomatoes. It’s insanity.

Here’s the first group of tomatoes. About half were on the vines, ready to pick and the other half were on the ground. Most are Romas, but there’s a few Early Girl and a small Beefsteak or two in there. I made salsa and froze it today with the ripest ones :bounce

Wow. I haven’t even set foot in the garden in 3-4 days because of the heat then rain and I was thrilled by what I found. Our first red roma tomatoes, crooknecks and zucchini, lots of corn and more. Check it all out :thumb

And the crookneck squash siamese twin that wants to be a porn star:

So much for planning on weeding today. A big storm came in last night and will last all week. With the amount of rain we’re going to get, I think the weeds might just take over :lol

I did manage to get the zucchini shredded and frozen, and got a bunch of peaches and have started freezing them. I got some from the store and some from a local orchard and am doing half of each in fruit juice and the other half in very light sugar syrup. I thought about canning some, but just can’t get the ambition up. Freezing is incredibly easy!

I couldn’t stand it any longer, I had to pick the 3 big zucchini :lol Going to make some zucchini bread and maybe a treat for the kids and shred and freeze the rest.

Mmmm crookneck!

I thought it might be a good idea to check out the taters that were getting flooded over and over. The bottom 4 plants, the ones at the end of the line so to speak that keep getting the most water, got pulled up last night and turned into dinner. The 3 russets and 1 of the red plants, completely harvested, gave enough potatoes for 5 of us to eat (my 4 year old wasn’t interested) as a main dish. The peas are going nuts and today many are being frozen and I will indeed have zucchini coming out my ears very soon, like so many new gardeners!

The next few months will be hectic, as I am going to start getting rid of mass quantities of our crap that I don’t want to pack and unpack again, plus work and the garden and everything, but I’ll shoot for a post every 3-4 days with updates and pictures.

Here’s some for today:

Everyone was interested to see what broccoli looked like flowering, so we let one plant do so.  Very pretty:

Our tater harvest:

Peas, plus a couple carrots that needed to be pulled to thin out the row and an onion just ’cause:

First zucchini:

Some random images and thoughts on drying parsley for the first time. I’ll put it all into one post at the end if it turns out well!

Started out with the biggest parsley, and grouped them into small bunches. Tied them with the left over twine from the trellis, and hung on a curtain rod in a window that gets a lot of direct sunlight. They are nice and bushy here, yesterday. Today they are wilting and I’m watching carefully to make sure they get good heat and airflow.