October is the month when the weather
cools down and the transition from
summer garden to a fall garden is in
effect
let's look at the California garden in
the month of October we will
begin with the garden tour and then move
on to the harvests that we made this
month we will look at what's growing in the
garden this month and then we'll look at
things to do in your garden so let's
begin with the tour of the garden this
month we are preparing our garden for
the next growing season and let's look
at our beds the harvested all the okra
that was growing in this bed it had
become too cool for the okra plants to
grow and we're now transitioning into
our fall vegetables and winter
vegetables like onions which have been
sowed here and our tomatoes are giving us
our final few tomatoes and moving on to
our next bed we have the sweet potatoes
growing that's also in a transition
phase and the Amaranth we have begun to
harvest the entire Amaranth plants now
it's been a while and now this bed needs
to give way for the winter vegetables
the same thing with the peppers and
eggplants the production is now very low
so we will be removing some of these
plants as and when needed to make space
for the winter vegetables
let's look at some of the harvests that
we made this month
guavas - we harvested
a lot of Arabian guavas and this is a
tall plant so I needed some kind of a
fruit picker that you can see in the
photo here is a very useful fruit picker
basically you just go to the fruit and
then just pluck it off the tree and it
comes down very safely
we also harvested a lot of mexican
guavas they are very delicious guavas
as well and more fruits we harvested a
lot of pomegranates the harvest season
for pomegranates is from October
through December and the fruits already
started breaking up like you can see
here very delicious pomegranates very
good tasting as well as very good for
your health and once the fruit start
opening a little bit
that's a good time to harvest your
pomegranates as you can see here you can
see that small crack in the surface of
the fruit that's when the pomegranates
are ripe and ready and delicious
and that's why homegrown pomegranate
taste so nice you can wait for the ideal
time to harvest your pomegranates and
that when you get the best pomegranates
that you can taste and this fruit picker
can be used on pomegranates too
although as you saw it's not that easy as
compared to fruits like guavas which are
much easier to pick so this is the
"wonderful" variety of pomegranate and
it's a delicious variety moving on to
our next harvest which is Amaranth we
were harvesting leaves till now for the
Amaranth plant but now we're harvesting
the entire amaranth plant as you can see
here and that is because the Amaranth
growing season is now complete
if you're harvesting Amaranth for its
leaves you can just pull out the plants
but if you want to wait for the seeds of
the Amaranth plant you can wait for a few
plants to grow mature and that way you
can get the seeds and then save the
seeds and plant a new set of amaranth
plants next season
I have plenty of amaranth seeds for now
so I might still keep just one or two
plants for seed production but otherwise
I'm going to be harvesting the whole
plants and using the leaves as needed
and this
Amaranth is the red Amaranth and it looks
pretty good and is very delicious as well
the cucumber plants have slowly
started dying and this is the final
cucumber harvest after which we will be
removing the cucumber plants and as you
can see here these cucumbers have grown
very well and we've got an abundant
harvest of cucumbers from this plant by
growing it in just a small container
we got a lot of eggplants from our raised
beds in october and usually eggplants
stop growing when the weather cools down
but we've been having a few hot days
here in southern california and the
eggplant and peppers are still producing
very well this month and we're going to
be harvesting a few of these
gourds now gourds also give a last harvest
around this time around october and as you can
see here we are harvesting the ridge cord
which is a very delicious gourd by the
way very healthy for you as well and
this is going to be the last harvest for
gourds that is this month october and
after which we will have to remove the
gourd plants as well because they will
start dying once the weather cools down
so most likely this is going to be the
final round of harvest for our summer
vegetables and then we'll move on to
planting all our fall and winter crops
from next month
and now let's look at moringa our moringa
tree grew very well this year and once
again we were able to harvest a lot of
pods now you can grow moringa for its
pods in places like Southern California
where the weather is warm to hot and a
few of you have asked me whether you can
grow moringa for its pods in a place
like Northern California or the bay area
and the answer is it's not very easy bay
area and Northern California have much
lower temperatures so you might get
lucky and you might be able to produce
pods in your moringa plant but in
general it's not very easy but i would
highly recommend you do give it a shot
and if you can grow moringa for its pods
it's one of the best things you can do
the pods are absolutely delicious when
they're fresh they're extremely
nutritious and Moringa is a wonderful
plant to grow in your home garden if you
haven't started growing moringa already
i would highly recommend that you start
that right away
Moringa is a superfood its leaves are
nutritious and it's pods are absolutely
nutritious and delicious
so whether you're growing this plant in
a container or in the ground this plant
will produce a lot not only a lot of
leaves but a lot of pods as well it's
very easy to grow
you can see the pods here there long
slender and when they're fresh
that is very nice and it's very hard to
buy fresh pods even in the grocery store
so the best way to grow fresh moringa
great quality moringa is it to
grow at home we also have harvested a lot
of okra this again would most likely be
the final round of okra for harvesting
and this was in the whiskey barrel
container the nombo giant okra and this
produced a lot of good pods as you can
see here even in October it is still
producing its last burst of okra pods
and very delicious okra variety to grow
and I did save some of the seed for this
okra variety so that I can continue
planting this okra variety in the next
season as you can see here very
good-looking okra, quite decently
sized and the pods are very nice
tasting and overall this plant was a
pleasure to grow
and then moving on to our pepper harvest
so the first variety of peppers that we
grew was an indian hot pepper variety
and the seeds were given to me by one of
my friends and this is a very hot
cayenne pepper variety and the one thing
unique about this plant is that the
peppers that it produces are quite large
in size quite thick and they're also very
hot so very similar to the cayenne variety
but this pepper was a little hotter than
most common cayenne pepper varieties and we
harvested a lot of poblano peppers as
well as you can see here these poblano
peppers are quite well sized peppers
quite large in size and as I mentioned
earlier in my opinion poblano peppers
have the best combination of heat and
taste so if you haven't tried poblano
peppers do give it a shot and if you
haven't grown poblano peppers you might
want to try growing in your garden next season
it's a great pepper variety to grow
absolutely delicious in my opinion and
if you let them go red they taste a
little different and it's a great pepper
variety overall now we looked at the
santa fe grande peppers last month we
were growing this plant and harvesting a
lot of peppers and now these peppers
have turned red and one of our YouTube
viewers mentioned and that was a very
interesting comment by the way to wait
until the peppers ripen that they turn
red before you can harvest them and that
way the flavor becomes very different
very nice and according to that user
it's the best flavor that you can get so
I did wait this time and these are hot peppers
and one more hot pepper that we
grew was the dragon cayenne pepper it's a
variety of kind pepper that's extremely
hot and
this i think in my opinion is the
hottest cayenne pepper that I have grown
and if you like hot peppers you should
try out growing this variety of cayenne
pepper the dragon cayenne is a hot cayenne pepper
now let's look at what's growing in our
garden this month we still have our
amaranth bed intact and you saw in the
harvest section of the video that we
were harvesting these plants but these
are growing strong and producing a lot
of leaves that we can harvest we are
also growing our citrus plants like the
Meyer lemon
it's a great lemon variety by the way
and also our dwarf Mandarin which is
called "Kishu"this plant produces a lot
of small delicious seedless mandarins
and now moving on to our gourds we still
have some of our growing growing the
bottle gourd plant is still growing and
it's growing well the Arabian guavas are
growing in full strength and as we saw
some harvests being made from this plant
this plant produced very heavily this
year and it's one of the best growing
plants in the garden along with the
other fruit trees like the Mexican
guavas the mexican guavas are totally
loaded with fruit and what amazes me
about this guava plant is that it's
about five to six foot in height and for
the height of this plant it is
absolutely loaded with guavas as you
can see here in fact its so loaded with
fruits that the plant actually falls
down almost bends down when it's in full
production strength so great guava variety to grow
and they will start
ripening around this month so it's time
to start harvesting them as well moving
on to our spinach the Malabar spinach
that we saw its now producing seeds that
can be saved and planted for the next
season and the moringa plants are
growing very well as well so it's
producing a lot of leaves and it's also
producing pods and i'm also trying to
grow bananas in a container this time as
you can see here I've used whiskey
barrel containers and the bananas are
growing pretty well in the container we
also have a tangerine tree the dancy
tangerine that's producing a lot of
tangerines
now let's look at the things to do in
your garden for this month the most
important thing to do for this month is
to prune and re-pot plants like roses for
example
it's important that you prune your roses
very well and if you haven't
transplanted your plants for about a year
or so it is time to transplant your rose
plant into a better container mix so
what we're going to do first is to make
the plant manageable we're going to
prune the stems remove all the dead
leaves and then make sure that the plant
is it ready for re-potting and make sure
you wear some protective gloves when
you're handling the Rose stems they can
be quite thorny and the idea is to
remove all the dead leaves dead stems
make sure that are very less branches on
the plant so it becomes easier to handle
them when you're doing your re-potting
process and re-potting just involves
taking the plant out of the container
trimming the roots and then putting it
back into the container with a little
extra soil maybe a little more compost
so that the plant can get all the nutrients
it needs so as you can see here the root
ball is quite large and this plant was
getting severely rootbound in this
container so what we're doing here is
trying to remove a little bit of soil
around the root ball and then we're
going to be trimming this you can put
this in a bucket of water if that makes it
easier you can even from the roots by
cutting them
leaving a few roots with the plant and you
can reuse some of the soil but i would
highly recommend that you add some kind
of organic material like compost maybe
some organic fertilizers that will help
your plant grow and i'm going to be just
adding some more soil around the base of
the plant once it's placed and that way
you can fill up the container make sure
the plant is all ready to go back
hopefully this will give a lot of space
for the roots of the plant to grow back
and as you can see here this plant has
grown back strong
it's also good time to start seeds like
onions we're starting some onion seeds to
fill in the gaps in our raised beds and
we're also planting some cabbage seeds
so you can plant all kinds of cool
weather crops like cabbage cauliflower
kohlrabi spinach beets and almost any
other cool season crop you can start the
seeds so that you can transplant them
within about four to six weeks and
cabbages will grow through the winter
season they grow very well in cool
weather and starting seeds in a seed
starting mix is the best way to start seeds
it's a sterile mix and will ensure that
worms like cutworms won't destroy your
seedlings and i'm also going to be sowing
some seeds directly into this container
just because I don't have much space in
the greenhouse and we'll see how this goes
and for those of you who got the curry
leaf seeds in the mail from me i hope
you have planted them and your seedlings
should be of this size by now and i'm
just going to show you how to transplant
them into slightly larger containers so
i'm using a good potting mix here and
I'm transplanting these seedlings the
curry leaf seedlings into larger
containers and for those of you who are
looking for the seeds just drop in a
comment with your address or contact me
from the YouTube page send me your
address and i will send you some curry
leaves seeds
so as you can see here we are
transplanting these into a slightly
larger container so I'm going to keep
them inside this container which will
make sure that they get enough water and
then place them in the
green house so that they can go for the
rest of the season
so that was our video
on the California garden in the month of
October if you like this video
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