Good morning everybody! We have evaded two frosts so far in early October but
it looks like this is it-- we're definitely going to get hit either
Thursday night or Friday night of this week because they're calling for lows
in the low 30s. So I thought I would do one last update on the garden before the
frost hits. So without further ado let's take a look. Now one of the first
things i want to point out is how insane these flowers are! The
colors are so vibrant and it truly feels like they are putting on
one last hoorah before the frost comes. Now folks have told me that
the lower angle of the sun in the autumn definitely affects the way that we
perceive color in the garden but a lot of these
things definitely have some renewed life in them
after the heat of the summer is over. So you can see here
these are nasturtiums that were planted early, early this spring
and they have bloomed all season but they are just putting on a ton
of blooms right now. My marigolds are still going strong I've got
both 'Flamenco' and 'Strawberry Blonde' over here
and these are some of my favorites these are Signet marigolds or you'll see them
referred to like the Gem series as a very famous one
of these. Now don't mind my poor little summer
squash here. So this was a late planting of summer squash
and it's starting to succumb to some disease but it is still
producing and will continue to do so up until the frost. So in this bed and
the raised bed behind me I've got predominantly cool season crops planted.
My spinach, my radishes, my turnips, a lot of assorted lettuces, some endive
and some cabbage are in this bed. And then back here I'm doing a little
experiment with some onions that supposedly
can be overwintered in my climate so we'll see how that goes.
And this bed is just kind of a mess at this point.
I've got carrots, I've got a bunch of cosmos that are reseeding, I've still got
some 'Durango' marigolds here that are blooming like crazy,
but one of the most interesting things from this year has been this toothache
plant. So I started these from very, very tiny
seeds early in the season and transplanted them out here,
and there were i think about eight plants,
and you can see the area that this has covered. This thing is really interesting
because besides being just kind of cool, this is
the 'Bullseye' toothache plant, these will actually if chewed
kind of produce this numbing tingling sensation
in your mouth which is really unusual. It's become quite popular in upscale
bars to offer alcoholic drinks where you chew on one of these and then
do the drink and it's this really unusual sensation. But I'm actually using
these because of their medicinal benefits.
So as the name indicates you can use these for
your toothache or gum pain or any kind of like abscess in the mouth they will
help they also have antiseptic properties and
supposedly are immune boosting. So I've been drying these, I've made a
tincture with them, and overall I've just been really impressed with
how well this has grown.
Now this has been one of my really enjoyable experiments this year. I've
been wanting to grow luffa gourd for several years and finally got around to
doing it this year. This is two plants that I planted on
this side of the trellis and you can see how they've just grown to cover this
whole archway. They're extremely productive, putting on
these giant fruit all over the plants and as
these dry down they can be used as loofas for scrubbing
and such. This 'Big Blue' salvia this has been a
honeybee magnet. And tucked in here we've got 'Freckles'
lettuce, my kohlrabi is pretty close to maturity,
I've got purple and I've got some green ones
back in there. This calendula has bloomed all season.
Some red chinese cabbage and this is a red chard this is called
'Joy's Midnight' and it keeps this color all season long.
This is 'Casper' kale and interestingly this seems much more
resistant to cabbage worm damage than the lacinato or dinosaur kale type.
So you can see my dinosaur kale over here, look at the damage the cabbage
worms have done they obviously prefer to eat this one
my 'Casper' kale has some damage but you can see
most of these leaves up here are unscathed and it tastes great.
This is one of my beds that is predominantly
cool season crops. So I've got some purple broccolis, a purple kale,
some red stemmed mizuna, frilly mustards, escarole, endive, a little radicchio there,
some lettuce and some baby cauliflower. Over here is a 'Treasure Island' sweet
potato. So these are supposed to be ornamental
and edible- so have decent sized and flavored roots.
As soon as the frost comes and kills these tops off I will be digging those
This is my 'Verde da Taglio' chard, not nearly as beautiful as the 'Bright
Lights', but man is this a good tasting chard.
Highly recommend this one for flavor. Some more little cabbages tucked in here.
These are the 'Tiara cabbages' and they're small, they're like a two to
four pound head at maturity but they mature very very quickly.
Borage is blooming like crazy again this kind of all died back and now it's
reblooming. These are some 'Waltz' they are paprika
peppers. We use a lot of smoked paprika so I'm
hoping we can smoke and dry these for paprika powder.
The last of my 'Mad Hatter' peppers here. And I've got a late planting of carrots
hopefully i'll be able to overwinter these.
Now back here in the main part of the garden I have mainly
cool season crops and cover crops. I've got a few warm season crops left,
some peppers and a few bush beans but I pulled out everything pretty early
so I could get my fall crops in. Now here I've got Chinese cabbage and it was one
of the very first fall crops to mature. I started them from seed early July,
transplanted them out mid-August and now we're in mid-October and they
are pretty much all filled out and harvestable at this point.
i mentioned a few of my peppers left in here
I've still got my standard jalapenos planted, my purple bell peppers
are still producing like crazy, these will have to be picked too before
tomorrow night. You can see over here I've got hoops
over my green beans. I actually covered these with frost
cloth once already and they didn't and I
didn't need to because we didn't get the frost. But these
are 'Derby' green beans and this is an older variety but I have been
really really impressed with this this year.
This is my late planting so this was done at the beginning of August
and these things have just produced like crazy. You can see in here as I mentioned
lots of mixed cover crops, there's a good planting of cilantro there,
we've got tiller radish over here, mixture of tiller radish and buckwheat
back there, got just a small planting of shell peas
here and I was a little worried about these
because I planted them what felt like pretty late to be doing
fall peas. I planted them on August 5th, it was quite hot and dry
for most of August and even into September and I did not know how these
were going to turn out. Luckily these have been quite productive,
they're putting on some beautiful peas, and the only problem now is I wish I
would have planted about triple this amount.
Got my early fall planting of beets done on August 5th.
Beets have been really happy this fall they're actually doing better for me now
than they did in the spring.
I have assorted kales, look at the color on that lettuce. This
is a Hungarian variety called 'Dark Roden' and this one is 'Red Velvet'.
My sad little cabbage worm eaten cabbages
hopefully these guys make it out of this, and then some lovely Pak choy.
So I've got my cauliflower planting over here, I peeked
the other day and these are just starting to form the teeny tiniest
little heads. You may have seen in last week's video
we have pretty much all the pumpkin and winter squash
harvested and now my greenhouse is acting as a curing room.
And last but not least my castor beans are taking over the world!
Now these are frost tender and I will lose them in a couple of days but
man they are impressive plants. So that's how the garden looks just before the
frost in the fall. And for more garden updates like this
please consider subscribing to my channel
Growfully with Jenna. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.