After a delay caused by my hosting company upgrading their interface and website, mucking up all my resources, I am back. So enjoy this very late Garden Update for October 2021. All pictures and statuses are from October.
October has been a slow month in the garden. It is the last month of the season here in central Oklahoma. Anything after Halloween is bonus gardening. My peppers have been going like mad and my tomatoes are trying to push one more flush. My basil is dying and my Egyptian Spinach and okra are nearing their end. They all seem to hate the 45F nights and those are about to become the norm.
How’s Everything?
The garden is surprising lush and green. October is full of rain and spring like temperatures. I figured my garden update for October 2021 would be like the garden in October 2019. Everything went good then the End Times came. It has been great because that is not the update.
I have strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, celery, and fennel all coming along. My cucamelons are in the process of dying back. I will need to farm their rhizome out for next year. Everything is in bloom and life is pretty good at the moment in the garden.
Unfortunately, my first frost date has been moving around so I am in the last X weeks of the season. A fun situation to be in when you have things that need to complete and be saved from frost. I will be pulling up basil for preserving. I will start to prepare my back beds as everything but the pimentos and maybe a rogue Tigger melon are pretty much done. My baby Tigger melon has been lost. It was just too small. I still have a larger one though I doubt the plant will survive next week’s cold nights.
Lets look at my experiments.
Experiment 1: Summer Potatoes
After spending several months working on the potatoes, we are in the final few weeks until we can cultivate to see how well everything preformed. Because of this, I am looking at them every day. They are pretty healthy and have grown a ton since the weather cooled off. The 80mph straight line winds we got early in the month have made them want to lay down. As a result, I have a a bit of a blight issue. Cutting back the infected leaves has so far handled it.
I think, I am seeing the start of a flower forming. Because of this, I am hopeful, I will get a decent harvest. I have used up the last of my edible potatoes this week make a purple cottage pie so it would be nice to have some boilers for the winter.
Experiment 2: Chinese Peppers.
These guys have been beasts so far in the garden. They have only been outperformed by the pimento peppers but they got a significant head start as my Chinese peppers were started in May, not January.
As a result of the storm, they too are not as stable as before. They all survived so that is good. I am really happy with the pepper size and quality. Despite trying to figure it out, I have not found what the potential sweet base stock for these peppers could be. I think it is a relative of a pimento but they are so much longer. The walls are not quite as thick as the pimento. It is very sweet like one though.
I have several that are ripening on the plant that looking really nice.
Experiment 3: My Mulberry Tree
After a few months in a solo cup knockoff, it got a bigger pot this week! Look at how pretty it is even sitting next to a snake plant that I propagated earlier this year. It just started growing like a weed when I moved it out of its cup. Heck, in this picture, it doesn’t even look real. So far it has only gotten some morning light from an eastern facing window. I have no idea what it would do, if I stuck it under my grow lights.
Experiment 4: Dragon Fruit Attempt 3
Earlier in the year, I tried dragon fruit. The first time, they got fried by the Oklahoma sun. In attempt 2, it got knocked off the work surface. Most died immediately with the rest going shortly after that.
In my third attempt, these are going to be babied and loved indoors until they are strong little plants. At minimum the entire winter but very likely they will not see fresh air until 2023.
Of course, me being me, I failed to turn on the correct heat mat when I started them so they have yet to sprout.
Each pot has four seeds in it. I hope to manage four strong seedlings from the 16 planted. If they fail than I will attempt to water sprout them in attempt number 4.
Experiment 5: The Great Unknown
Since the Jelly Melon was pulled to make room for my lettuce, I figured I was only going to be riding out the winter with 4 experiments. That does not look to be the case. I opened the door to my closet where I stored my potatoes to discover lots of sprouts.
I figure they are trash anyway, why not try to grow them over the winter for seed potatoes in the spring. There is just enough time to run a potato cycle before it is time to sprout my potatoes for Spring and start my seedlings.
I really have no idea how this is going to turn out but it not costing me anything but a bit of electricity to power the LED grow lights.
If anyone has grown potatoes indoors, let me know what your experiences were like.
That is pretty much all that needed a garden update for October 2021. November will be strange as the forecast currently does not have the first frost until December. This is not likely to happen and there will be great tragedy in the garden for November. Though my crystal ball has been hazy this Fall.