The Display Vegetable Garden in October

The first hard frost finally arrived in mid-October. That frost finished the growing season for the Black Beauty zucchini, the beans, the tomatoes and the squash vines. So sad to see the last remnants of the once-flourishing garden shrivelled beyond all recognition. With the bountiful harvest of squash, zucchini, tomatoes and beans we’ve been too busy freezing and processing to mourn the loss of our vegetable garden.

Successful Vegetables

The Anna Hubbard squash were the stars of the October vegetable garden. Seeds were sown directly into the soil at the end of May and produced four vigorous plants. A couple of weeks ago, under threat of a hard frost, we harvested 13 very fine looking squash. Each squash weighted in at about 3 to 5 lbs. The Anna Hubbard squash have a very dense flesh. Once baked in the oven for 30-40 minutes the squash becomes soft enough for eating or baking. This vegetable is really delicious when slathered with maple syrup.

Surprisingly the Black Beauty Zucchini continued to producing new zucchini despite the light frosts. The zucchini leaves showed damage but kept right on producing until the first really heavy frost in the second week of October. We harvested about a dozen zucchinis and stuck them in the crisper of our refrigerator. Black Beauty seems to be a very good “keeper” as the larger zucchini are still nice and firm though picked 2 weeks ago.

Carrots continue getting fatter and fatter. They are still producing nice looking and tasty carrots. The October frosts haven’t damaged the carrots at all, though we did cover them twice so far. At this time of year, we usually see some slug damage, but curiously, we haven’t seen any chewed up carrots this year.

Ironically, the parsley, which finally started sprouting in late August, is now lush, green and delicious. Parsley is frost-resistant, so it’s a great fall crop that will hopefully keep producing until November. Chard is still growing though very slowly. Since only one of the four chard plants bolted we still have a decent amount of fresh chard to add to our soups and salads.

October has turned out to be a lovely month with today’s temperatures reaching a unexpected high of 68 degrees (or 19 Celsius) . The color of the leaves was just magnificent this year providing this wobright colorful backdrop to the farm. Frosts have been light enough to allow the hardier vegetables to continue growing, so we’re still eating those fresh salads we’ve become addicted to. That won’t continue for long, so we’ll enjoy every minute while it lasts.

Happy Gardening!
Annie Rose

Footnote: Our Nikon D40 suffered “irreparable water damage” according to Nikon which apparently can happen simply by taking the camera into a “humid environment”. The pictures this month were taken with the Google Smart Phone, the Nexus HTC. It’s a wonderful phone, camera, personal organizer, compass, GPS, toy and in a pinch – like now – a real life-saver.