Last week we started getting some real October weather. In good Montreal tradition, the temperature has fluctuated between close to 20 and as low as 2, sometimes within the same day. Josh just put away his shorts for the year, but the kids are reluctant to clear the summer clothes out, being eternal optimists. I gave up on my light jacket and started wearing my winter coat this weekend.
The garden has been in a state of some confusion. Not only did my lamiums start to bloom again, but my stella d'oro lilies and my gerbera daisies made a late fall comeback. The pink chrysanthemums I planted back in the spring have spread and look ready to bloom, if a frost doesn't kill them first.
The tomatoes are going full swing, though a lot of the leaves and branches on the plants are dying. I am not sure if it is because of the bacterial problems, or if the leaves yellow and die in the fall regardless. The spraying with hydrogen peroxide did a good job on controlling the bacteria in the tomatoes. I still have a few with black areas on them, sometimes the bottom half of the tomato, and sometimes just a bit at the bottom of the centre where the seeds are, but most of the tomatoes ripening now are big and healthy. Over the past two weeks, I have starting picking the orange tomatoes as well as the red ones so that in case the weather dips below zero overnight, I won't lose any of the tomatoes which are starting to ripen. I am not planning to try to save and use every green tomato this year. I still have a lot of the chow chow relish we made last year, which really was the most successful use of the unripe tomatoes. I found the green tomato sauces and soups to be too acidic to enjoy the quantities we made. The orange tomatoes are ripening very quickly when I bring them indoors. I also noticed that when the weather is hot, only the red tomatoes come easily off the stem when picked, but as the weather gets cold, even the unripe orange ones come off with no effort.
I brought in the first three pepper plants about a month ago, and it gave me a chance to compare how they do inside versus outside. The indoor peppers ripened to red, but the leaves turned yellow and fell off. The outdoor peppers have held out well, but almost all of the peppers stayed green. Yesterday I brought them all in. I did a bit of research on the web, and it seems that peppers like it hot and steamy, 27 degrees celcius high humidity, and lots of light, but not to much water. I think I seriously over-watered the first few I brought inside. I am not sure what to do with the rest of them. Right now my options are the basement under a florescent full spectrum bulb where it is cool and only moderately humid, or in front of my dining room windows with humidity increasing when we make soup or pasta. I am not pleased with increasing heat and humidity in the basement. I hope to keep the plants going long enough for the peppers to turn red, maybe even for the ones still flowering to produce fruit, and with some luck I will keep a few through the winter.
I harvested most of my carrots and using them and the rest of the potatoes, with some other vegetables lying around the fridge, Josh made a wonderful soup. I left one last row of carrots, hoping they will still grow. I plan to cover some up with hay bales before the frost and harvest them gradually into the late fall like my mother-in-law does, just to see how that works. I managed to get some decent sized carrots, but many were small because I planted too many too close together and did not thin them out. Ultimately, I ended up doing the equivalent of thinning at harvest time, keeping the bigger carrots and composting, or even replanting the small, undeveloped ones.
I am really pleased that this late in the season I still have flowers going. All my annuals (petunias, nasturtiums, marigolds, cosmos, begonias, chrysanthemums, sunflowers, pansies, dahlias) are still going to a greater or lesser degree. I looked online to see how and when I should be digging up the roots for the dahlias, begonias and cannas, and how to prepare and store. I am supposed to wait until the leaves turn yellow on the begonias, but they are not ready to give up the ghost yet. Makes it a bit hard to plan my gardening schedule. Unlike spring where I can work by the calendar, now I have to follow the weather and the plants.
The strawberries have made a comeback, at least the alpine ones, which like cool weather, though they are not as prolific as they are in midsummer. Strangely, my raspberries are in full swing and I am picking an average of ten berries daily off the four or five active canes, and they show no signs of slowing down.
Another last fall task is planting garlic. We have been happily eating up our harvest from this summer, and Josh was reluctant to already give up great taste for the rest of the year in order to have cloves to plant for this year, so he begged more garlic from his parents who were kind enough to share some more. I hope to plant them soon, as it is cold enough, but I want to put them in the areas where the tomatoes are still going strong. In order to keep up my intention to rotate crops, I need to finish one thing before I can plant for next year.
While picking tomatoes, I found a very slow moving mantis walking across an open patch of hay where the potatoes had been. It looked injured but I could not see where. I picked it up and moved it onto the nearest tomato cage so that it would not be eaten by a bird. I managed to get some great photos before she pulled herself into the leaves. Josh says it was a female who had recently laid her eggs, and that they use all their energy up in the process, then stop eating and die before the winter.
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