October Cornucopia

October harvests can bring abundance for many months. The time of year has come to harvest your cold sensitive veggies, and it will soon be time to cover your cold hearty veggies for optimum season extension.*

Our harvest this week includes many greens and roots. Some will be stored, some will be eaten.

Pictured above are:

Wild flowers

Butternut Squash*

Detroit Dark Red Beets

Daikon Radish

Misato Rose Radish

Turnips

Rainbow Chard

Curly Kale

Baby Bok Choy

King of the North Sweet Pepper

Doe Hill Sweet Pepper

Sage

Mammoth Dill

Notes for the Week

This is the time of year we start to look out for our first frost of the season. You might hear on the weather forecast that the first frost marks, "The end of the growing season." While this is very true in many respects, there are some garden vegetables that you can leave in the ground and will survive quite well over the next several weeks, though they will not put on much growth. No need to worry about kale, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, beets, carrots, arugula, lettuce, radishes and other roots and greens. In fact, many of these veggies improve greatly in taste after the first frost. The freeze forces the plants to convert starches into sugars, making them very sweet to the taste.

Other garden fruits and vegetables cannot survive cold weather, and these should be harvested before a frost if you want to enjoy them. Keep your eye out for nights dipping below 38 degrees Fahrenheit if you still have tomatoes, basil, peppers, beans, cucumber and melons in your garden. One garden vegetable you really need to bring in once the temperature dips below 34 or so, contrary to what the season might suggest, is winter squash. Hard frosts can damage squash and diminish their ability to store into the cold months.