GA: Broccoli still going strong!

Stopped in today for the first time in a few weeks, thinking I'd pull the broccoli today.  Well -- I don't think so!  They're doing great, with a lot more side shoots starting and showing a lot of potential for more growth, especially with the next several weeks still good growing for the cold hardies.  I was really surprised at how well they're doing -- I thought they'd be still standing but not doing much producing.

However, I am not sure if they might be full of worms, since I removed the covers on October 24th or 25th since that was the weekend we needed to have equipment removed.  So, when harvest time comes in a few weeks, I'll either do a salt water soak, or just have it...   Likely the former, just in case.  

GA: Harvested the biggest rutabaga -- my first ever grown rutabaga

The rutabagas that I started in paper towels on July 10th are still alive and well, and today I harvested the biggest one, which is quite huge.  Looking forward to trying it mashed.

A few of the others are decently sized, but most are very small.  Will leave them all there for a while, as there's still some good cold hardy growing weather coming up.

Tuberous begonia brought inside -- there are now two smaller tubers instead of one big one

Hmmm --- after many  years of this tuberous begonia having one single nicely sized tuber, this year when I gently dug it out from the soil it came out as two distinct smaller tubers.  Hopefully they'll both take in the spring and I'll have two!

First frost in yard was sometime within the last week or so

 First frost in yard was sometime within the last week or so.  The tuberous begonia is kaput.  A potted zinnia is still going though.

Leaves: Just one garbage bin worth this year, from the maple tree just west of the west visitor's parking

Today I collected the one and only set of leaves that I'll collect this fall.  They're all from the maple tree/bush a 30 second walk away, just west of the visitor parking area (in the park/hill area).  Just one garbage bin worth, which holds a good amount considering I compressed them every now and then.  It was very convenient and I wasn't shy about gathering them in daylight hours.

With that one garbage bin, I gave the garlic a generous mulching (and then placed several un-used fence "panels" over them to try to minimize the amount of leaves that the wind will blow awa)y, and put the rest into a garbage bag in the basement labelled "2026 leaves".  (I didn't put leaves all over the whole garden the way I did in past years, only over the garlic this year.)

These leaves have the tar spot thing happening, but google says that poses no risk to vegetable crops.

I'm hoping the saved leaves will be enough to cover next year's potatoes, as well as other early plantings.  I do also have a bag of straw saved from the spring which can also be used to mulch early plantings before next year's straw arrives.

GA: Potato harvest result = 48 pounds harvested from 12+ pounds which cost $21+ ---- so $0.45 per pound (account for cost of seed only)

 These are the results from this year's potato harvest (at GA):

48 total pounds harvested (with a few estimations when gave some to Ray before weighting).

This was from 12.3 pounds of Superior, as well as ~10 leftover fridge potatoes from last year's harvest.

Those 12.3 pounds of bought seed potatoes cost $21.39 including tax.  (The leftovers I'll just say were free.)

So, $21.39/48= $0.45 per pound for this year's harvest.  (Not accounting for all the other garden costs - plot rental, amendments, etc.)

GA: First frost hit within the last few days (not in yard yet)

Saw today that first frost hit at GA, whereas it hadn't hit when I was last there a few days ago.  

The yard hasn't had its first frost yet.

GA: Corn cob harvest tally = 33 sweet corn, 30 popcorn

GA:  Corn cob harvest tally = 33 sweet corn, 30 popcorn.

(Would have been more if I had harvested more before the squirrels/birds got them)

Rest of popcorn devoured by birds/animals -- so my timing was good for the harvests I did in recent weeks

The popcorn I harvested on Sep 20th and 23rd, when the ears were full and in some cases the covering was still quite green (dried tassels though) and in other cases the covering had started to yellow (but nowhere near completely dry on the plant) are all looking very promising -- they're still nice and plump and golden, ie they haven't shrivelled into nothingness the way the ones I harvested on August 20th did.

And ALL of the remaining ears still at the garden have now been finished off by birds and/or other animals.

So, in future, as long as the harvested kernels will be poppable (I'm hopeful but won't try any for at least another month), definitely harvest around Sep 20th in future years to beat the birds/animals -- DON'T wait until end of September / end of October.

Oh -- and this timing was based on my popcorn sowing dates starting on May 20th 2026 (with subsequent rounds as needed to fill in gaps).

Garlic: Planted all today -- all from cloves harvested this year (ie bought none this year)

Having seen several sources say garlic planted earlier in the fall produces bigger bulbs than garlic planted later in the fall, and several local well known sources planting now (or already planted), today I planted all the garlic.  (Fortunately the foundation work finished in time!)

SEED SOURCES:

This year I didn't buy any seed garlic. I just used (a) the cloves from the biggest bulbs (mostly Music, and five cloves of elephant), (b) the corms from this year's and last year's elephant garlic; and (c) the little bulbils that some of the garlic this year had growing in the stem a few inches above ground.

SOIL PREP:

Forked the soil.  Added several buckets of Trail Road compost (a really nice healthy amount, several inches thick), lots of vermiculite (two big stainless steel bowls worth), kelp, az, mrp, and pre-soaked alfalfa.  Mixed it all up with the fork and broke up as many clumps as possible.  With all of this, the garlic bed (which is the entire southeast bed) is quite high, several inches higher than the surround area (which I'll try to raise up next year with more Trail Road compost).

LOCATION AND METHOD -- CORMS:

Method:  For the corms, I messed up with ~half of them by (deliberately) removing the entire outer casing (down to the shiny white raw innermost bit) instead of just the hardest outer casing.  (Googled after, too late, oops.)  The other half I removed just the hard outer casing which it turns out is the correct way to do it.  It was very easy, just used kitchen scissors to knick away at the stick-out side portions and chipped the hard casing away.  Easy, but tedious.  Didn't pre-soak them at all.  ~9 per square foot plus a few popped in here and there randomly.

Location:  In the southeastmost section are the 2025 corms, leading into the 2026 corms, all are along the southmost edge of the garlic bed, one foot "deep" (not deep into the soil!) by ~3 feet across.  The ones that I peeled the inner layer off (oops) are the front most ones, with the ones behind them being the ones that I properly removed only the hard outer layer.  All went ~an inch or so deep.

LOCATION AND METHOD -- BULBILS:

Method:  Nothing fancy, treated them the same as cloves, just didn't plant them as deep since they're way smaller.

Location:  Almost all are along the south edge, to the west of the corms.  A wide square foot, so 1.~2 square feet or so, ~20 of them in there.  Also, ~6 found later the same today are popped in along the west edge of the main Music patch.

LOCATION AND METHOD:  ELEPHANT CLOVES

Method:  Basic garlic style.  Planed several inches deep.

Location:  These are huge cloves!  5 of them in total planted, from the biggest/healthiest bulb harvested this year.  Four are along the east edge, north of the corms, in one square foot, and one is tucked behind them along the east edge.

LOCATON AND METHOD;  MUSIC CLOVES

Method:  Basic garlic style.  Planed several inches deep.

Location:  These are huge cloves!  60 cloves in total planted!  All are from the biggest bulbs harvested this year, and only nice big chonky cloves (a very few of the cloves in the biggest bulbs weren't big and chonky enough so I used them for cooking instead of for seed).

FINAL NOTES

After a good watering, covered them with burlap to try to keep out squirrels etc.  Note:  While planting I used short fences (held down with a few stones) to demarcate corms from bulbils etc, BUT I had to lift them out after when putting down the burlap, so this messed me up, so the fences may not be in the exact right location and I took out the panel dividing the elephant corms from the music bulbils because I lost track of where the division was.  Hopefully it will be obvious next summer which are which!  Also -- even though I saved the best and biggest to plant, there was still lots of harvested garlic to use for cooking!  Last year I sowed about 55 cloves, so hopefully this year's 60 + 5 will be good too.  (The corms won't be harvestable until 2028.)

See also my paper "map" of what's where, on the fridge and emailed to myself this evening.

Excited to see how this does next year!

Saved seeds from neighbour's green/yellow tomatillos which are much better than the "purple" one I grew this year

Saved seeds from neighbour's green/yellow tomatillos, which are much better than the "purple" one I grew this year.  My "purple" tomatillos from the Amazon-bought seeds are hardly purple and just aren't ripening, so they're bitter and will likely all need to be tossed.

The neighbour's green (yellow when ripe) tomatillos are delicious though!  So I took a couple of her fallen very-ripe tomatillos, opened them out, squished out the seeds, put them in a jar with water, swirled it around; then the seeds immediately fall to the bottom so I right away gently poured the water out and poured the seeds onto a paper towel to dry.  (ie didn't do the fermentation method)  I'll use these seeds for next year's tomatillos and will toss the "purple" Amazon-bought seeds.

Picked up 14 buckets of Trail Road compost ("potting soil") -- spring is much better than fall

Went to Trail Road today to get some soil for the yard, especially for the garlic area but got car-full.

Today the pile was closer to the road and was massively overgrown with weeds at the top, but they hadn't started dropping seeds yet.  But the pile was pretty hard, not like the gorgeous stuff of the spring.  I imagine this pile has been sitting here for quite a while since it's not the busy season.

14 un-compressed buckets of very dry soil (it hasn't rained in ~2 weeks) landed just shy of the minimum.  It was 230 kg or 507 pounds.

Saved 1 bucket to put in the basement (adding to a few buckets there from the spring haul).  The other 13 buckets were enough to put a nice layer in the eastmost "square" plus one or two buckets stored under the vertical structure to disperse in the spring.

Ideally would like to get another load for the yard next spring but won't bother going back this fall given how dense/old the pile is, especially as those weeds will start dropping their seeds all over it at some point.

GA: Results of popcorn ultra-early harvesting experiment = flop

The cob of popcorn that I harvested on August 20th after the tassels had turned mostly brown/crispy but everything else was still very green, and then placed loosely in a paper bag, ended up completely drying up whereby there were no kernels to be had whatsoever.

The cob of popcorn that I harvested on August 28th, in a similar condition as the August 20th cob noted above, was in a bit better shape in that there were some kernels, but they are tiny.  I decided to try popping the tiny kernels on the stove, just to see if they're usable at all.  Results:  No good -- they just burned without popping.

GA: Birds ate several of the popcorn cobs; have been harvesting gradually before birds or future raccoons get them

^^^

GA: Started early havesting but probably still a bit too early

My first potatoes harvested were about a week ago, to use in a recipe with zucchinis since the zucchini plants have been dropping to SVB etc.  Then harvested some more today, but still just a little corner of one of the patches.  The potatoes are so far medium size, no big chonkers yet.  Hopefully they'll keep growing, but the plants are definitely dying back, with some stems completely dried out.

GA: Broccoli harvest definitely slowing, but still some

^^^

GA: FOY leeks harvested

Not a ton of them are on the thicker side, but hopefully they'll still grow.  Today harvested 5 of the bigger ones, to have with potato leek soup.  Of the 5, one had bolted so it was useless.  Since the all the leeks are under cover, not sure how many others may have bolted, we'll see later on...

GA: FOY sweet corn harvested; but a bunch of them have zero corns forming

Ooooh YUMMMMM the sweet corn is delicious!  So crispy and perfect!  

BUT a whole bunch of the sweet corn patch has stalks with nothing growing -- the tassels thing at the top yes, but no hint of any cobs whatsoever.  Seems to be a lot of the earlier round of sowing -- maybe too shaded???

GA: Sweet corn Peaches and Cream started developing ears 1-2 weeks ago; Golden Bantam not yet; Popcorn just now starting to develop

Probably eating corn within a week!  Peaches and Cream ears definitely starting to fill in!

GA: Scotia are ripening (plants diseased like the other tomatoes but still producing)

^^^