Planting October 2022 Planting and Chat Thread

packyderms_wife

packyderms_wife

Neither here nor there.
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Planting Calendar - Gardening by the moon

This planting calendar helps you pick the best days for gardening tasks based a 200-year-old formula. Our readers swear by it! Learn more.
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  • 1st – 1st
    Do clearing and plowing, but no planting.
  • 2nd – 3rd
    Plant tomatoes, peas, beans, and other aboveground crops, indoors in the North and outdoors in lower South.
  • 4th – 5th
    Poor planting days. Kill poison ivy, weeds, clear land, but no planting.
  • 6th – 7th
    Extra good for vine crops. Favorable days for planting aboveground crops where climate is suitable.
  • 8th – 9th
    Barren days, do no planting.
  • 10th – 12th
    Good days for transplanting. Good days for planting beets, carrots, onions, turnips, and other hardy root crops where climate is suitable.
  • 13th – 14th
    Poor days for planting, seeds tend to rot in ground.
  • 15th – 17th
    Start seedbeds and flower gardens. Good days for transplanting. Best planting days for fall potatoes, turnips, onions, carrots, beets, and other root crops where climate is suitable.
  • 18th – 21st
    A most barren period, best for killing plant pests or doing chores around the farm. Good harvest days.
  • 22nd – 24th
    Fine for sowing grains, hay, and forage crops. Plant flowers. Favorable days for planting root crops.
  • 25th – 26th
    Start seedbeds. Favorable days for planting aboveground crops, and leafy vegetables such as lettuce, cabbage, kale, and celery where climate is suitable.
  • 27th – 28th
    Do clearing and plowing, but no planting.
  • 29th – 30th
    Plant tomatoes, peas, beans, and other aboveground crops, indoors in the North and outdoors in lower South.
  • 31st – 31st
    Poor planting day. Kill poison ivy, weeds, clear land, but no planting.
 
dioptase

dioptase

Veteran Member
I'm trying to decide if it is too late to start seeds for lettuce and other cold weather greens. (I should have done it last month, or late August...)

We are finally getting some tomatoes off the 2 later-maturing of the 6 tomato plants that I planted this year (very late for me, because I wasn't planning on planting any at all this year, due to the drought and mobility issues). DH keeps harvesting the tomatoes too soon, though. (And he considers himself the expert as to when tomatoes are ripe! :rolleyes: )

As an aside, DH has been complaining about the quality of the tomatoes this year. :mad: Part of that may be because I am growing different cultivars than I have previously grown (when you are scrambling for plants at the last minute, you may not be able to grow your favorites, and I wanted to try some new cultivars anyway). Part of that is probably because he is harvesting too soon. I don't see any other reason for it, though.... those plants have got the good life, with lots of compost and organic fertilizer, minerals, mulching, and irrigation twice a week. (It's surprising how juicy tomatoes can be with only 2x/week irrigation, in a drought situation!)
 
dioptase

dioptase

Veteran Member
Zone 9, SF Bay Area, but my kitchen garden area gets a lot of shade even in the summer, so....

At worst I can plant whatever, and then the plants will overwinter, and I can harvest in say Feb-Mar (I've done this before so I know that it works out), presuming I am mobile then. (Long delayed (fights with insurance company) knee replacement is in the works...)

I'm thinking various lettuces, arugula, maybe raddacchio (which will be new for me), maybe I can also sneak in a crop of radishes. I've tried direct-sowing beets but that's been a failure. Spinach seems to be a no-go here (slugs/snails). I'm debating whether or not to direct sow bunching onion seeds.

Pretty much everything (except the bunching onions, chives, and mints) has to go under mesh tents (my critter cages are still housing the tomatoes until frost), due to rats/rabbits/raccoons.
 
packyderms_wife

packyderms_wife

Neither here nor there.
dioptase said:
Zone 9, SF Bay Area, but my kitchen garden area gets a lot of shade even in the summer, so....

At worst I can plant whatever, and then the plants will overwinter, and I can harvest in say Feb-Mar (I've done this before so I know that it works out), presuming I am mobile then. (Long delayed (fights with insurance company) knee replacement is in the works...)

I'm thinking various lettuces, arugula, maybe raddacchio (which will be new for me), maybe I can also sneak in a crop of radishes. I've tried direct-sowing beets but that's been a failure. Spinach seems to be a no-go here (slugs/snails). I'm debating whether or not to direct sow bunching onion seeds.

Pretty much everything (except the bunching onions, chives, and mints) has to go under mesh tents (my critter cages are still housing the tomatoes until frost), due to rats/rabbits/raccoons.
Click to expand...

Greens grow well in planter type boxes. Do you have a patio table that gets enough sunlight? If so plant your lettuce, etc., in some shallow planter boxes or even flower pots. Also have you considered sprouting and micro greens until you're mobile again?
 
dioptase

dioptase

Veteran Member
The kitchen garden consists of 2' (more or less) raised beds with automatic irrigation, so that's where things go, and most things have to be protected against the critters, one way or another.

Trying to grow veggies in pots here really does not work well, both because of the critters, but also because of the need for constant watering (it's arid here). I refuse to use hoses on edible plants (I don't trust even the so called "drinking-water safe" hoses for safety, seeing the foam that comes out of them when the water is first turned on), so that's a lot of lugging of water from the house. I tried it 2 years ago with potatoes in fabric pots on the (sunny) patio steps, with poor results, so I'm not doing that again.

(The potatoes grown in the raised beds did infinitely better than those in the pots. That was an experimental year as I had not grown potatoes before, other than one poor attempt (too much shade) in a fabric pot, so I at least got some experience and useful data out of it all.)

I don't do sprouting or microgreens. I HAVE toyed with the idea of doing passive hydroponics indoors under lights, but I have yet to get around to that. I'd do that for lettuce, but I think that I'd have to be selective as to which cultivars, since there would be very little headroom (with Bell jars for the root space) for the "above ground" plants themselves. No tall Romaine, for example, though something like 'Little Gem' might work. The question is, whether it would be worth the effort or not.
 
AlaskaSue

AlaskaSue

North to the Future
My autumn garden cleanup and prep for spring is just about done. I had such a good harvest of garlic planted last Sept that I planted about 100 this year and deeply mulched the area. Today I decided to plant another small raised bed of Music, so prepped it to plant tomorrow if it doesn’t rain, which it’s pretty much done since early July. Also did a couple of rows of parsnips in the big raised bed for next fall. Time to put away what tools I still have and start getting the planting calendars done and dream of spring :) Zone 3

The cotoneaster along the front drive are so pretty right now!
3EA778A3-FFA6-4D79-A200-03492BA76C0B.jpeg

Alas the other trees are all bare, but I got my lilacs mulched well for their third winter.
 
dioptase

dioptase

Veteran Member
Some good news, of a sort. DH *finally* decided that he likes ONE (of the six cultivars) of the tomatoes that I planted. This is JUTLAND. DH picked all the red ones, so I wasn't able to get a picture of it. Basically it is a tomato that in shape looks like ROMA, but isn't a paste tomato - it is a good all-purpose tomato. (We generally eat them raw, or DH makes gazpacho.) He may also like the dehybridized CAMPARI, which is more of a cherry size tomato. (The first one he didn't like, but now he seems to be changing his mind on that.)

I can see that I will be saving seeds from these two cultivars. Of the other 4 cultivars, I already have commercial seed, or can get it, or DH doesn't like them. If it turns out that he likes the dehybridized CARMELLO (I don't think we've tried that one yet), I can save seed from that too, although that's one that I can get from tomatofest.com .

It's so nice to finally have some appreciation for the tomatoes, after listening to grumbling all summer and up until now!
 
packyderms_wife

packyderms_wife

Neither here nor there.
seraphima said:
Th potato harvest was abundant- I grow Robintas, which do very well here. Had lots of garlic, but more than half of it the bulbs were open, not covered with a tight skin. not sure what that is about. Carrots were fine. Still have parsley and sage, mint, calendulas, chives, lettuce and kale.
Click to expand...
Which state/zone are you in? I’m in Iowa zone 5 a/b, literally on the cusp. that said a friend told me to plant foe zone 3 and I’d never be disappointed, and some years she was correct.
 
A

anna43

Veteran Member
I got covid just before our hard freeze so was unable to do a final tomato harvest. This was two weeks ago and today was the first day I felt like a human being so went out and spent the morning clearing the garden. All the tomato towers, posts, etc. are now stored away and tomato vines etc. in three piles ready to be hauled away. I still need to clean up bushels of fallen tomatoes or I will end up with volunteer tomatoes everywhere next year. I still have buckets of tomatoes and peppers in the garage to check to see if they're still good or if they've frozen. All in all, I lost my tomato and pepper harvest due to covid so very disappointing. The only bright spot is the pantry shelves are still full (or mostly full) from prior years canning. I did manage to stick two gallon bags of tomatoes in the freezer so can do something with them once I start feeling better.
 
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