Fall & Winter Gardening

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap
but by the seeds that you plant.”

~Robert Louis Stevenson

It’s time to start those seeds for you fall/winter garden. Time to seed: turnips, radicchio, kale, overwintering onions, winter radishes, lettuce and spinach. It’s also time to sow some clover under your tomatoes.

Last week I started seeds for: ‘Catalina’ and ‘Bloomsdale Longstanding’ spinach, ‘Big Boston’ lettuce, fall greens mix, ‘Japanese Minowase’ radishes, ‘Round Black Spanish’ radishes. This week I’ll be starting some ‘Evergreen Hardy Bunching’ onions and more spinach and fall lettuce and maybe some turnips and radicchio. Don’t forget to order your garlic if you’re hoping to plant some this fall, if you wait to long you may not be able to find it. I ordered mine from Gourmet Garlic Gardens.

Have you planted anything for fall/winter yet?

The Garden Pond

If you remember we put in a small garden pond earlier this summer and stocked it with goldfish from the pet store. The gold fish all got Ich and died, which is common with pet store fish. Since my parents already have 2 ponds at their house that are stocked with goldfish that are healthy and naturalized to ponds, we decided to catch a couple of theirs for our pond. Mr Chiots got out my dad’s casting net and netted us a few little fish.

These fish are thriving now and making sure our pond stays free of mosquito larvae. The water lily we planted in the pond is doing well, it won’t bloom this year, hopefully next year we’ll see some beautiful blooms. Perhaps we’ll get some frogs to move in as well.


The garden that surrounds the pond isn’t quite finished yet. I have to decide which low growing plants to put in front of it among the rocks, I want to get this finished by the end of September.

I moved one of my favorite plants to the pond garden, it’s a Golden Variegated Hakone Grass. It’s thriving in it’s new location. I’d love to have much more of this beautifully plant in my garden! It glows beautifully in the shady corner of the pond and drapes gracefully over the rocks. I can’t wait until it had reached it’s mature size.

The garden around the pond is also filled with: goat’s beard, ‘Francis Williams’ and another smaller variegated hosta, and mint. I’m considering some wooley creeping thyme for the area in front the pond or perhaps some short golden sedum that I have in the front flowerbed.

Any great suggestions for low-growing plants? Do you have a favorite plant that in the garden?

Keeping Track of Small Garden Tools

I used to have a bad habit of carrying trowels around with me when I was gardening and leaving them where I was working. I often forgot where they were and when I needed them again, I’d have to walk around the garden looking for them, trying to remember when I had used them last. As much as I tried to always put them back in the garage, I just couldn’t seem to remember. I love my trowels and thus never want to lose them. Not to mention a good garden trowel is not a cheap purchase.

A few months ago I decided to put a bucket by the back door to keep my trowels and my cultivator in. After doing this I’ve been able to keep track of them. I find myself carrying my trowels back to the house with me and throwing them into the bucket. This has worked well for me and I have only had to look for my trowel once or twice since I started doing this. I also like that they’re right there when I walk out the back door. I no longer have to open the garage door and head into the garage to get my tools, I simply grab the one I need from the bucket and head out into the garden.

My mom has a similar technique, she has a bucket that she keeps trowels, forks, fertilizer, a companion planting guide and a few other items for gardening. She carries this bucket around the garden with her as she works and deposits back in the garage by the door when she heads inside. This means her garden bucket is always ready to grab when she heads out. This is a great idea if you have a covered area for your bucket. Since mine sits on the back porch in the weather, I simply leave my 4 garden tools in it. They can take the weather as can the old bucket I keep them in.

If you’re in the market for good quality small garden tools I would highly recommend The Rumford Gardener large trowel, transplanting trowel, and the cultivator. I purchased them many many years ago at Target, but they are now available on Amazon. They’re solid die-cast aluminum and they’re cast in one solid piece with a rubberized handle coating. They’re tough as nails and strong as an ox yet light enough to use for a long period of time. In my rocky tough soil they keep on going where a lesser trowel would have been bent long long ago. I also find them quite comfortable to use.

What techniques have you developed to keep your garden tools easily accessible and easy to find?

Quote of the Day: Thomas Edison

“Until man duplicates a blade of grass,
nature can laugh at his so called scientific knowledge”

~ Thomas Edison

The longer I garden and learn about the balance of nature the less I realize I know. As my gardens live organically each additional year I’m amazed at how nature balances itself out without me having to step in. When I try to step in I upset the balance and who knows what the ramifications will be, especially down the road. I’m now even content to let horn worms eat my tomatoes, and the cabbage worms eat my brassicas, I know they make tasty treats for birds, or be a host for beneficial wasps.

How has your view of nature changed throughout your gardening career?

If you’d like a copy of this quote on this photo it’s on my Flickr.

Planning Ahead for Fall

About a month ago I started a new round of cucumber seeds hoping for a great fall harvest to fill the pantry with all varieties of pickles. Cucumber plants don’t like the heat of summer, they prefer temperatures in the 70′s, yet they can’t take a frost. Since we have hot hot summers here in Ohio, cucumbers seem to languish once the temperatures hit the mid 80′s, which is usually right after they start producing. Since this summer has been a particularly hot one, my cucumbers quit producing about a month ago, although I did get almost 2 gallons of pickles from my five plants. This year, I decided to try to grow a fall crop of cucumbers, I’m hoping that they get through their productive season and I’ll have tons of cucumbers to pickle in late September, let’s hope we don’t get and early frost.

I started a whole flat of cucumbers back in July, hoping to get a large number of cucumbers at once so I can make a few large batches of fermented pickles. The seed packet says they take about 57 days to produce, which should be just about right. I transplanted them 2 weeks ago. I planted about 15 plants at my mom’s house and about 20 plants here in my raised beds in the back garden.

I’m once again growing ‘Boston Pickling’ Cucumbers since I really like them. I’ve actually never grown another variety, this is the first I’ve tried and I’m very happy with the pickles that I make from them. This year I’m trying to save a few seeds for them since the place I order most of my seeds from no longer carries them. Not to mention I’ll be saving myself a few dollars, I’ll make sure I post all about it and offer some free seeds.

I’ve read that a lot of gardeners grow second crops of beans and of zucchini to extends the harvests. I tried beans last year, but an early fall frost did them in right when they were starting to produce. It’s always hard to time second crops in a short growing season and with the drastic weather changes we can have here in NE Ohio, but seeds are cheap so I’ll keep trying!

Do you have any crops you grow a second round of for fall harvests?