As you have probably noticed, some of your summer crops have started to throw in the towel. Nighttime temperatures have been in the low 30's and a hard frost is imminent. All of our basil has already bitten the dust as well as the squash, and tomatoes are no doubt next. What this means is: harvest the living daylights out of your garden. Here is a short list of the most temperature sensitive plants: basil, summer and winter squash, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. These crops will certainly be finished soon, so keep your eyes on everything so your final harvest isn't totally frost damaged.
If you end up with more food than you can handle, think about preservation. Nearly everything can be preserved either through canning or freezing.

Ball Canning is a great resource (they make great jars and the website has a lot of trustworthy recipes)

Another great resource is our upcoming canning class at Carkeek Park (details below): it will be a little late in the season, but...we will be making and canning some applesauce. It is nice to have somebody walk you through it the first time so you can see how easy it actually is...I don't have any idea why it is rated 18 and older (I'll try to watch my language).

Use Your Fruit!

Ages 18 and older

Do you have a fruit tree in your backyard? Curious about the best ways to keep that fruit through the winter? Come to Carkeek for a fun, hands-on tutorial and learn creative ways to preserve your fruit. Colin McCrate and Brad Halm from the Seattle Urban Farm Company host this great event. Email Colin at colin@seattleurbanfarmco.com to register.

Location: Carkeek ELC

10/24 Sat Time: 2:30 – 4:30 p.m.

Newsweek

Here is a link to an article from Newsweek about the recent rise of urban agriculture across the country...Urban Gardens Grow

Prune Yo Tomatoes

You may have noticed that your tomato plants have finally gotten the clue and started to grow a little bit. You may have also noticed that, once they start to grow, they can get out of control pretty quickly...thus the need for trellising and...pruning. Believe it or not, but cutting out some of the branches of your plant will actually result in more, better tasting fruit (and your tomatoes will be less prone to problems such as fungus, mold, drunk driving, etc.). Brad found this article which explains it all very well:
Pruning Tomatoes - Fine Gardening Article
Source: finegardening.com

Bastille II

This link to King 5 website from yesterday is helping to foment the fervor over rooftop gardening...

Onto the Radio

If this isn't ridiculous, what is?
On the radio KIRO 710 AM...Living Well

Cherries

In the very unlikely chance that you have not noticed: it is cherry season in Seattle. This is about the closest thing to a candy tree that you will ever find. If you look around, you will see that there are cherry trees literally all over the entire city. Cherry trees are easy to identify: in the early spring they are famous for their incredibly showy white or pink flowers, and in the summer they have cherries all over them. There are a lot of varieties out there, some very large and sweet, others smaller and more tart. The smaller types are typically used as
"pie cherries", baking with them allows you to add a
little sugar, thus making them more palatable. Other
types are sweet enough to eat directly.
There is absolutely no chance that I will tell you where
the cherry trees that I like to pick are located, but if you
take a walk around your neighborhood, you will almost
certainly find a cherry tree. If located on someone's property,
obtain permission to pick (which is usually easy to do) and go to town.
This bowl represents approximately 1/20th of yesterday's harvest (we picked about 40 lbs in one hour)...most are now in the process of being pitted and heading to the freezer...

Holes In My Leaves

If you have a vegetable garden, there is a good chance that you are growing something in the Brassica family. If you are growing something in the Brassica family, there is a good chance that you will have pest problems. If you have pest problems there is a good chance that some of these pests might be the problem (in a general order of appearance in the season): Cutworms, Root Maggots, Cabbage Loopers, Aphids...

Early in the spring, maybe your broccoli or cabbage started to wilt and look like it was not getting enough water? Maybe it wasn't getting enough water, but maybe it had been munched on by Cutworms, which had eaten a ring around the base of the plant, cutting off the nutrient and water flow from leaves to roots and vice versa.
Maybe your spring broccoli instead took on a yellow color and never seemed to grow, maybe you decided that you needed to fertilize more...maybe the roots were being eaten by Root Maggots.
Here are some suggestions for control of these pests (although a little late for this spring...).
We have taken to applying beneficial nematodes at the first sign of damage in the spring...

Just maybe, you had no problems until early June when all of the sudden there appeared large holes in the middle of all of your broccoli leaves and some of the newer leaves were bitten off entirely. Slugs? More likely you can now proudly consider yourself part of the Cabbage Looper club. Look all over your brassicas for little, bright green catapillars (also look for brown, wet, squishy looking balls of muck. This is frass, or catapillar poop.) Squish the loopers immediately between your fingers and notice that their innards are much darker green than their exteriors. Take a quiet satisfaction in learning this new piece of natural history.

Loopers are out and about right now and, if neccesary, can be organically controlled with Bt, but in a small garden it may be just as effective to look over your plants every day for a week or so and eliminate every green catapillar that you encounter. The coolest way to manage your loopers is to attract beneficial parasitic wasps that will lay eggs in the catapillars and eat them from the inside out... seriously. The added bonus is that the adults are attracted to a lot of flowering plants, including Valerian, which theoretically could also be used to make "calming teas"...
If your plants are healthy and you catch the damage early, there should be no long term repercussions from their damage.

Lastly, watch out for Aphids which are just now showing up and going to town on just about everything in your garden....when caught early, aphids can be managed with a combination of soap sprays and hand squishing. You can also bring in more beneficial insects such as ladybugs and lacewings...
But if you can't tell, regardless of which pests you have and which remedies you apply, I think it is best just to get used to squishing bugs...