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The Season is REALLY Winding Down!
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October, to me, is the real end of the growing season. In unusually warm years, we can harvest cool-weather crops into November. With coldframes, high tunnels, and greenhouses, some gardeners grow greens year-round! But I consider October the end and begin to look forward to quiet time for a few months. (Actually, anyone in agriculture never stops working, but winter's less hectic so it seems 'quiet'. It's all relative.)
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October Garden Tasks
October advice: don't clean up your garden! Maybe you've had a frost by now, maybe not. But when it happens, leave everything alone until warmer days in spring. Bugs have moved into your plant debris for winter. Let them sleep! We'll revisit this in March.
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If you had insect infestations (squash bugs were bad this year!), rake up the mulch under the plants and put it in the trash. Insects overwinter in it and will come back next summer. Reduce the chances of that by cleaning up the mulch and plants that are winter homes to your least favorite critters.
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Cover your beds with aged manure or good compost and straw to nourish and protect them over the winter. Put fresh chicken shit on your compost piles to speed up decomposition. Kitchen scraps and yard waste will be magically turned into luscious compost in time for spring planting.
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Late in the month, plant your garlic and spring flowering bulbs, such as tulips, daffodils, muscari, and hyacinths.
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Prune deadwood from trees and shrubs.
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Order seed catalogs for 2024, and start planning!
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Illustration by Christie Bundy
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Fall Events
On October 7, I'll be at the Taos Land Trust Fall Harvest Week Mercado signing The Book and selling cacti (see below), Renee's Garden Scatter Cans, and some paper weavings and collages.
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Other vendors will have succulents, houseplants, fruit trees, native trees and shrubs, food forest perennials, remedios, honey, preserves, produce, and other crafts of upcycled materials. A true mercado!
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Auntie Nannie's Seed Exchange will be set up indoors from 10-1 throughout the week (Oct 2-7). In the spring, seed exchange stations will return to various businesses around the county. Stay tuned for that on the Facebook page, the Taos Land Trust page, and this newsletter.
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See the flyer below for details on Fall Harvest Week.
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On Fridays, Casey Flynn has The Book with her at the Talpa Community Market. This time of year, she sells succulents, house plants, and many native plants she grows from local seed. I'm there most weeks, too. Only two more markets this year! It runs through October 13. Be sure to visit local growers and craftspeople before the end of the year!
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From November 18 through December 24, The Book will be for sale at Taos Folk at the Stables for the happenin' holiday pop-up market. Love a gardener? Give them The Book!
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The Book is always available at KOKO, Gutiz, Moxie, Earthgoods, Dixon Market, Petree's Taos and Los Alamos, Cid's, and Taos Herb. And you can also contact me for a signed copy and get the 'farm tour'! You can also buy directly from the publisher here.
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Cacti for Sale!
Last winter, Kevin brought home seeds of a Cereus repandus cactus that was growing in his brother's yard in Arizona. Because we love an experiment, we grew them out.
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And now they're adorable little cacti selling for only $7!
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They make easy, quick-growing houseplants that you can move outside for summer. See the photo below of the 7" wide flower a friend got on her mature Cereus this summer.
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We'll probably have more succulents come spring. But in the meantime, if you like low-maintenance plants, come get one or several of these! The holidays are coming! Put these pots into decorative containers to dress them up for gift-giving.
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Our Cereus repandus babies! Easy peasy to grow! They come in a 2"x 2" pot for $7.
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Cereus repandus almost a foot tall.
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Cereus repandus flower, measuring 7" across! Photo by Nancy Zinno
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Fall Bird Migration
If you are fascinated by birds (and maps, like me!), you'll love this live bird migration map from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
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"Real-time analysis maps show intensities of actual nocturnal bird migration as detected by the US weather surveillance radar network between local sunset to sunrise."
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It's only available until November 15, but then they put it back up for the spring migration.
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For information on migration over Taos, check out the Migration Alerts. Bird migration activity is ramping up! "The BirdCast model predicts low or medium migration intensities."
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to learn what you can do to keep migrating birds safe. There's also a transcript and informative links at the bottom of the page. (Turn your outside lights off!!!)
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Orange Crowned Warbler passing through, August 2020.
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CSA Shares for 2024
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