Sara's Garden MarketSustainable Living, Gardening, Flowers, and Food

Parts of Minnesota are under a frost warning tonight.

Here’s what you can do to protect your plants:

• Cover warm weather plants like tomatoes, peppers and squash with bed sheets.
• Water your garden early in the day. You want the plant to be dry when night comes, but you also want the ground to be moist and the plant to be well watered.
• Build a PVC structure and put clear plastic sheeting over it making a greenhouse right over your plants!
• Pot up plants and put inside or in your greenhouse.
• If all other options are not possible harvest every vegetable you can and hope for the best!

I have done 4 of the above. I watered early this morning and all my plants are now dry, and well watered. I spent most of the day making pesto from my basil and freezing it. Basil is especially vulnerable to frost damage. I also harvested every descent sized tomato regardless of color. I make 2 quarts of salsa and froze that too. I potted 2 tomato plants and put them in the greenhouse. I also covered another tomato plant, my eggplant, and one bell pepper plant with bed sheets.

Now all we do is wait and see. It is QUITE cold out there compared to 4 days ago when it was in the 90’s!!

Talk to you in the morning. I would love to hear how everything looked in the morning for you all! Post something in the forum for it.

Sara Murray

Hi everyone,

It’s almost time to start using our greenhouses again. Now is the time to clean it out and gather supplies for the coming winter.

• Wash down the sides carefully and make sure you dry with a fan after.
• Sort all your containers, and see if you need to get more. I usually ask for seedling and small plastic containers from my local free market online.
• Wipe down your shelves
• Gather any new supplies you will need in the coming year, lights, light fixtures, seed bed warmer pads, shade cloths, fans, space heaters, vents, thermometers, humidifiers etc etc etc…
• Repair any tears or small holes
• Make a plan to get your electricity and make it water proof.
• Make sure tie-downs are still good, or repair them.

Happy greenhousing!

Sara

How to harvest and what to do with all those vegetables when your area gets a frost warning.

We have our first frost warning of the season tonight in Minnesota. It’s supposed to get down to 35 degrees Fahrenheit with scattered frost. Some vegetables can withstand a light frost; beans, peas, onions, and carrots will all be fine. However, there are plenty of plants that will turn to mush at the first sign of frost; basil, tomatoes, and squash probably won’t survive.

One thing you can do is build a structure around the plants you want to save and cover it with greenhouse plastic, or buy some frost cloth and cover the plants overnight when it gets down to the coldest temperature of the day.

The other chore to do when frost is on the horizon is harvest the vegetables from the garden and start cooking, canning and freezing.

Here is my chore list for today: Harvesting all Tomatoes, Peppers, Cilantro and Basil and how I cook or freeze it for the winter.

• Harvest ALL Basil and make pesto, freeze in batches for later.
• Harvest all Tomatoes except super green ones to ripen on the counter top.
• Harvest all ripe Tomatoes and Cilantro and make into salsa and freeze.
• With extra Tomatoes cut off stems, place on cookie sheet and put in the oven at 375 for 10 minutes, let cool and peel. Then you can place the entire peeled tomato(es) in freezer bags and freeze for later.
• Harvest all green beans, cook lightly and freeze.
• Harvest all peppers and either peel like the tomatoes and freeze or freeze whole. Red bell peppers I peel and freeze, green bell and jalapeno I just put in freezer bags raw and whole.

Happy harvesting, cooking and freezing.

Seed saving has started here as frost will be coming within a month or sooner. So I will start posting how to save the seeds from the plants you want to start over the winter to have again next year.

How to save pepper seeds:

1. Wait for the pepper to ripen all the way. Even most green bell peppers will turn red when they are totally left to ripen. If you think a frost will kill the plant up-root the entire plant and hang upside down in a cool location until the pepper ripens, and then harvest the pepper for seeds.
2. Cut off the bottom of the pepper and scrape out the seeds onto paper towel to dry.
3. Dry for several days, shaking every day or so to loosen if they stick together.
4. Label and save in a seed packet.

How to save tomato seeds:

1. Wait for the tomato to ripen all the way. If you think a frost will kill the plant up-root the entire plant and hang upside down in a cool location until the tomato ripens, and then harvest the tomato for seeds.
2. Cut the tomato in half the short/across way. Scoop out seeds and jelly into a glass container you can see in. If you are only doing a small amount (1-2 tomatoes) add a little bit of water to the glass.
3. Cover the glass with a paper towel.
4. Leave on your counter for 3-4 days, stirring once per day. A fungus will develop which will eat the jelly off the seeds and also release antibiotics that will keep the seeds and tomato plants healthy later on.
5. After 3-4 days pour more water into the glass, almost to the top. Stir very gently and that will release the rest of the tomato parts from the seeds. Viable seeds will sink to the bottom of the glass, anything that floats to the top can be carefully poured off.
6. Strain and then dump the good seeds out onto a paper towel. Dry them for several days or until you can crack one in half when you try to bend it = it’s too dry to bend, so it just cracks and snaps in half.
7. Label and save in a seed packet.

How to save green bean seeds:

1. When you are harvesting to eat and some get too large to be tasty just leave them on the vine.
2. They should have nice large seeds in the pod by the time a frost comes, if they don’t you may want to pull the entire plant and hang upside down to ripen and dry.
3. If you get some nice large seeds in the pods by the time a frost comes just leave them on the vine until early next spring.
4. In spring time wait for a lot of dry weather, and almost all snow (if you have some) is gone. Harvest the seed pod which should be nice and brittle and brown.
5. Spread the seeds on paper towel for a few days just in case there’s some moisture left in them from the temperature change.
6. Label and save in a seed pouch.

If you buy nice heirloom seeds that are NOT GMO you really shouldn’t have to ever buy them again. Just save the seeds and grow them again next year!!!

Happy seed saving,

Sara

So last year I bought a small greenhouse and I really loved using it for my seeds and plants last Spring. So, now I am starting to think Fall. Our night time temperatures are getting lower and I can sometimes smell a little Fall in the air.

So here’s the next thing I am going to do. When the temperatures really start to plunge and the first frost threat comes I am going to pot up and stake my best tomato plants and put them in the greenhouse to see how long I can get them to keep producing! I might do this with my eggplant I’ve been raving about as well.

I hope they keep going!!! I will let you know how it goes.

Thanks for stopping by

-Sara

So, the time has come to discuss the issue of frost and how we (in the North) are going to extend this season and try to get our tomatoes to ripen on the vine!!

Last year I tried to create a greenhouse with greenhouse plastic, PVC pipe and packing tape around my entire garden. It was working great until a wind storm in early October when it all came crashing down and had to be taken down and off of the garden.

This year I plant to eventually pot up the tomato plants that are doing well and put them in the greenhouse! (The actual greenhouse that I bought in the early Spring.) But before I need to do that there are plenty of warm days left. When day-time temps get below 55 I will move them to the greenhouse. Over night temps are sometimes dipping into the 40’s now though.

So, I am going to go to my local hardware store and get some frost cloth. I have my tomatoes on very tall stakes, and I am going to get a few more that are even taller. I will drape the frost cloth over the stakes and hope for the best!! (Pictures coming soon.)

Wish me luck – I still have several dozen tomatoes in the garden, as well as jalapeno and bell peppers, and 4 lovely eggplants I need to save!

The only difference between gardening in the early Spring and gardening in the Fall are the mosquitoes!!

So I cleaned out my raised beds and planted the cold weather vegetables again. The warmer vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, squashes will all need a frost blanket. But the salad greens like spinach, kale, and arugula will all do really well again! Even radishes will get another batch once it gets really cold.

So in May I took the plastic that I had over my raised beds and rolled it off and stored in on the side of each bed. I am guessing I will get another few weeks and then I might have to put it over during the night time hours. I want to keep those salad greens above 45 degrees Fahrenheit. We had one night time temp of 55 last week already!! It went back up, but Minnesota is known for it’s temperature swings.

So, backward we go into Fall and Winter. Thinking about greenhouse, and plastic and frost blankets. 🙂

Tell us what you’re doing this Fall to prepare your garden for the winter in the forum!

Thanks for stopping by,

Sara

If you have a hard time getting things pollinated in your garden I highly recommend planting cilantro!

First of all it’s super easy to grow, seeds go right into the dirt and keep moist until they are sprouted.

Second, cilantro is very tasty in soups, salads, and salsa!

Third and most wonderful, if you plant a lot and let it flower your garden will be full of bees!!!! And we all know the pollinating power of bees! This year I have a 4′ row of solid cilantro and bees galore! Almost ever blossom of tomato, and peppers and eggplant and zucchini have been pollinated! In previous years I have had to do the zucchini and some peppers by hand. It’s so much better to have the bees do it!

If you haven’t yet discovered how essential bees are to our food sources please visit

http://environment.about.com/od/biodiversityconservation/a/honeybees.htm

or read up on honey bees and the *essential* role they play in our food supply!

Thanks for stopping by!

Sara Murray

So my sweet little tiny eggplant now has 4 blossoms on it!!!!!

I cannot wait to eat those lovely little veggies. The zucchini next to it had 3 zucchinis get blossom-end rot, so I watered that section of my garden bed with a mixture of water and milk last night to help any new veggies from getting it – such as the new little eggplants I am expecting soon.

I have several tomato plants that I need to get rid of. I dug them out of my vegetable garden last night to create some space between my existing tomato plants. There is one pear tomato plant, the rest are standard tomato plants. They are ALL producing tomatoes (green still).

They have been raised organic, never sprayed with anything. They are from NON-GMO organic seed stock http://www.stclareseeds.com/ a great company which has signed the safe seed pledge. So you could even save these seeds and get awesome tomatoes year after year! 🙂

Let me know where you planted them, and if you liked the tomatoes they produced! Join the forum and talk gardening with us all year round.

Thanks for stopping by

-Sara