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

Watering your garden when there might be a frost seems a little backward, but it will protect your plants.

A healthy well-watered plant will do better than a weaker, drier plant will in cooler night time temperatures. You don’t want the plant to be wet, but you want the Earth to be nice and damp when nightfall comes.

All of the processes that the plant uses to take in water and create food for it’s self take energy. When the plant uses it’s energy to take water and create food it releases a small amount of heat. So a plant that is undergoing this process is slightly warmer inside than a plant that is sitting there doing nothing but drying out.

So water your garden early in the day, and allow the plant’s leaves to be dry by nightfall and you should have some added protection against cooler nighttime temperatures.

Happy Autumn!

Sara

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

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

Hi everyone,
I am toying with expanding my outdoor garden this year!
I have found that with only 5 more fence pieces I can double my garden space!

Last year I found it hard to weed, and the plants were all too close together. Especially in mid-summer when everything gets to be a bit of a jungle out there.

I will keep you posted on plans. For now you can have a look at the picture on my “Fall Plans” post here and envision adding on two more fence pieces to each side to bring it out into the yard more, and placing the gate at the side (in between what is the old side pieces and where the 2 new ones would be added).

Thanks for stopping by,
Sara

Hi everyone,

The fall plans are in effect! First order of business is building PVC pipe supports for the plastic sheeting that will become the temporary greenhouse I will be using to extend my seasons! The over night low yesterday was 45 degrees Fahrenheit so I better get this thing up. Last year we had one early frost mid-September. Never mind the unseasonably warm October we had, or the subsequent 80 degree days. Everything had died in the frost and I lost a good 1.5 months of natural growing season.

I am going to purchase 20′ sections of 1″ or smaller tubing and make some large hoops. I am not quite certain how to secure the plastic to the tubes. So far my ideas are zip-ties (which will rip the plastic over time)  or packing tape (which may not hold up in the freezing and wet of winter and spring. Ideally maybe I don’t have to secure it that well. I have enough to cover a very large area, so maybe draping and securing to the ground with rocks will be enough.

The other project that needs to get done is to move what used to be a nice border of small purple mums. These mums are on the outside, front edge of my veggie garden. They started out the size of a basketball, and are now over 2 feet across! They take up so much room in the front of the garden I am missing out on about 3″ by 10″ section of good soil. So they are being moved to the outside corners of the garden. I have a Victorian fence around the veggie garden with rose bushes in the corners on the inside. The mums will be opposite them on the outside of the garden.

This picture was taken last year. The rabbits has eaten every thing right to the ground. So I went to my local super store and bought this Victorian fencing and lined it with rabbit fencing on the inside. It is the Fort Knox of veggie gardens!

So the roses are on the inside and the mums will be on the outside corners 🙂

When I get it a bit cleaned up and moved around I’ll post more pictures. This year’s garden is 100 times better than this poor sad eaten over one.

SO!

Last fall because of an early frost and my frustration with losing just about everything in my wonderful outdoor garden I completely forgot about my carrots!! I never harvested them and they are still alive out there!!! And, THEY LOOK GREAT!

I am curious to see how they taste but they look awesome.

I will post pictures in a future post. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by!

~Sara

I have started my indoor garden!

So far it consists of a small shelf, lots of shop lights with daylight bulbs and one with a grow bulb in it. I have some old pots that I am using as well as a few new seed starting trays with biodegradable seed pots inside for transplanting.

The regular pots that you see that are not specifically for seed starting are the pots that I want to try growing veggies and herbs from seed to table all indoors. Then maybe next Fall when everything is dieing outside I won’t feel so sad because I know I can really garden indoors year-round.

So far in those pots I have cilantro, basil and 5 tomato plants.

The seed starting trays will have flowers and veggies that I will transplant into the outdoor garden in the Spring. The packets say to start the veggies 6-8 weeks before planting, which means I am still waiting on a lot of that for 1 more month. The first safe planting here is the 3rd week in May!

So far all the plants are very happy and healthy. I have the lights on 12 hours per day, and I have a small fan on them almost all the time as well.

Thanks for following!

Greenly, Sara M