You have heard me say that fall is a great time to grow. I have a Growing Franklin article on it as well as recorded a webinar if you want to learn more. My community garden has a growing season from April 1 to November 1 and is now done for the year. My container garden however has been producing heavily and I used the outstanding weather this weekend to move it to its winter location as well as plant 4 pots for future production.
The summer home for the container garden is on the south face of my house. Right now my neighbor’s house is shading this spot since the sun is lower in the horizon.
It was not easy to move these. Each weighs about 80-100 pounds and they had to go 30 feet to a different part of the driveway that gets better sun. Still I love my container garden as it allows me to grow all 12 months of the year. If you want to learn how to grow in containers, I did a website post on Growing Franklin as well as recorded a webinar class on it.
Once moved, I harvested the rest of the lettuce and bok choi.
Got four heads of lettuce and eight baby bok choi. I will start some more lettuce under LED lights to plant in a month.
I then pulled out the roots and amended the soil in four of the pots with a slow release organic vegetable fertilizer. I planted spinach in two of the pots as I had great success with that last year. If you want to learn how to Grow Spinach Over Winter you can read this Growing Franklin website post or you can view the Overwinter Growing recorded webinar I did. The other two pots got garlic. One pot hard neck and one pot soft neck to compare how they do in containers. OSU has an excellent Fact Sheet on Growing Garlic, so does our BYGL site.
Back row L to R is softneck garlic, hardneck garlic and Lunchbox pepper. Front row L to R is two pots of spinach direct seeded and a bed that will house lettuce transplants soon. I put bird netting on them to keep the squirrels from digging and will put row cover on as needed.
I left the pepper plants alone as they are still in good production and we have a good chance of warmer than normal temps still to come based on the NOAA/NWS prediction model. They are starting to show some mild yellowing of the leaves and I will need to fertilize with a water soluble fertilizer. I did cover the plants with row cover during the occasional cold snap that is common in fall. I will also use the microclimate benefits of black containers on a black driveway to scavenge extra heat.
Still predicting a higher than normal chance of warm weather through January. Great container garden weather.
It is not too late to plant believe it or not. Make sure to pick cold tolerant varieties and use season extension as needed.