I neglected to do a Hello October 2026 post for reasons I don’t know but the month has come and gone, so there’s that.
October 2026 reminded me of August. Not in weather, obviously, but in the fact that I was once again in the garden working every minute I got. This time, I’m getting ready for winter and the list of tasks seem endless and after falling back one hour yesterday, my 90 minutes of work time suddenly got cut down to barely an hour, depending on when dinner is.
October was busy. I removed the non-productive plants and chopped them down to tiny little pieces before piling them back onto the beds, practicing chop-and-drop. I did the same to the lawn – mowing and leaving the residue back on the ground and hope it will help the soil in 2027. In late August, I sowed a cover crop of mustards on the lawn and this cover crop is supposed to help loosen the soil and fight pests underground. After finding out about my grass allergy last week, I wonder if I should just stick to cover crops for my lawn in the future since cover crops do not contain grass.
In October, I also began building new greenhouse frames for the raised beds. After finishing the frames for the front garden, I will need to get more material before I can complete the one for the back. On each of the greenhouses, I have also added a permanent roof made from a dark fine-mesh fabric to keep insects out and provide a subtle 30% shade so the vegetables won’t bolt so easily in spring. I can’t wait to test this out in spring since my vegetables always bolt prematurely in spring. Beside the permanent roof, I’m also putting in removable frames of window screens to keep bugs out on all sides as well as provide shade.
I feel like the more I garden, the more I view gardening as an engineering project. Maybe it’s because I think more clearly when everything is in numbers and I do love building and constructing stuff.
It has been amazing to see how productive the garden had been even in October. In past years, I would be cleaning up the garden, instead of harvesting. I have been harvesting raspberries every other day before it over-ripens and falls off the stem. On Halloween night, I harvested most of the tomatoes (unripe and ripe) and put all the unripe tomatoes in a box to be ripened over time.
Is it odd for me to say I’m looking forward to the holiday in November? I don’t usually look forward to the holidays because that meant being stuck at home with little to nothing to do. This year, however, I feel like I will have something to keep me busy, unless the weather doesn’t cooperate.
Looking at the weather, even looking as far out as the middle of the month, I’m not seeing frost, and that’s quite unusual. Technically, I can keep the tomato plants in the ground but I feel they will just be hanging there like dead weights since the day length will dip below 10 hours in a few days. So, there, more clean up jobs in November. So I guess that’s what I have to look forward to in November.
