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Post by feather on Oct 1, 2022 7:18:46 GMT -6
To Do List for us for October
rototilling, stones. Manure-call carol about delivering 2 truck/trailer loads, around $40. Tentative plans to buy 4 year 6 mil plastic, if we need it or decide to cover the cattle panels, around $60. Seeds-have some, will need more from flowers, herbs, onions BEANS. Possible sauerkraut Write the inventory on dried good and dehydrated veg/fruit/teas. more.... harvest lemon grass continue canning and dehydrating-peppers, pears... continue harvesting kale, lettuce, cucumbers, tearing out landscape fabric on the parts of the gardens that are finished planting new grape vines, garlic for 2023 |
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Post by susannah on Oct 1, 2022 8:16:11 GMT -6
To be honest, I haven't really thought about it all that much yet. I'm still wrapping my mind around how fast September blew by. But here's a start:
Remove pier - that should/WILL happen today. DONE.
Remove boat lift - see "remove pier". DONE.
Take down the two dead pines in the front yard. They've been dead for a couple of years now, and the tops have already fallen off so that should be an easy job.
Cover up central air unit. DONE.
Rake and/or blow all the leaves. Because it isn't peak yet and many of the leaves haven't fallen, that'll be later this month.
Keep an eye on the raised bed garden and keep on top of the chard and kale that are still growing like crazy. Freeze the stuff as needed. DONE. And by that, I mean the garden is done for the year.
Indoors, I want to get going on a good fall deep-clean of the house. Due to our many days of sub-zero weather, we spend a lot of time indoors in winter and it's just so much more pleasant when the house is clean, neat and everything's in its place. Or almost everything.
Plant the indoor garden! Lettuces and scallions only this year. While the Easter egg radishes were pretty and fun, they just didn't produce that many. At least, not enough to justify the planter space.
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Post by susannah on Oct 2, 2022 16:55:05 GMT -6
The pier was removed yesterday, as was the boat lift. All parts are in their winter home (in the woods, on a platform we built from the former pier).
The central air unit is covered up for the winter. To be honest here, I only included it because I knew it would give me something to cross off my list with very little effort!
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Post by feather on Oct 3, 2022 18:19:31 GMT -6
For the top of the cold frame, the double plastic, we used the clear shower curtains we had (and weren't using). They worked well for spring, and they are falling apart now. So we are recovering with plastic, again, doubled. I has to be on by friday and hopefully team work will get it done faster.
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Post by nbc3mom on Oct 9, 2022 11:27:58 GMT -6
We started prepping for winter this weekend. DH and I moved all of the canned food from opened shelves in the garage to our old kitchen cabinets which he and DGS hung in the garage. I always 'hid' the cans by covering them with plastic bags whenever we had workmen or others in the garage but I feel a lot better now that everything is behind closed doors. We only have some of our water on the opened shelves now. I inventoried everything as we moved it; the one item that was missing was corn. We stopped at Aldi after our walk and bought cans of cream style corn. I still have regular corn in the freezer from last year. I still have to go through the pantry to inventory pasta, cereal, crackers, etc.
DH filled 5 gallon buckets from the rain barrels and brought them into the garage for flushing should we lose power. I was talking with a farmer the other day about the coming winter. He has been going through old issues of the Farmer's Almanac comparing our current conditions with the past. He said to prepare for a cold, snowy season. One sign that he mentioned was the abundance of bees on/in the fruit. He hasn't picked one apple or peach because there are so many bees around them.
We have a propane camp stove and a gas grill for cooking. The biggest thing we are missing is an alternate heat source. I remedied that this morning by ordering a Big Buddy heater. It's not going to heat the entire house but will help keep the pipes from freezing.
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Post by nbc3mom on Oct 12, 2022 8:52:33 GMT -6
The heater came yesterday. It’s exactly what we need. Today we got a new peach tree. One more step to feed ourselves and save money on food.
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Post by susannah on Oct 15, 2022 11:40:10 GMT -6
Prior to the arrival of our first - and second - snows of the year, I picked all the kale and chard left in the garden (and there was a lot of it) and blanched and froze it to use over the winter. I also removed the "baby gate" that was at the entrance to the maze of a garden door. I figure if deer are agile enough to navigate into the garden now, more power to them.
It was getting down well below freezing every night, the sun - which had been plentiful up until a week or so ago - seemed to have taken a long vacation, and everything was growing much more slowly. It was time.
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Post by feather on Oct 16, 2022 12:38:25 GMT -6
I've sorted seeds off of the yellow zinnias and the marigolds and the multi colored zinnias.
The birds this morning were ravaging our hung up sunflowers, so we took them down. I'd like to get some seeds for next year and for eating.
The landscape fabrics are up and cleaned and rolled. New ground was tilled, and more tilling later. Manure will be here this week sometime.
The lemon grass is harvested. New grape vines planted.
Inventory of dry goods partially done, there is more to do....which I have to look for and label.
We've got a lot left to do, and decided to leave the cold frame sit until spring, then recover the cover frames in plastic, and we'll plant seed early in spring.
Sauerkraut was started. I wipe down the sides every couple of days, press the kraut towards the bottom, to bring up the water, retop with plate and bag of brine.
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Post by adinwnc on Oct 16, 2022 15:13:36 GMT -6
The difference in weather across the country always astounds me. It is 70* here today and we won't get our first freeze until later this week. We don't usually get snow for another two months and occasionally not until January. Our yearly average is maybe 9 inches, so we can work outside through mid-December and get back outside in mid-February.
My son has been coming over on Saturdays to help get the yard straightened up for next spring. We are chopping down volunteer trees, cleaning out overgrown beds and putting down new paths. The plan is to take down an old metal shed and put up a new, waterproof one in its place the week of Thanksgiving.
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Post by feather on Oct 16, 2022 15:40:52 GMT -6
Rake and/or blow all the leaves. Because it isn't peak yet and many of the leaves haven't fallen, that'll be later this month. I wanted to share this. I read it on Wisconsin Gardening. I was imagining, how thick the layer of leaves is in this woman's yard. "I live on 4 acres of woods and cut about an acre. I live on a lake about a mile wide and about 3 miles of flat marshland all to the west of my property. The wind can really get whipping. If I didn’t rake the leaves I would have crunchy leaves up to my calves. I am not exaggerating. I have been cutting up leaves with my garden tractor and around November 1, I need to use a leaf blower in addition to the garden tractor with a 60 inch cutting head. I cut leaves 2-3 times per week until around December 1st unless we have an early snow. I asked my husband to buy me a mulching kit for the tractor at a cost of about $500. ( if he can find one this late in the season). Has anyone used just a mulching mower and how did your grass look go in spring? I cut leaves in the morning and the lawn is covered by afternoon. Right now I am spending about 10 hours a week on my lawn." I was thinking, maybe, let the leaves be and let them blow out of the yard as they blew into the yard. 10 hours a week on leaves seems like a big commitment of time.
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Post by feather on Oct 16, 2022 17:29:36 GMT -6
The difference in weather across the country always astounds me. It is 70* here today and we won't get our first freeze until later this week. We don't usually get snow for another two months and occasionally not until January. Our yearly average is maybe 9 inches, so we can work outside through mid-December and get back outside in mid-February. My son has been coming over on Saturdays to help get the yard straightened up for next spring. We are chopping down volunteer trees, cleaning out overgrown beds and putting down new paths. The plan is to take down an old metal shed and put up a new, waterproof one in its place the week of Thanksgiving. We've rarely had a year with no snow in october AND november. A few not white christmas's. We get an average of 43 inches of snow. I'm sure susannah up north gets more snow. It is beautiful and shoveling is a pain. |
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Post by susannah on Oct 18, 2022 8:33:02 GMT -6
The difference in weather across the country always astounds me. It is 70* here today and we won't get our first freeze until later this week. We don't usually get snow for another two months and occasionally not until January. Our yearly average is maybe 9 inches, so we can work outside through mid-December and get back outside in mid-February. My son has been coming over on Saturdays to help get the yard straightened up for next spring. We are chopping down volunteer trees, cleaning out overgrown beds and putting down new paths. The plan is to take down an old metal shed and put up a new, waterproof one in its place the week of Thanksgiving. We've rarely had a year with no snow in october AND november. A few not white christmas's. We get an average of 43 inches of snow. I'm sure susannah up north gets more snow. It is beautiful and shoveling is a pain. The average annual snowfall for where I live is 57 inches, although that's just an average - our weather can have wild mood swings. Several years ago we got 110 inches of snow for the season, which is the snowiest I remember. Crazy thing is, while the average for Eagle River is 57 inches, the far northwest part of the county can be around 100 inches due to lake effect snow (being closer to Lake Superior). I'm not gonna lie, I prefer our lower totals. Because - among other things - having to shovel off the roof is NOT our idea of fun, and a "good winter" means we only have to do it once or twice. Or...be still my heart...not at all. The snow of the past couple days was nothing, really - lots of areas south of us actually got more than we did. There's a dusting on the grass and our elevated deck is snow covered but nothing out of the ordinary for northern Wisconsin in October. I am really, REALLY glad I chose to pick and preserve what was left in the garden earlier this month. Because the winds are absolutely brutal right now and I seriously do not want to go outside, although I'm sure I will later. But at least I won't have to tend to the garden. Speaking of the garden, the indoor garden gets planted next week. Dh is experimenting with LED grow light placement this year; he thinks the new setup might be better. We'll know in a month or two. |
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Post by adinwnc on Oct 18, 2022 18:39:22 GMT -6
Wow! Fifty seven inches is a lot of snow! We got 24 inches in one day, and lost power for a week. I can't even imagine 110 inches - that's 9 feet! I'm not sure my house is even 9 feet tall. That would certainly take a lot of planning and shoveling to survive that. What a difference it is between locations. It's warm enough here to grow your winter garden under a piece of glass all winter - you'd have to be careful to vent the area if it was going to be sunny or your plants would fry. I guess I'd better quit complaining about a high temperature of 41* today and count my blessings instead. Please take care during such cold and inclement weather!
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Post by feather on Oct 31, 2022 17:17:27 GMT -6
Everything was done, but no buying of plastic for the cattle panels. Maybe next spring. The dehydrated stuff is only half inventoried.
How did your October shape up for preparing and getting the to-do list done? |
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