October Garden

Coming in from the backyard today, just after lunch, I was greeted by my next door neighbor who was talking to the man from The Grid. I held up my harvest of four medium sized beets complete with their greens and said, “Don’t have to live in the Boonies to grow some nice stuff”. 

All my neighbors know about my urban gardening activities, but the Grid guy looked a bit uncertain as though he just didn’t know what to say. So he didn’t say anything. At least not about the bountiful harvest; just indicated that it was my turn to have my gas meter inspected. That done, he was on his way to wherever.

This is surely the clumsiest lead-in to what I really want to talk about, i.e., urban beets and other matters of concern to gardening in the city. 

You see, it’s October and time to wind down the “gotta get this or that done today if we’re ever to see any veggies by fall”. Now it is fall, and a beautiful time of year. Time to relax and enjoy some past effort. Time to appreciate a sweater and the colors and light produced by a sun which has moved slightly to the south. 

 Before pulling the beets I pulled some pepper plants. They were healthy but too late in the season to hope for any more produce; they have done their work. The soil around their roots was a treat to see. Years of added compost reveals a loose but firm friable texture of dark color. The Germans have a word, “gemutlich”, with an umlout over the u, that indicates comfort, satisfaction, all’s ok. That’s the best I can come up with as I’m hoping Mr. Jones, my High school German teacher   would be pleased with me. I also add things to the soil like the carbon scraped from the inside of the stovepipe from months of wood burning ; total black, pure carbon. I’m not too sure that the Co-op Extension agent would approve, but that’s my style. Better the carbon in the ground than in the atmosphere. 

And the beet greens, to get back to this odyssey, are beyond description. Healthful is too mild a word. Just to look at them is to feel their vigor, strength and, OK, maybe Gemutlichheit? Even that still leaves me unsatisfied. 

So the October garden continues. While there is more to harvest, there is also no escaping the rotation of the planet which gives us little choice about what’s ahead.

In this urban compound there is the four foot square raised bed plot that is still producing green beans as well as the sugar snap peas which are still trying to make: they won’t.

Even though they have blossoms, it’s too late. Reluctantly, I’ll pull them up. Next year I’ll try a different seed company and hope for earlier results.

Nearby, green pepper plants have outdone themselves, still hawking loaded branches like a school kid itching for a gold star. 

The other bed is 6’x 8’; bigger, but with a compost box plunked smack in the middle. Eggplant and tomatoes on either side of the box, branches still bowing with almost ripe offspring. Then chard on the third side which has fed us since late spring and has no intention of quitting. 

Standing on the remaining side are the okra plants. Their dozen or so stalks have reached the height of four feet or so and are in blossom. Yes, we’ve had a few pods for the table, but okra’s long growing season means the harvest is yet to come. Its window of opportunity in the North East being short along with Mr. Groundhog’s spring nibble-fest put this southern variety’s valiant northern escapade at an unachievable disadvantage… 

They won’t get there either.