Planting garlic and strawberry runners and loving fall vegetables

The pace of my fall garden is wonderfully slow. The frantic harvesting and preserving of summer has relaxed into small bursts of "beating the frost" activity, followed by large quantities of sitting and enjoying. There are a few tasks left to do in my garden in October, though, namely planting garlic and transplanting strawberry runners. The rest is clean up and prep for the winter months ahead.

Six heads are better than one!

 

What remains growing in the kitchen beds are the vegetables of hardy stock - beets, carrots, turnips, cabbage, leeks, Swiss chard and kale. Cooking with these ingredients is a welcome change, indeed. All the winter squashes and white and sweet potatoes are safely gathered in.

I'm using the best bulbs from this year's crop as my seed garlic for next year's crop.

Planting out the garlic for next year is an easy gardening task. After a quick turn in of compost, the garlic cloves are planted about two to three inches below the soil line, pointy end up, about six inches apart. After a good water, I walk away. When the weather becomes consistently cold, I'll add a layer of mulch over the bed.

If you are lucky, you get multiple new plants on one runner.

The strawberry plants I put in my Edible Landscape Project sent out runners, with many of them escaping the confines of the beds - prison break! All it took to gain control of the inmates was to snip the baby plants from the runners and plant them back in their strawberry beds. I've found to successfully transplant, it is easiest if the baby strawberry plants have developed roots. If there are no roots yet, I wait a few days before checking again. Once moved, I give the transplants a good watering to help develop a strong root system.

Next up is trimming back some of the perennials in my Edible Landscape. Is your garden and chore list winding down?

Sue


Related Posts:

Guide to transplanting strawberry runners.

Harvesting and curing garlic.

Storing garlic.