It's Time to Plant Garlic!

October is the month to plant garlic! This easy to grow vegetable is planted now, hibernates in the ground over the winter, and is ready for harvest come early summer. Garlic is often propagated via cloning. A single clove will form an entire bulb, which will then be broken apart and the process starts over again. Here are some tips for growing:

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  Look for hardneck varieties of garlic, as they are best suited to the New England Climate.

• Some softneck varieties are hardy, but do not plant cloves from the grocery store. Commercially grown garlic usually comes from California or China, and is not adapted to our New England climate. Produce sold in stores may also be treated with growth inhibitors which will prevent sprouting.

• Break up the garlic bulb, but do not peel the cloves before putting them in the ground - their skin is meant to protect the tender tissue inside, which stores energy for the next season. 

• Plant cloves with the pointy side up in loose soil, at a depth of 1 to 3 inches, depending on the variety and size of the clove.

• Provide 6-8 inches of spacing between cloves.

• Cover your bed with a straw or leaf mulch to help insulate the new bulbs. 

As the Garden Winds Down...

By October, many gardeners are ready to put their gardens to bed, or at least put parts of their gardens to bed. Here's a few helpful tips to help you tuck in those vegetable gardens!

• Before cleaning up your garden for the season, make a quick sketch or diagram of where you planted various crops. Use this as a reference next spring so you can practice crop rotation strategies. This is also a useful disease prevention technique against pathogens which overwinter in the soil.
  • Add notes about what varieties were successful and what suffered to help you with seed selection this winter!

• Remove entire plants. Dispose of any leaves and plant material that were infected by disease, or heavily infested by insect pests. Compost only healthy plant material to help prevent the spread of problems next season.

• Clean up any dropped fruit to prevent volunteers next spring. (Or leave them for a fun experiment!)

• Save seeds from matured flowers and fruit for next year's garden

Sooty Blotch and Fly Speck on Apples

Seeing fruit that looks less than stellar while apple picking this fall? Sooty blotch and fly speck,  interesting group of fungi that affect apple, may be to blame.

Sooty blotch causes brown, grey, or black smudges on an apple’s surface that can be easily wiped off. While clusters of small black dots on the apple’s external surface, more difficult to clean off than sooty blotch, are likely due to an infection of fly speck. Several different fungi can cause Sooty Blotch and Flyspeck, and these two issues may appear together or separately.

Fortunately, these concerns are only "skin deep" as they say. Apples that have been infected by either of these diseases are perfectly safe to eat, although their aesthetic value has been diminished. You can use apples of this nature to make treats such as apple butter, apple cider, or applesauce.  

Native Plant: New England Aster

An excellent choice for late-season beauty for your garden is the New England aster, a Connecticut-native perennial with notable ecosystem benefits. This plant produces daisy-like flowers in brilliant shades of violet starting in late August and continuing through October. They fit perfectly in pollinator gardens, rain gardens, or as accent plants in a landscape.

This plant is extremely hardy. It can tolerate a wide range of conditions and soil types, from full sun to partial shade, and dry to wet ground conditions. They grow in USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 3 to 8 (https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/). In addition, they are resistant to many pests and diseases and may offer worthy competition against the weeds in your garden.

During the late growing season, many pollinators rely on the New England Aster as one of the few remaining sources of pollen and nectar, especially the migrating Monarch butterflies. Including this species in your garden will promote beneficial insects and pollinators to your garden from late summer through late fall, helping them thrive when their food sources become scarce.

New England Asters can grow to be between 3 and 5 feet in height and produce rough, velvety leaves. From early to late fall, they form clumps of vibrant flowers. Their natural habitat includes areas with open ground and high moisture, including prairies, lake shores, and wet meadows. They’re also often found on roadsides or along railroads, a testament to their hardiness and resilience.   

Word from the WiSE

Women in Soil Ecology, UConn Student Chapter