Fall is the season of harvest. One of the greatest reasons to grow plants is to grow food. In Chapter 3 you planned and planted a garden. By fall, you will have already harvested and enjoyed lots of the fruit and vegetables you grew. The most fun fall vegetables include pumpkins and gourds … just in time for Halloween.
Carving Pumpkins has become a great tradition in our country for Halloween. It actually started when the first English and Irishmen came over to America and used to carve the pumpkins into lanterns. In Europe, they used to carve turnips. The early American settlers put candles inside of carved pumpkins to provide light.
Pumpkin Carving
Most of us have tried this at Halloween. But there are ways to master the art of pumpkin carving. If you’re happy with the triangle eyes and nose, then that’s what’s important. If you want to try something new, it’s time to try some serious carving. You can make hair and eyebrows by carving thin lines halfway through the skin rather than all the way. Any details you create in this way will give your pumpkin a whole new personality.
Of course, you don’t have to carve; you can simply paint a face on a pumpkin and set it out for Halloween.
Jack-o-lantern carving
Tasty Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
Remove the seeds from the pumpkin, and wash them in a colander. Let the seeds dry and spread them on a baking dish. Sprinkle with salt and drizzle with oil. Bake at 250 degrees for an hour, turning them occasionally. Enjoy! Try adding cinnamon, sugar, or garlic powder in the mix for variety.
And, of course, there’s always pumpkin pie …
Saving Pumpkin Seeds for Next Year’s Garden
You’ll get a lot of seeds from a single pumpkin, but only some will germinate next year. Wash them off well and remove all the gooey pulp. Spread them out and put them someplace cool for a week to ten days. Then you can simply put them in an envelope for next spring. In the spring you’ll be ready to plant them in the garden in full sun, or start them indoors.
Plants with Spooky Names for the Season
Eyeball Plant
Bloodwort
Ghost Plant
Ghost Fern
Witch Hazel
Wolfsbane
These plants will grow through the summer, and in the fall you can add some of your pumpkins and gourds and the stalks of your harvested corn plants to the Halloween garden.
A Halloween horror
Painting Gourds
You can find some gourds at the local market or grow them yourself and paint different faces on each one. Outline the face in magic marker first. Use tempera or acrylic paint. Put all the faces in a bowl for Halloween and you might just bowl your friends over with a pot of “shrunken heads.” If you have some peat pots and some annual rye seed left, you can grow another crop of googly-eyed people for the Halloween season. Start your rye seeds two weeks before Halloween. (See page 24.)
Spring surprise: A little work in fall pays off in early spring.
MORE FALL PLANTING. Fall is a season of harvest, but it can also be a wonderful planting season for certain plants.
Bulbs (Tulips, Daffodils, Crocuses, Narcissus, and More)
Bulbs are fun to plant, but you won’t see any flowers until next spring. The bulbs you plant in the ground are like little storage containers for roots and other things the plants need to grow. Wait until it’s getting pretty cold out before you plant the bulbs, because you really don’t want them to “wake up” until spring. If it’s too early, and it gets warm again before winter, the bulb may sprout but won’t flower or do well. You really want to wait until November. Plant the bulbs generally about three times as deep as the height of the bulb (i.e., a 2”-high bulb should be planted in a hole 6” deep). Press gently on the dirt once you’ve filled the hole to remove air pockets.
Plant your bulbs at a depth three times the height of the bulb.
Bulbs like daffodils can be quite large, while crocuses and others are very small. Putting some kind of mulch over the top of the planted bulb helps lessen the effects of temperature changes. Cold and snow cover are great for bulbs. Wait until you see them next spring. Even if you forget you planted them, they’ll pop up and surprise you.
Enjoy the beautiful blossoms in spring. When the flower’s done all that will be left are the tall foliage stalks. Don’t cut these back until they begin to brown as this is how the bulb restores itself for another appearance next spring. You can get many springs of enjoyment from a single bulb planting.
Fall Planting: Garlic, Lettuce, and Kale
If you start lettuce or kale seedlings inside in August, you’ll be able to plant these out in the garden in September. These will grow well in the cooling weather and can be harvested though the late fall and early winter. You can also plant kale earlier in the summer. The best kale comes after a frost and even some snow. Most years you can harvest kale into November and sometimes even later.
This simple tool makes the job easier.
October is a great time to plant garlic, which is a member of the onion family and a favorite of cooks. Plant the single cloves in full sun with their tips 2” beneath the soil about 5” apart. The cloves will rest dormant (almost like sleeping) for the winter, and the plants will begin to emerge in spring and be ready to harvest in midsummer.
PUTTING THE GARDEN TO BED. Fall is the best time to get your garden soil ready for next spring. After you’ve harvested the last of your pumpkins, spread your best compost over the garden. Add fallen leaves to the soil as well.
Add some dried manure (available at stores—unless you have access to cow, horse, or other farm animal manure) and mix this all into the top 5–6” of the garden bed. This will continue to break down over the winter and you’ll have a beautiful soil mixture in the spring. It doesn’t hurt to leave a few of the old vegetable plants in the garden to degrade and become part of the circle and the rich mix for your spring garden.
