Garden Hints - Lane County Extension

Last night got cold and the next 4 nights also look cold down to 26-27 degress F. Be sure if you have any water sources, protected, AND let a faucet drip to keep the pipe water moving. Tree leaves make a good insulator.

Prunes are slowly ripening but really slowly. Peppers are starting to show signs of growing and new bloom. Corn - actually almost ripe. With a good 2nd fig crop, be sure to water the crop well. Tomatoes look good with most varieties ripenng all at the same time. I have a small wild blackberry patch. With the heat I placed water nearby, and I now have blackberries with good size and at least a months worth of new berries ripening. It is hard to say but it is time to think about the fall/winter garden planting time. Think about cole crops, similar to the April plants, I found a small bag of potatoes, so I planted them 2 weeks ago, time will tell, wrong timing but gardening is one big experient. My pumpkin and watermelon seeds finally germinated two weeks ago. The pumpkin plant is alread 3 foot tall. Maybe pumpkins in early November.

Be sure to have irrigation set up, the last three weeks have been very stressful on lawns, trees, garlic and gardens.
Gravenstein apples - full crop. Prunes - medium crop; pears - light crop. Quince - I got one bloom to pollenate.
Apples, pears- thin or remove extra fruit. The tree only needs one fruit per cluster of 4-5 apples. Thin so apples are about 4 inches apart. Yes, I know it looks like a lot of apples on the ground. When I thin, I am removing 4 out of 5 apples. If you want big apples or pears, remove a lot of fruit. Also, removing fruit, provides a place for the netx year for the tree to get "pregnant. If the fruit is not thinned, the tree goes into biennial bearing where the tree only produes fruit every other year. Thinning helps to have fruit EVERY year.
Tomatoes - 20 volunteers.
Onions - Patterson, doing very well.
Garlic - up 1 1/2 feet, irrigate. Remove the flowering tops, which can also be eaten or stir fried.