Old Fashioned On Purpose

S15: E8: NOW is the Time to Start Your Fall Garden. Here's How.

• Jill Winger • Season 15 • Episode 8

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Looking for a bit of redemption after a less-than-stellar growing season? Want to reduce the pressure to preserve ALL the food right NOW? A fall garden can offer all of this and more and it's one of my secret weapons for growing more food with less stress. 

The time to start your fall crops is NOW-- join me to talk about what plants are best, some of my biggest mistakes, and how you can start your own fall garden no matter where you live.

Podcast Episode Highlights

  • First thoughts on fall gardening (why I'm going to do it, why you can/should)
  • Figuring out your frost date
  • Learning about plant maturity dates
  • Why it's worth it to have a fall garden
  • Why you need to start NOW for fall gardening
  • Tips for planting outdoors for a fall garden
  • My plans for this fall garden 

Resources Mentioned in This Podcast Episode:

Learn more about Air Doctor here: airdoctorpro.com

  • Use code HOMESTEAD to save up to $300 on your air doctor system

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Speaker 1:

So I will admit that this year has not been my most stellar gardening season. I'm going to blame it on the weather. Mostly. We've had an extremely hot, extremely dry and oddly windy summer, which we just usually don't have. Our wind in the summer, and my outdoor garden especially, has just been weird. I had a lot of stuff that just didn't germinate. I have a lot of baby plants that got just beat up by the wind and kind of stunted them, and so I am licking my wounds, making it through summer.

Speaker 1:

Things look pretty good right now, but I have to admit that I am planning on a bit of redemption in my fall garden this year. So, contrary to what I thought for many years, you don't start a fall garden in the fall. You start it now, which is midsummer. If you're listening to this when the episode comes out and that can be a little bit disorienting, because if you're anything like me or your region is similar to mine I'm kind of in that honeymoon season of gardening right now. Everything's planted, everything's growing, it looks pretty decent and the insanity of harvest has not yet started, and so I'm just kind of tootling along and it's really easy to forget that now is when we need to start planting our seedlings, potentially back in your house on your seed racks, or thinking about cultivating beds or areas in our gardens for those fall crops. So if you are intrigued by the idea of planting a fall garden this year, maybe you're like me. You need a little bit of redemption from a rough start to this year's main garden. Keep listening. I'm going to give you some ideas on how to know whether or not your region will support a fall garden Spoiler alert it probably will and some ideas for my favorite vegetables to plant and what I'm doing this year.

Speaker 1:

So welcome to the Old Fashioned On Purpose podcast. I'm your host, jill Winger, and this is the show where we look at what we have left behind as we have raced towards progress and how we can get some of the good pieces back. So I have been dabbling in fall gardens for I don't know a couple, a number of years now. Like I said in the intro, for the longest time I was so confused by them because I was like, well, how can I plant a garden in the fall? Because our summer and winter basically just smashed together here in Wyoming and our fall is like a week. So I'm like there's no way I'm going to have time for plants to be developed enough before the snow comes. So I had to really dig in and understand how this whole thing works. But in essence, what a fall garden is is just growing cold weather crops later on in the year that can withstand some cold. Like we're not hoping for a perfect extended summer, we're just getting strategic with what we're planting and how they can survive frost and maybe even some snow.

Speaker 1:

So whenever I start talking about this, the first question I always get is well, can I have a fall garden in my area or in my region, or how can I do this without a greenhouse? Well, first off, you can I have a fall garden in my area or in my region, or how can I do this without a greenhouse? Well, first off, you absolutely don't need a greenhouse to plant a good fall or winter garden, even though I do have a greenhouse. I'm going to talk about some of that today. Know that that is not a requirement. And number two, I don't have the perfect answer or the perfect formula for helping you know whether or not you can plant a fall garden, but odds are you probably can. You just have to do some math, and that's the hardest part and that's the part I think that kind of tripped me up for a long time is. I was kind of looking for that blog post or that book that would give me the perfect thought for me formula on when to plant, how to plant, if I could plant, it's not going to exist for our individual areas, right? So we have to do that thinking. Once you do that thinking, you'll be set. So here's how I think about it and here's how I figure my planting dates for us here in Wyoming and this can be applied to anywhere that you live. Know that I live in an extreme climate. I've talked about that many times before. So if I can do this, I know that you can do this in your probably less extreme climate. Even if you have to take a few measures to make this work, it's worth it.

Speaker 1:

So, okay, the first thing you need to know as you are planning out your fall garden is your first frost date, not your last frost date, right, that's the one that comes at the end of spring, but we're looking at the first frost date, which is when, obviously, we're going to have that first cold snap in the fall. So you can find this online. There's lots of calculators and zone charts and maps. Ours is roughly September 15th. Of course that's an average. There was one year in particular where we got a full-fledged snowstorm with many inches of snow on September 8th. I will never forget that year. But for the most part, we won't get our first frost till September 15th, which is quite early compared to most places in the United States. Now that doesn't mean that we go from summer to full-on snow on that day. What usually happens is we'll get a killing frost and then it will warm back up to the 70s or 80s or 90s, which is a little bit frustrating because things are dead and you're like, oh my gosh, you could have had another month to grow if we hadn't had that killing frost. But that's what I know.

Speaker 1:

If I am planting something that is very sensitive to cold, that it needs to be covered or out of the ground or finished by September 15th roughly, then the next thing we're going to look at with the crops that we hope to grow and I'm going to talk a little bit more in a minute about what crops I picked I don't do a full-fledged garden in the fall, right. This is a very much abbreviated version, but we have to look at the plants that we want to grow and know their maturity date. So oftentimes this is going to be on the seed packet itself or if you're ordering from a place like True Leaf Market, like I do, they're going to have that information on the website. If you can't find it, just a quick Google search will give you average maturity timeframes. However, keep in mind that certain varieties are going to be maybe much shorter or much longer, so kind of try to get in the ballpark, but that's going to be really important for you at least to have a guesstimate of how long it's going to take that plant to mature. And then from there you basically just count backwards. You know, if you know a plant needs 45 days to mature and you know your frost date is September 15th, then I'm going to count backwards.

Speaker 1:

Now the one exception to this and this is honestly an exception that has really become the rule in my fall garden is I'm purposely planting vegetables that like cold, that like frost and maybe even get better after a cold snap. So September 15th is never my hard fast end date. It's just a date I keep in mind for when I know the temperature could start to drop, but the things I'm planting in, whether it's my raised beds or in my greenhouse. I know that if we get a cold snap, a killing frost on September 15th and I'm just saying that date because that's my average date, right, that's going to be different for you. I know that those plants will continue to grow, they won't be dead after that frost. They'll keep going and I can harvest them later in the year. So keep in mind that we're going to be very strategic in what we plant in that garden to make sure that works.

Speaker 1:

So, before I get into more of the nitty gritty, let's just talk for a few seconds about why this is worth it, because potentially, some of you are listening to this episode right now and you're going. I feel like I'm barely surviving the summer garden. I am looking forward to that killing frost. I'm not sure I even want to consider a fall garden. If that is you, totally fine. Like you don't have to do this, and there have been many, many years where I have been so over the garden by August or September, like I just wanted to be done and take a break. There's no shame in that.

Speaker 1:

But here are a few reasons why. Even with my busy schedule, even with my limited time that I have to spend in the garden, why I find that fall gardening actually kind of reduces my garden stress in a weird way. So, first off, the fewer bugs is a huge benefit for me, especially with my brassicas or my coal crop varieties. So cabbage moss, cabbage worms are such a pain part of my fall garden. You're going to have much fewer, many fewer how should I say that? Many fewer bugs, especially those caterpillar type cabbage eating bugs, because they will die in that frost. And so when I plant those brassicas in my fall garden, they're beautiful, they don't have holes all over it. I don't have to worry about the little green worms. It's a huge benefit.

Speaker 1:

The second reason is that, believe it or not, even though it might not feel like it at this exact moment, the fall garden reduces the level of chaos and crunch that I feel gardening overall, and I think the reason for that is back in the day before I started fall gardening, I felt like I had to grow everything for the whole year in a very, very short window. Like our frost, free days are very few. We I plant like June 1st usually, and then potentially September 15th is when we have our another killing frost, so I don't have a big window and so feeling like I had to plant everything I needed for an entire year, that was a lot and it felt very high stakes. Now that I have extended my growing season on either side, I don't feel that same stress and, honestly, there are things that I no longer grow in the summer because I know they're going to do better in my fall and winter garden. I'll get into those varieties in a minute.

Speaker 1:

I also don't preserve as much or feel that pressure to preserve as much as I used to, because I know that I am using the fall and winter growing seasons to plant the plants and almost let the earth act like a giant refrigerator for them in a sense. And so I'm not against preserving. Obviously I do it a ton, but sometimes come August, september, october when everything needs preserved, having one less crop to deal with is a huge benefit. So an example of that would be carrots. I have never had good luck preserving carrots in cold storage. I've tried them in their fridge. They work okay, but it takes up a ton of space. I don't have a great root cellar. I've tried it in my basement. My basement's just not cold enough. I've tried the whole carrots in sand and carrots in sawdust. That was disastrous and I turned it into a rancid carrot slurry sludge that my husband still talks about.

Speaker 1:

So I just don't love preserving carrots. I don't like canning them, I don't like freezing them. I just want them to be fresh, which is very high maintenance. So I find that when I plant the carrots in the fall or late summer and then they come to maturity, I just let them sit in my greenhouse or sit in my outdoor garden. I harvest them throughout the winter as needed, and I have fresh, crisp carrots. They're sweeter because the frost makes the plant convert some of its substances into sugar, so they taste better and I don't have to worry about packing them into a Tupperware with sawdust, which doesn't work anyway, or a fridge or whatever. So that reduction in preservation stress is awesome, I think, and it's a huge benefit to a fall garden, in my opinion.

Speaker 1:

And then the other big reason would be some plants just do so much better without heat, and there have been so many years I would plant my lettuce and my spinach and my arugula in the spring, like when I planted everything else and then they bolted almost immediately. I have had spinach plants be one or two inches tall and they're already bolting so frustrating. And as you know, heat causes those plants to bolt or start to go to seed, and so I don't grow greens in the summer anymore. It's just a complete waste of time and space. What I do instead is I grow greens in the fall, the winter and the early spring and there's a couple month gap where I can't get much to grow because we're so reduced on our light hours. But the rest of the time I absolutely can keep those plants either just kind of at a static state or they'll be slowly growing. They don't bolt as much, they taste delicious, they can handle a frost, they can handle a snow and it works brilliantly.

Speaker 1:

The other plant that really benefits from the cooler temperatures rather a variety, the family of plants would be the whole crops. With the brassica variety I have tried the cabbage and the broccolis. Actually, last year I planted them in my greenhouse for my fall garden, but I put them in too early. I kind of jumped the gun and had the most beautiful plants, like big, stunning foliage leaves, the whole nine yards, like picture worthy. But they never.

Speaker 1:

The broccoli cauliflower did not develop heads and my cabbage did not develop heads, and I think it's because they never got that cold snap when they needed it and it never triggered the plant to send up the heads, and so I know it wasn't an issue with watering. It wasn't an issue with watering, it wasn't an issue with soil, because I planted them again in the early spring this past year, when it was cool, and they developed heads just fine. So it was very odd, though, and I realized it was related to too much heat. And so those three reasons fewer bugs, less chaos and pressure, and then less heat those are the main reasons I continue to fall garden, even though sometimes gardening feels like it's adding a little bit more chaos into my schedule. It's worth it because I can extend that season, it takes that pressure off of those summer months and I know I can have fresh fruit food for a longer period of time. So that's the why, and let's get into the how.

Speaker 1:

So the biggest reminder and I mentioned this a minute ago, but I'm going to say it again You've got to start now with some of these crops. Now being end of July, early August, you can plant some things into September, and again, I'm just saying this roughly based on my region. I know many of you are going to be in a somewhat similar region. If you're in the South, obviously you're going to probably be planting your big garden now, because you kind of have a flip-flopped season from me, but if you are in a Northern type climate, you're going to want to start thinking about this in the summer. So what I'm personally doing right now is I am starting some of my seeds back in the house under my grow lights, just like it's spring, which feels really weird when I have a full-fledged, almost mature garden outside. But this is how we roll. So I'm going to be planting my cabbages and broccoli and cauliflower in my little seed trays in my house of flower, in my little seed trays in my house. Sometimes I will also, just to speed up the process, do little tiny cells of lettuce, spinach, arugula. I find those sprouts so fast outside, though it's kind of like not super necessary.

Speaker 1:

One note with this, and I've tried a couple different varieties because I'm like oh, I have the greenhouse and it's summer, so I don't need to start my seeds in the house under my grow lights, which is a wonderful thought. In practice, it hasn't worked out as well and I think it's related to the heat. And when I have put my seed trays in the greenhouse to start, they just don't germinate well because it is so hot and it dries out so quickly. And even though I'm watering thoroughly once or twice a day in the greenhouse, like sometimes, those little tiny cells just dry out too much in between waterings and, as you know, that's the kiss of death for a germinating seed. And so for that reason it's just easier and I can control the environment more when I start them back in my house under my grow lights.

Speaker 1:

You could experiment with different things, but that drying out doesn't work. You don't get any second chance once that germinating seed dries out. So I will plant my longer season veggies in my trays right now, and then I kind of wait till end of August, early September to put my other items right in the soil, like the greens, and so that would be lettuce. Spinach. Mosh is one. It's also known as corn salad. It's a little tiny green but it can handle like the Arctic, so that's a good option. Sorrel, chard, mustard, arugula those I'm usually direct sewing right outside, again, usually end of August, early September. The key and again, these are my dates, these are my timeframes. You're going to have to adjust accordingly.

Speaker 1:

I think there's probably fewer of you that have a more harsh climate than I do and more of you who have a milder climate, so I'm hoping this episode still hits for you in that time range where you can jump on board and do some of these things. Hey friends, so I'm interrupting this episode for just a second to share something pretty cool with you. So I'll never forget the time many years ago when we visited a naturopathic doctor to talk about my husband Christian's allergies. He's dealt with them since he was a kid and he's kind of just one of those people who tends to be allergic to pretty much everything. And the doctor's recommendations was to put in a air filtration system in our house, to stop working in dusty barns or outbuildings and to stop being around animals. And I walked away super frustrated because obviously, if you know us, that's just not an option. We're going to have the animals, we're going to have the barns, we're not going to go live in a sterile house somewhere in a big city. So I kind of ignored those recommendations.

Speaker 1:

But over the years since then I've heard a lot of other naturopathic doctors and people in that space, talk about the importance of having some sort of air filtration in your home. I just didn't really know how to do that and I didn't like the thoughts of putting in a ginormous system that sounded really complicated and super expensive. So I was really excited to come across Air Doctor. Air Doctor is a air filtration system that captures all of those super tiny contaminants that you can't see. Think things like dust, pollen, mold spores, pet dander, bacteria, virus and viruses, and even things like ozone gases and vocs. It's this little unit. You don't have to like hire an hvac company to put it in, you just take it out of the box, plug it in and off you go, and it has this thing called an ultra HEPA filter that is proven to filter particles that are 100 times smaller than a typical HEPA filter. So it's kind of like a HEPA on steroids. So we have ours in our bedroom, because we spend more time there than any other room in the house, while we're sleeping, of course, and I love knowing that at least for that period of time, especially during the summer months, our body is getting a break from the constant pollens and histamines and everything else that's floating around outside and, quite honestly, it's making us a little bit miserable itchy eyes, runny nose, you know the whole nine yards. So I'm excited for you to give it a try, if this is something you've been struggling with as well. Air Doctor comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. So if you don't love it, you just send it back for a refund, minus shipping. And I have a promo code for you. If you use the code HOMESTEAD, you can save up to $300 on your Air Doctor system. So head on over to airdoctorprocom that's A-I-R-D-O-C-T-O-R-E-R-O, airdoctorprocom and use the promo code homestead to give it a try.

Speaker 1:

Now back to our episode. When you do plant outdoors, you want there's kind of a sweet spot. You want to make sure that it's still going to be warm enough and you're going to have enough light to trigger germination, but not so much that we're starting so early that the plants are going to be done before we really get into that winter cooler season. And so for me again, that's usually August through September. I know that I can get stuff in the ground. It's still going to be warm enough to germinate. So, like my carrots, I'm going to be planting those outside in a couple of weeks and they take a long time to germinate anyway. I know they need the warmth, they need to be moist. I'm going to have to be really on top of that and I'll plant those out and let those get enough growth before everything slows down October, november and then they just sit in the soil for the rest of the year.

Speaker 1:

You could also do other root vegetables, parsnips, beets, turnips, things like that but those are really my main categories of what I like to plant outdoors Brassicas, greens and roots. Those are going to be your best bet. Could you plant things like potatoes, tomatoes, green beans If you have enough wiggle room on your growing season, potentially, but for me I just don't have enough, and so I can succession plant things like beans or peas, but I know I need to cut those off, usually late summer, because they're just not going to have enough time and they're not going to sustain through. It's just completely passive solar and so it's beautifully warm on some of those winter days, but it can still get down below freezing, sometimes even below zero, depending on how cold it is outside, depending on what kind of cloud cover we have. So basically, my greenhouse is like a giant cold frame and I consider it its own little growing zone. It's a slightly warmer zone. I'm 5b in my outdoor garden. I think I'm more like a 6b or maybe sometimes a 7 in my greenhouse, but it still gets cold enough in there to kill the sensitive plants because I'm not heating it. I don't have a desire to heat it. If you have a heated greenhouse, then that's a whole different game.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so that's the why. There's some of the how and why I pick the vegetables I pick. Let me just walk you through my plans for this year. Maybe this will inspire you, give you some ideas of how to put this in to practice. So the one thing I always, always, always, plant in the fall even if I don't have a fall garden of any other type is garlic, and I have episodes on garlic. I have blog posts on garlic.

Speaker 1:

If you haven't raised your own garlic, grown your own garlic, it's a game changer. It's incredible and it's so easy, and I put my garlic right outside in my raised bed garden. I want it to get cold. It needs that cold snap, it needs that freezing to grow proficiently the following year, and so I will usually put mine in end of September, early October. It's okay. If it's already frosted, that's totally fine. I just want to get it in where the soil is still warm enough for it to start a little bit. And then I so I plant it, cover it with soil, and then I cover it with mulch, grass, clipping straw or whatever, and then water it a little bit, but then that's it, it's done and it just sits there and, without fail, it comes up in the spring and I harvest it the following June or July and it is like clockwork. It is such a fun treat to see it come back up and you're like oh my gosh, I forgot I planted that. Here you come. So garlic always goes in in the fall.

Speaker 1:

Now, with my outdoor raised beds, I plant fewer fall crops out there for a couple of reasons. Well, first off, I have the greenhouse, so it's easier for me to use that in the winter. But the biggest reason is I have done root vegetables out there, I've done cabbages out there, I've done kale out there. My biggest problem is our snow drifts, so the carrots have stayed edible throughout the winter. But we will get and you've probably seen my pictures on Instagram. You follow me there. We get such extreme snow drifting that it will pack four, five, six feet of snow on certain areas. You never know what area is going to get it, but it will pack drifts on certain areas that are rock hard, and sometimes those drifts will stay for weeks or months, and so I've had it happen where my raised bed garden drifts over and then, like there's no way, I'm going to go out there and dig through six feet of snow to get to some carrots in the ground. So if you don't have snow drifts like that or you live in a more temperate climate that still gets cold but is not as crazy as mine, I absolutely think you could plant almost anything you want in your outdoor space. I have been amazed at my outdoor cabbages where they have had snow on them and then I can still harvest them, unwrap a few of the outer leaves, discard those and the inner cabbage is still fantastic.

Speaker 1:

So one thing I am doing for my raised bed garden this year and I do this a lot and I've really leaned into it more recently is I have been devoting more time and even letting certain beds rest just for the express purpose of putting cover crops there. So I've been I think I talked about this on a previous episode I've been dealing a little bit with a nitrogen deficiency in some of my soil out there, which is to be expected in a raised bed garden, and I think that's one of the downfalls of a raised bed garden is eventually you have to address those deficiencies and it's a little bit trickier. So I have low nitrogen. Did I say low nitrogen? If I said high, I meant low. I have low nitrogen and high phosphorus and I know that because I did the Redmond home soil test. I've talked about that before.

Speaker 1:

They're an incredible option, super affordable and super fast, and that probably comes from the manure I've been adding. I know that my compost pile because I also tested that is primarily horse and cow manure and I know that the nitrogen can leach off when it sits outside. And I think I've been adding the manure material, that organic matter, but it hasn't had the nitrogen I thought it did, but it's that phosphorus has maintained. So now I have this conundrum where if I add more manure, I'm going to continue increasing my phosphorus level but then I'm not really adding as much nitrogen as I want because my manure pile isn't super rich in that and that high phosphorus can cause other issues, tying up iron and zinc and things like that. So I'm trying to get that back into balance.

Speaker 1:

I don't want to just add straight synthetic industrial nitrogen. That's not how I roll. I keep thinking okay, what would happen in nature if this was occurring, and how can I address this in a more holistic way? So one thing I'm doing in a lot of my raised beds this year is, as soon as I'm pulling plants, I'm planting a nitrogen fixing cover crop in their place, and in the past it's almost been an afterthought, but these days it's becoming a forethought. It's becoming something that I'm really focused on, even if it means a year or two with slightly reduced yield, because I'm not succession planting as much or I'm not being as aggressive with my planting.

Speaker 1:

So, for example, in my raised beds where I just pulled the garlic out a few weeks ago, I am going to be planting clover in those beds, and clover is legume like alfalfa, and what those varieties of plants do is they pull nitrogen from the atmosphere and the microbes work. I wish I was better at explaining this on a scientific level, but the microbes work together to pull that nitrogen from the atmosphere and put it into your soil. So I'm going to let that clover grow for a little while and then it'll kind of get stunted or frosted once we get really cold and then in the spring I'll flip it over and let that organic mass decompose and bring that nitrogen back into the soil. And that's not going to be adding the phosphorus, because I don't need that, I already have plenty of it. That would be occurring if I was adding manure. So those are my big plans for my outdoor garden garlic and cover crops on as many beds as possible. So then when I go into my greenhouse, which is gonna be more similar to probably more of y'all's climates it's a little more temperate. That's where I'm getting more creative with my vegetables. So one thing I'm trying that may be a colossal failure, but I'm trying it anyway is I'm going to.

Speaker 1:

I actually just did it this morning. I planted cucumbers in one of the beds in there, just a couple rows. I could not get my cucumbers to germinate outside. I replanted them three times. I think it was too hot. I don't know what was going on. I think something was also eating them as soon as they would come up out of the soil, because I could see some of the stems just like sawed off. So frustrating. So I have these cucumbers. It's pushing the envelope a little bit, because they do need a little more time. But I'm going to see, if I get lucky and we have a warmer fall, that maybe I'll have just enough time to get a little bit of a cucumber harvest in the greenhouse. We shall see. I'm also going to be starting my broccoli cauliflower cabbage seedlings this week indoors.

Speaker 1:

In a couple of weeks I'm going to be planting carrots out in the greenhouse. I have to be as strategic, because some of my greenhouse beds are still very full. My pumpkin plant has taken over the entire structure. It's a little bit of a problem. I'm going to have to do something different next year because the pumpkin vines are now covering almost every bed and my melons are still growing and my tomatoes are still growing. So I'm not going to pull those out. I'm going to let those go to maturity. But there's a few beds that my radishes are ready to be pulled. There's a couple tomato beds that I think those plants will look a little puny. I'm probably just going to pull those out and just call it good, and that's where I'll be putting the carrots. And then come September-ish, mid-september, I'll be putting the greens directly in the soil there and then nurturing those, and so that's my plan Every year.

Speaker 1:

I'm learning something new. Every year one crop does really well and one doesn't, and I think that's just the nature of gardening. But I just like the extension. And for some reason and maybe you might not feel like this, and it's okay Having that longer growing season with less pressure feels more peaceful to me than having a tiny growing season, feeling like I have to get everything grown at once. So that's my plan and we'll see how it goes. Like I said, I'm always learning. Last year I learned that I can't plant my broccoli too early, because then I don't get heads, and I can't plant my cabbage too early. So I'm just getting a little bit better every year.

Speaker 1:

But I do love that dynamic of going out to the greenhouse on a frigid day, putting on all my clothes to walk out there. I get inside, it feels warm, like a warm hug. It feels so good in there and I can go harvest the spinach, I can harvest the carrots. I'm getting that fresh produce in the dead of winter and that feels pretty awesome. And just one more reminder you don't need a greenhouse to make it happen.

Speaker 1:

You could do this in your outdoor garden. Many, many people do right. Many people do this in their outdoor garden, whether you're just doing it as is. You can build little cold frames. You can use season extenders. You can build little cold frames. You can use season extenders. You can use hoops with plastic over them. I know a lot of folks do that. I cannot because of our high wind, but if you don't have high wind, you can experiment with those dynamics. You can cut the bottoms off of milk jugs and stick them over certain plants when it's super cold. So there's lots of ways to get creative.

Speaker 1:

But I encourage you if you are looking for a bit of redemption in your gardening efforts this year maybe you had a rough season, like I did. Give this a try, even if it's just one crop, even if it's just garlic, even if it's just carrots. Try something this year to see and start that experimentation process, and I think you'll really enjoy it. So that's what I have for you today. Friends, I just wanted to come in and record this while it was fresh on my mind, in between planting the cucumbers this morning and probably planting seedlings this afternoon, or starting seeds in my trays this afternoon. So it's always good to learn something new. I'm always learning, always failing, and I think that's just part of the process. So I hope this was inspiring to you and that's all I have for you. So thanks for listening and I'll catch up with you on the next episode of Old Fashioned On Purpose.