Although we don’t have a lot of color in the trees, October is a beautiful month in lower Alabama. During early October our evening temperatures fall into the lower 60’s and during the day the mercury makes its way into the lower to mid 80’s. A few days see the lows in the upper 50’s and highs in the mid 70’s. That doesn’t sound like much to shout about, especially if you live somewhere north of the Mason Dixon Line. But here in Zone 8b it’s a long awaited relief from the dismal summer heat and humidity of the Deep South.Most of the sweet potato farmers have harvested their crops. Peanut farmers are digging goobers. Huge bales of cotton are being hauled to the gins. The last remnants of summer gardening are the occasional stands of okra that you see here and there. Ours played out long ago. Had I kept it faithfully picked it would still be producing and would until frost. I admit that I have a hard time picking okra when its 95 degrees with the same percentage of humidity, especially after working all day taking care of client’s lawns. At that time of day the only things I’m interested in are a shower and the air-conditioning.
October ushers in new adventures in the garden. It’s time to put in cool weather crops. We have beds full of collards, chard, cabbage, mustard greens, turnips, broccoli, onions, and lettuce. These are growing nicely and looking good. We started putting in cool weather crops during late September during a terrible drought. That meant irrigating to get transplants established and seeds sprouted and growing.
We are also doing some experimental gardening. In early September, the last of the potatoes that we dug in June were planted in two rows. They’ve been hilled up once now and if we can keep the first couple of early frosts off of them they should make eating potatoes. I think it was the last week in August that I planted three rows of sweet corn, two rows of bush-type green beans, and three types of squash.
These crops germinated and came up well but insects in this sub-tropical zone have presented a fierce problem in growing corn and squash as a fall crop. I can’t blame them. If I were a bug I think I’d rather chew on something sweet and juicy instead of scrounging for lunch on a bunch of dry, hard fare. They’re not stupid and know a good deal when they find it. A couple weeks ago I almost put the tiller to the squash but somehow managed to constrain myself. It’s blooming now. Most of the corn is between waist and chest high and it’s beginning to tassel. The beans are loaded with blooms and should have no problem making before the first frost hits.
October also happens to be a teaching month for us. Back in the spring we were asked to teach a gardening class as part of the adult education program at St. Lawrence Catholic Church. Thirteen people attended the first session of the class. That was really encouraging. Before the week was over we had a call from a newly formed local food grower’s initiative that is trying to get the local city officials to allow them to use municipal property for a community garden. They are also involved in several other worthwhile local food production endeavors. One of their members had attended our first Monday night session and had encouraged their group to invite us to come and give a talk on gardening at their November meeting. How could I not accept the invitation to talk about this passion?
There are a lot of food concerns afoot these days, what with all the talk about GMO’s, pesticide contamination, salmonella poisoning, rising transportation and distribution costs. The more we know, the more we educate ourselves about these concerns, the more motivation we discover within ourselves to do something more than just talking about the problems. Home gardens and grass roots projects may never change the massive problems on the large scale. They do, however, create a major difference in the lives of those involved in them.
