It it starting to feel like autumn and so it is time to plant garlic. Garlic requires a cold season do do well, so timing is critical – try to plant within two weeks of the first frost so the cloves develop roots but don’t emerge by the time of the first hard freeze. The cloves are planted in rows about 3 inches deep. By next summer these cloves will have produced another crop of garlic.

We don’t hear the ‘This is a test, and only a test’ words as much as we used to on TV and radio. But, this coming Wednesday there will be a national test of IPAWS, the nationwide emergency alert system.

We have four tomato plants growing in the greenhouse. They have been flowering for a few days, and since there are no bees in the greenhouse the flowers have to be pollinated by hand.

Each morning we take a small paintbrush and gently brush inside each flower, move to the next flower, and so on to pollinate the plants.

Success! This morning we have our first baby tomato starting to grow!

Greta has been slowing growing over the past few weeks. She’s now about two inches long and looks more like a Halloween decoration each day. The moth she caught was completely consumed within 24 hours.