Hello! And happy fall (officially tomorrow!)! And I guess that it is a happy fall if you like all of these nippy nights! And it’s not so happy if you are a heat lover who thrives on heat and humidity. Then you were probably really happy this past week when it decided to be summer again!

At any rate, it’s already almost the end of September! Where did September go? You know the old saying – “Time flies when you’re having fun”? Well, I hate to tell you, time flies even when you are not having fun!

One thing we all know – our gardens out there are not having much fun. Everything out there is now in the final chapter (actually the final pages of that last chapter) of last minute production, or complete shut down, or final harvest. And of course, if you’ve been hit by frost last Saturday, then your garden is probably already free-dried!

But let’s take a quick look at some of the stuff that might still be out there in your garden. Carrots – you know, they actually taste better after a touch or two of frost! The carrot tops may take a beating, but who cares? It’s those carrot bottoms that everybody loves. You can leave those carrots go for a while in the round and then pick them as you eat them. The ground won’t freeze for a while yet.

Or you can always dig your carrots now, knock off any soil, and cut off those dingy carrot tops. Let the carrots air-dry for a day or so, and then layer them in a peat moss bed, or even in a pile of hay or straw. This way, you can then just reach in and pull out a carrot or two when you need them. The only downside to this method of outside storage is those 4 footed varmints will probably help themselves to those carrots before you get to them.

I don’t know about you, but I really hate having to share anything in my garden with Mickey or Minnie Mouse, or Bambi, or Thumper. What do you think I am – Goofy? After all, that anything out there in the garden actually becomes everything out there in the garden. They rarely leave anything behind.

Perhaps a long-term storage method for carrots is inside storage. Carrots are usually pulled and stored in a cold root cellar at 32 degrees with high humidity. No root cellar? Well, another method is to store carrots in moist sand or sawdust in 5-gallon buckets.

Keep in mind, carrots are really sensitive to ethylene gas. They will become bitter, so don’t store carrots near apples, since apples release lots of ethylene gas.

And that brings us to – apples. You can go to an apple orchard to pick your own or you can buy a bushel from your favorite farmers’ market – and, of course, that favorite market would be the Lowville Farmers’ Market. But if you don’t get to eat or can them all, you are faced with a bitter sweet problem – how to keep all those wonderful sweet globes all crisp and fresh. If you keep them in the fridge, they tend to dry out all too soon. What to do?

Try this: get them cold on a cold brisk night, then bring them inside and store them in one of those Styrofoam coolers. Stored this way, those crunchy apples will retain that moisture and keep crisper and fresher longer.

Winter squash and pumpkins are ready to harvest when the connecting stems begin to shrivel and take on a grayish color. Press the rind with your fingernail, and it should be tough and resist denting. Do not poke your fingernail through the skin; this may cause the pumpkin or winter squash to develop rot.

As the pumpkins or winter squash mature, their color becomes more intense and brighter. They say that winter squash can never over-ripen on the vine, although I have had spaghetti squash crack and split when they were over-done.

At any rate, both pumpkin and winter squash should be harvested when a hard, killing frost is predicted. When cutting, leave at least 1 inch of stem attached. Winter squash and pumpkins without stems may soon start to decay around that stem scar.

With the exception of acorn squash (which does not store for very long), winter squash should be cured n a warm, dry place for 10 days at 75-85 degrees. After that they should be stored for the long haul in a warmish, 50-ish degree dry place. With these conditions, you can expect your winter squash and pumpkins to keep for up to 6 months, provided you haven’t eaten all of them up before then. Keep in mind, acorn squash does not store that long. You can expect them to keep 6 – 8 weeks.

For all of those green pumpkins out there, bring them in where the temperatures are nice and roasty-toasty warm. This should start them turning orange, especially if they already have a touch of orange to begin with. And if those pumpkins are still very immature ad green, turning them orange is a bit more chancey. But I would still give them a chance and bring them in.

Hey, I know where you can find great orange pumpkins, terrific winter squash, super-duper spuds, onion you will cry over, red ripe tomatoes and much, much more – all untouched by that kiss of frost!

Yes – you guessed it – at the Lowville Farmers’ Market – yes today, from 8:30 until 2 in the Forest Park Pavilion on the beautiful Lewis County Fairgrounds.

Remember Eat Smart New York!

And – Bye – Talk to you soon!
D