They're now calling for lows in the upper 30's this week, I'm not going to strip the tomato plants quite yet. We gave several bags of tomatoes to one of my wife's colleagues, they made some tomato relish with it and have already eaten a bunch of it.

We did bring the big rosemary plant in for the winter, now can I keep it alive?

The squirrels have been feasting on our tomatoes recently, we are finding half-eaten ones all over the back patio and in the yard. It is supposed to get to 37 tonight, I may pick everything that's ripe or close to ripe later today. We had an inch of rain overnight so right now the ground is still a bit too soggy.

Squirrels can slip through some pretty small holes, even chicken wire might not keep them out.

I'm moving the Aerogarden down to the basement. Now that we've been through two cycles of it, we have a better idea how often it needs to be tended to or harvested from. It doesn't need to be in a south-facing window, or in a window at all.

And this way the rosemary plant that we brought in for the winter can get a south-facing window, so maybe we can actually keep it alive over the winter. I think most of the time we lose the rosemary plant because we forget to water it. But our plant guy passed away earlier this year, so I'm doing the weekly plant watering.

Once I get the Aerogarden set up again, I plan to start some lettuce plants. Based on the last time around, we should be able to start picking lettuce around the end of November.

They're now calling for a low of 28 Friday night and lows in the mid 20's most of next week, so the outside garden should get its killer frost soon. I did manage to get another quart of tomato juice canned from the tomatoes I picked last Thursday.

It's supposed to hit the mid 20's here tonight, we may finally get our killer frost.

I started some lettuce plants in the Aerogarden today, some black seeded Simpson, some Rouge d'Hiver, one romaine, all from Aerogarden. I also did some self-planted buttercrunch lettuce, parsley and spinach. I don't know how well they'll do, but its better than having empty slots.

I was going to start them last week, but when I set up the Aerogarden after moving it, the right set of lights weren't coming on correctly. Fortunately, it was still under warranty (until the end of November), so I had to wait until a replacement console arrived, then I spent 2 hours taking off the old one and putting on the new one. Those things are solidly built.

I planted 11 pods from Aerogarden, all of them have sprouted. I also planted 13 self-planted pods. I put in 2 pods of spinach. One of them has sprouted, the other didn't so I reseeded it the other day. These seeds were from last season.

I also did 6 flat leaf parsley and 5 buttercrunch lettuce, but in both cases the seeds were from 2017, so they might have been too old and dried out. I've replanted those with fresh seeds (same types).

Almost time to start a new gardening thread for 2022. 🙂