October went out with a blaze of fall color and unseasonably warm weather. And, of course, still no rain.

Lucky for me though, the cold nighttime temps held off until the very last week of the month, which kept us harvesting tomatoes, peppers and okra until the 17th – very late for these true warm season crops. After a summer with temperatures too high for the tomatoes to ripen, I’m not complaining!

Another huge highlight of October was our bumper crop of sweet potatoes. Our volunteers harvested 170 pounds of sweet potatoes during a full day of what often felt like archaeological excavation. And these potatoes were some of the biggest we’ve ever seen! They are now curing and getting ready for donation just in time for Thanksgiving.

Somehow, despite how hot and dry the season has been, we’re up to over 2,262 lbs. of food donated to the Media Foodbank and lots of summer camp kids who stopped by to help harvest and learn more about how to cook with the crops we grew. Those numbers feel great in a season where any success was hard won in a vegetable garden.

Still, they are just numbers. It’s hard to find the right ones to reflect the impact the garden makes on the community or the people who visit. To me, the meaning comes from the number of families who rely on the Media Foodbank, which is upwards of 100. And according to Michael Zeltt, the foodbank’s director, that number is only climbing. I also love that the people who come to the garden walk away seeing what a working vegetable garden looks like. It’s my hope that everyone goes home feeling inspired and empowered to grow their own food. Even when the weather doesn’t necessarily cooperate.

I’ve spent a lot of time this month thinking about how much gardening is actually out of our control. The heat and drought reminded me that the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley. I can spend a full winter prepping and mapping out crops — but I can’t make it rain or change the temperature. The frost will come when it comes, and I can stretch the season a little with freeze cloth and creative planting, but there’s no turning back the clock on minutes of daylight or keeping the soil from dropping below 50 degrees. Eventually, nature will put an end to the growing season, and everything will rest until the spring.

There are a few things I’ve done to keep the garden growing longer. I’m a big fan of doing another lettuce planting in early September. This is such a quick crop that you’re sure to get a good round of greens before the cold sets in. Last week we harvested an amazing 20 lbs. of five different multicolored lettuce varieties, and who doesn’t love that in October?

I also love to grow brassicas in the fall. These incredibly cold hardy vegetables, like kale, collards, and mustard keep going even when temps drop. Some of them, like broccoli ‘Early Purple Sprouting’ even require a cool period to trigger flower formation. Since broccoli is the unopened flower of this beautiful plant, I’m very excited to see what happens in the next few weeks.

The only bad thing about brassicas is that they tend to attract every single garden pest known to man. From cabbage looper to harlequin bug, I’ve picked most of them off my plants in the last few weeks. The downside to this is that it takes a good amount of time to check every brassica in the garden for insects. The upside is that it lets me manage the garden organically, and it really does seem to work. The leaves look a little lacy in spots, but the plants are growing well.

I also planted ornamental kale as a ‘trap crop’ this year to see what I could do to distract the pests. I planted this beautiful variety about two weeks ahead of all my other brassicas in the hopes that the insects would flock to it and ignore my crops. It does seem to have helped. Certainly, it catches its own fair share of cabbage looper and harlequin bug. Then I come along and pick them off, dropping them into a jar of warm soapy water.

I’m also creating a few micro-climates throughout the garden to help some of my less cold hardy perennial crops over winter. We’ll be covering our fig tree in the next week and I’m going to do my best to shelter my cup and saucer vine (hardy to zone 9) to see if I can keep it for next year. I’ve also dug up and potted some of my tender perennial herbs, like lemongrass and stevia, to keep in the greenhouse through the winter.

The beds still look full for the end of October, and the bones of next year’s garden are already taking shape beneath the soil in the garlic that we planted. I look forward to the new shoots poking up above the straw mulch, giving us a little hint of green to take us through the cold winter months. You can learn more about growing garlic and other herbs here.

My main hope for the next month in the garden is rain. Talk to anyone from Pennsylvania right now and they’ll tell you how much we need it. Stop by the garden next time you visit Tyler. We can do a rain dance together, and take a moment to say thank you and goodbye to this year’s garden. It will be missed, until the time comes to start growing again.