YOUNG PEOPLE'S HORSE & GARDEN CLUB

10/05/2026

Amazing Sky Shows all week!!
LOOK UP!!
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09/30/2026

09/30/2026

If you want monarchs in your yard, there's exactly one plant that matters, because their caterpillars can eat nothing else on earth, and right now is the moment to collect and sow the seeds. Here's the catch that stops most people cold: milkweed seed won't just sprout if you poke it in the ground and hope. It needs a stretch of cold first to break its dormancy, which is precisely why fall sowing works so well, you let winter do the job for you, exactly the way nature intended. There's a knack to catching the seed from those pods at the right moment too, right as they're splitting but before everything drifts off on the wind, which is that little parachute you can see in the photo. Get a patch going and you're not just decorating the garden, you're feeding a migration that's genuinely in trouble. It's all in the first comment.

09/30/2026

🌌✨ OCTOBER 2026 — A MONTH FULL OF SKY EVENTS

October is bringing a packed lineup of celestial events, from Saturn at opposition to meteor showers, a Moon–Mars pairing, Mercury’s best evening elongation, and the Hunter’s Moon. 🌙🪐☄️

October 4 — Saturn at Opposition
Saturn will be opposite the Sun in our sky, making it bright and visible from evening through the night. 🔭

October 5 — Moon Meets Mars
The Moon will pass very close to Mars, creating a beautiful celestial pairing. 🌙🔴

October 8–9 — Draconid Meteor Shower
The Draconids peak around these dates. Activity is expected to be modest, but dark skies can still reveal meteors. ☄️

October 12 — Mercury at Greatest Eastern Elongation
Mercury reaches its greatest distance from the Sun in the evening sky, offering a chance to spot the elusive planet shortly after sunset. ✨

October 21–22 — Orionid Meteor Shower
Fast meteors from debris left by Halley’s Comet will reach their annual peak. 🌠

October 26 — Hunter’s Moon
October’s Full Moon rises, bringing one of the year’s most recognizable traditional Moon names. 🌕✨

Save these dates and keep your eyes on the sky all month long.

Which October event are you most excited to watch? 👇

09/30/2026

October doesn’t automatically mean the planting season is over. 🍂🌱 In a lot of gardens, it’s actually a really useful month for getting a head start on cooler-weather crops.
🧄 Garlic is one of my favorite things to plant in fall because it can settle in before winter and then take off again in spring.
🥬 In milder areas, leafy greens like spinach, lettuce, and arugula often appreciate cooler temperatures far more than summer heat.
🌱 Radishes are another good quick crop when conditions are cool enough, especially if there’s still time before hard freezes.
🌾 If a bed is going to sit empty, I’d rather cover it than leave bare soil exposed all winter. A cover crop can help protect the surface and add organic matter later.
The big thing I check first is my local frost timing. October gardening can look completely different depending on your USDA zone.

09/30/2026

The praying mantis clinging nearby in the cold isn't lost. She's finishing the most important work of her life.

The tan, papery lump is her egg case. She whipped it out as a liquid froth and it set in the air, and inside, stacked in a column of tiny chambers, are more eggs than you'd guess.

Insulated. Waterproofed. Built for a winter she won't be here for.

The case rides out the cold glued to your stem, and on a warm day in late spring it pours out a crowd of mantises the size of mosquitoes.

🔍 Whose case is it:

- Round, foamy, walnut-sized — Chinese mantis, introduced
- Long, narrow, with a ridge down the middle — Carolina mantis, native

🌿 What to do:

- Leave the stem standing through winter
- If it has to come down, tie the case to a stem or fence outside at the same height, out of the wind
- Keep it outdoors — a warm room hatches it months early, with nothing for them to eat

She spends her last strength on a box of froth. Everything she was is inside it. 🍂

09/30/2026

Not every caterpillar in the garden is a pest 🐛 Some are future butterflies and moths, including monarchs, swallowtails, painted ladies, and cecropia moths. Knowing who’s who can help you protect the pollinators already growing in your garden.

09/30/2026

09/30/2026

Garlic goes in the ground about now, and the calendar is the whole trick: 4 to 6 weeks before your soil freezes, which means October across most of the country, late September in zones 3 and 4, and November into December from zone 8 south 🧄

One clove becomes one head, and it's not a seed doing the work. Garlic doesn't reproduce by seed in the garden; each clove is a cutting, a clone of the plant it came from, with everything it needs to rebuild the whole head. That's why a single head from a good grower is enough to start a patch, and why the patch keeps its character year after year.

The condition is cold. A clove needs 6 to 8 weeks below about 40°F to get the signal that winter has passed. That's what tells it to split into cloves in spring. Skip the chill and you dig up a round, a single undivided bulb like a small onion. It's edible, and if you replant it next fall it will divide, but it's a wasted season. In the North the ground supplies the cold for free. From zone 8 south, gardeners fake it: seed garlic goes into the refrigerator, in a paper bag away from the fruit drawer, for 6 to 8 weeks before planting ❄️

Region also decides the type. Hardneck garlic, with the stiff central stem and the big easy-peeling cloves, wants real winters, zones 3 to 6, and throws up curly scapes in June as a bonus crop. Softneck garlic, the braidable kind that keeps until spring, suits zones 7 to 10 and the West Coast. Buy it as seed garlic from a farm or nursery rather than the grocery store, where the heads are often treated to keep them from sprouting.

Then the part on the chart:
- Break the heads apart the day you plant, not before, and keep the papery skins on each clove
- Plant the biggest outer cloves; small inner ones go to the kitchen. Big clove in, big head out
- Pointed end up, 2 inches deep in the North and 1 inch in the South, 6 inches apart
- In zones 6 and colder, 4 to 6 inches of straw mulch after planting, pulled back in spring
- Harvest in June or July when the lower third of the leaves has browned, cure two weeks in a shady airy spot, and set the biggest heads aside for planting next fall 🌱

Buy the heads this week, and let the cold do the rest 🍂