Alternatively, you can harvest each green tomato, wrap them in newspaper and store them as a single layer in your basement or any cool, dry spot. When you want to ripen them quickly, bring them up to your kitchen and they should turn colour quite rapidly. Keep checking the stored ones and throw out any rotting fruit.
Winter squash can also be brought in now. To test if they are ready to store, try digging your thumbnail into the skin. If it makes a mark, the squash is not ripe and should not be eaten first. If the skin is nice and thick and does not give in to the thumbnail test, bring it inside.
I rub down my winter squash with a 10% solution of bleach in order to kill off any surface rot organisms. If your kitchen is fairly warm and active, the squash can be left here to cure for a couple of weeks and then placed into storage in a cool, dry place. The best temperature for storage is 50-60 F. Last year, I found my buttercup squash was the first to begin rotting so I generally try to finish those off first. I love butternuts so they never last long in storage but for some reason, my spaghetti squash seems to last forever!
With the tomatoes out of the garden, I can clean up the area they were in, amend the soil with compost or my own mix of organic fertilizer*, and plant my garlic. Only break apart garlic cloves just before plannnting and try to leave as much skin on the cloves when you break them apart. The outer cloves produce the largest bulbs while the small inner cloves are best used for cooking. The usual spacing for planting is 5 inches apart and 2 inches deep. Elephant garlic, however, should be given twice this much space.
Even though I love the hot taste of the Rocambole types of garlic, they don't store well so I grow more silverskin, soft-neck types. If you'd like to experiment, try getting garlic from a specialty grower. Dan Jason, from Salt Spring Island, carries at least 40 different varieties!
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