Gardening in Aswan
Aswan · Sahara, Nile & Horn · hardiness zone 11a
New here? Start with the gardening introNow
26°C · Overcast
Today
34° / 23°
Soil 6 cm
33°C
First frost
Rare
Weather read at 1:29 a.m..
The garden year · Aswan
Harvest and put up
The main crop comes in faster than it can be eaten. Jars, freezer, cold room.
- Pick before frost
- Cure squash, onions, garlic
- Can, freeze, dry, ferment
- Save seed
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today
Frost rarely decides the year here, so the phases follow the calendar.
Cool-season sowing picks up as the heat breaks.
Frost watch · Aswan
No frost in the next seven days — the coldest night is 23 °C. Hardy crops carry on; anything tender that is still out is living on luck.
Coming out of the garden now
What’s ready in Aswan in October
The tender crops first — they are finished by the first hard frost — then the keepers that can wait in the ground and sweeten.
Pick before frost
TenderPeas and beansPicked Sep–OctDry beans
The crop that stores itself: leave the pods to rattle, shell them on the step, and eat them in February.
Drying · Pressure · FreezingPick, store, put up →
TenderSquash and pumpkinsPicked Sep–OctPumpkins
One kind is for the porch and one is for the pie — and the seeds from both are for the oven.
Curing · Cold storage · FreezingPick, store, put up →
TenderSquash and pumpkinsPicked Sep–OctWinter squash
Cured for ten days and kept on a cool shelf, the September harvest feeds you until March.
Curing · Cold storage · FreezingPick, store, put up →
Half-hardyTree fruitPicked Aug–OctApples
The one harvest that can feed a family until March — if you know which apples keep and which don’t.
Cold storage · Water-bath · FreezingPick, store, put up →
TenderFruiting vegetablesPicked Aug–OctHot peppers
A handful of plants gives a year of heat — dried on a string, pickled in rings, or fermented into sauce.
Drying · Pickling · FermentingPick, store, put up →
Half-hardyCabbages and kinPicked Jul–OctCauliflower
The fussiest brassica: tie the leaves over the head, cut it while it is tight, and freeze what you cannot eat.
Freezing · PicklingPick, store, put up →
The keepers — frost makes them better
HardyRootsPicked Sep–NovRutabagas
The winter root of the north — a sack of them in the cold room is December sorted.
Cold storage · FreezingPick, store, put up →
HardyRootsPicked Jul–OctBeets
Two crops in one bed — the roots for the cold room, the greens for tonight.
Pickling · Pressure · FreezingPick, store, put up →
HardyCabbages and kinPicked Jul–OctBroccoli
One big head, then weeks of side shoots — if you cut it before the buds turn yellow.
FreezingPick, store, put up →
Very hardyCabbages and kinPicked Sep–DecBrussels sprouts
Not worth picking until it has frozen a few times — then the sweetest thing left standing in November.
Cold storage · Freezing · PicklingPick, store, put up →
Very hardyRootsPicked Mar–NovParsnips
The one root that wants a hard frost before it is worth eating — and the last crop you can dig in spring.
Cold storage · FreezingPick, store, put up →
HardyCabbages and kinPicked Jul–NovCabbage
The head that keeps all winter in a cold room — and turns into sauerkraut when it will not.
Cold storage · Fermenting · FreezingPick, store, put up →
Put it up this week
Jars, freezer and cold room for what’s coming in
Tested recipes, with the processing times and the safety lines that matter. A child can wash, snap, pack and label.
- Water-bath canningtomato
Crushed tomatoes, water-bath canned
The plainest, most useful jar in the pantry: tomatoes and nothing else, ready for any sauce in February.
About 7 × 1 L (quart) jars from 10 kg (22 lb) of tomatoes; 6.4 kg (14 lb) fills 9 × 500 ml (pint) jars · 1½ hours active
The recipe → - Picklingbeet
Pickled beets
Sweet-sour beet slices with cinnamon and clove — the pickle that makes a winter plate look like something.
About 8 × 500 ml (pint) jars · 1¼ hours active
The recipe → - Picklinghot pepper
Home-style pickled jalapeños
Taqueria-style jalapeño strips with carrot and onion in a plain vinegar brine — the tested, lime-free way to put up a hot-pepper glut.
About 6 × 500 ml (pint) jars · 1 hour active
The recipe → - Picklingcarrot
Pickled carrots
Sweet-sour carrot coins with mustard and celery seed — a bright lunchbox pickle from the roots that will not all fit in the cold room.
About 4 × 500 ml (pint) jars · 45 minutes active
The recipe → - Water-bath canningapple
Applesauce, water-bath canned
Sound apples — seconds are fine once the bruises are cut away — into the easiest jar of the year; no added acid needed, and sugar optional.
About 7 × 1 L (quart) jars from 9.5 kg (21 lb) of apples; 6.1 kg (13½ lb) fills 9 × 500 ml (pint) jars · 1¼ hours active
The recipe → - Pressure canningpotato
Potatoes, cubed and pressure canned
Hot-packed cubes that go straight from jar to frying pan: the fastest home-fries you will ever make, from the potatoes that would not keep.
About 9 × 500 ml (pint) jars from 6 kg (13 lb) of potatoes, or 7 × 1 L (quart) jars from 9 kg (20 lb) · 1¼ hours active
The recipe →
The exception to “nothing to plant”
The last things to plant this year
Garlic
Cloves go in four to six weeks before the ground freezes, pointy end up, 5 cm deep, under a thick mulch of leaves. The one crop that is planted now and picked in July.
How to plant and store garlic →Spring bulbs
Tulips, daffodils, alliums and crocus want six weeks of cold before the ground locks. Plant them three times their height deep.
A cover crop
Winter rye or oats on any bed you have cleared: it holds the soil through the thaw and turns in as green manure in April. Oats winter-kill and are easier to deal with.
Writing your field guide — reading the forecast, the moon and the map…
In the garden now · October
Who else is working the garden
The insects and soil life out near Aswan, Egypt in October. Most of them are on your side — learn the few that aren't before you reach for anything.
PollinatorMar–OctHoney bee
Apis mellifera
Golden-brown, banded, furry thorax, and pollen packed onto the hind legs in visible baskets.
What it does in the garden →
BeneficialApr–OctLady beetle
Coccinellidae
The adult everyone knows; the larva is the useful one — a spiky, alligator-shaped grey-and-orange creature that looks like a pest.
What it does in the garden →
BeneficialApr–OctGround beetle
Carabidae
Shiny black or bronze, fast-running, with grooved wing covers and long legs.
What it does in the garden →Photo: Gavin Slater · CC BY 4.0
Soil lifeMar–Jun, Sep–NovEarthworm
Lumbricus terrestris
Familiar; look for the saddle-like clitellum a third of the way down a mature worm.
What it does in the garden →Photo: José Garrido · CC BY 4.0
PestApr–Jun, Sep–OctSlugs
Gastropoda
The silvery slime trail and ragged holes in the middle of leaves, not at the edges.
What it does in the garden →Photo: Casey H. Richart · CC BY 4.0
Photographs are research-grade observations from iNaturalist, each credited to its photographer. Ranges and timing are typical, not guaranteed — 87 species are covered across North America, Europe and Africa.
Behind this week's gardening
The day, the ground and the sky over Aswan
Above about 32 °C tomatoes drop their flowers and lettuce turns bitter.
- Ground beetlebest now — Running the soil surface after dark, taking slugs, cutworms and larvae. One of the best predators a garden has.
- Earthwormbest now — At the surface after dark and in wet weather, pulling leaves down into the burrow.
Overhead · Aswan, Egypt
The sky over the garden
The two clocks nothing on the ground can argue with: the length of the day, and the phase of the moon.
The sun
11h 49m of light
Sunrise
06:42
Solar noon
12:36
Sunset
18:30
A month from now the day will be 0h 39m shorter. Enough light for steady growth.
The moon
Waning Crescent
15% lit · waning · day 26 of 29.5
- Next full
- Oct 26 · 20d
- Hunter's Moon
- Next new
- Oct 10 · 4d
- Darkest nights
Planting by the moon: Last quarter to new: a resting phase — weed, prune, harvest, turn compost and prepare beds.
Anglers' solunar rating: good — the tradition says fish feed hardest in the days either side of new and full, and around moonrise and moonset. The evidence is mixed; light and weather matter more.
Turn of the season
Winter solstice
Dec 21 · 76 days away
Frost is rare here — most years see none, or a night or two at most.
Next moons
- New MoonOct 10
- First QuarterOct 18
- Full Moon · Hunter's MoonOct 26
- Last QuarterNov 1
Right now · Aswan, Egypt
Forces at work
Nothing here is a guess. Each of these is read from this week's forecast and this location's climate record, and each one is pushing the season one way or the other.
- Quiet right now
Frost
357 frost-free days
Frost is rare here. Coldest night in the next week: 22.8 °C.
The hard edge of the growing season. Ice inside a leaf ruptures its cells — one night ends a tomato and sweetens a parsnip.
- Worth watching
Soil warmth
33.1 °C
Hot soil: germination drops off above 30 °C and roots slow. Mulch, shade the row, and sow late in the day.
Seeds read soil temperature, not the calendar. Six centimetres down is where the decision gets made.
- Quiet right now
Day length
11h 49m
Losing about 1 minutes of daylight a day.
The one thing weather can't change. Plants count photoperiod to decide when to bolt, bulb, flower and go dormant.
- Worth watching
Heat units
150 GDD / 7 days
A lot of heat. Growth is fast but tomatoes drop blossom above about 32 °C and lettuce turns bitter.
Growing degree days: the running total of warmth above 10 °C. Crops and insects both run on this clock rather than on dates.
- Holding things back
Rain
0.0 mm / 7 days
Only 0.0 mm over seven days. A garden wants roughly 25 mm a week — water deeply twice rather than lightly every day.
Sets the pace for everything: germination, fungal fruiting, slug nights, and how a river runs for the next three days.
- Working for you
Pollination
7 of 7 flying days
7 good flying days ahead. Open flowers will get worked — leave a shallow water dish out and hold off on any spray until dusk.
A third of what you eat needs an insect to have visited first. Bees fly on temperature and wind, not on your schedule.
Read and watch with your kids
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