Work in the summer garden was slowing; the winter greens were in. Soon, I’d need room to grow onions and garlic. I was running out of bed space. I needed to fill the gaps.
Work in the summer garden was slowing; the winter greens were in. Soon, I’d need room to grow onions and garlic. I was running out of bed space, so I needed to fill the gaps.
Exhausted from shoveling two cartfuls of soil, I was a bit grumpy when finished the no-dig bed. I threw the shovel, slammed the grip of the cart to the ground. At that point, I still thought I’d be shoveling soil for multiple more beds. I didn’t look forward to the manual labor at all. Now, I get to look forward to more manual weeding instead. I prefer that, to be honest.
The soil for the bed is a mixture of wood chips, straw, and chicken poop, but well composted by the chickens. The neighbor dumped it all in a corner of their range, and they’d been digging around in it. Now, it was chicken-coop compost, and I was lucky enough to shovel two entire cartfuls onto this no-dig bed before I the plot was passed on to new owners.
When I made the bed, there was no plan for it yet. I hadn’t yet created the bed plan for next year’s garden. I’d merely seen a gap in the beds and decided to fill it. Even the soil had been a later addition to the plan. Before, I’d just covered the ground for a manually weeded bed. Now, the cardboard will stay on the grass underneath the soil and decompose there.
While the pump pumped more water from the neighbor’s land into my barrels, I added mulch to the new bed. I also used some grass clippings to mulch other beds around the garden. When I plant the new bed, I’ll have to remove the straw again, then add it back a third time.
Mulch is worth the work to move it around, though. Soon, I’d be shoveling cartful after cartful of spent bedding onto the plot for the onion and garlic beds. When I’d get the news that the plot was moving hands, I’d even have to rush this a bit. But we’ll get there.
Mulch is worth the trouble. And to my surprise, it works for a lot of crops. It even worked well for ground cover. I’d gotten a ground cover the company had literally called “Fast ground cover” in German. It grew well through a layer of straw and is now covering the bed.
This was one of the two ground cover mixtures I’d gotten for the fall. One would terminate with the first frost, the other would survive the cold and grow until terminated in spring.
The fast ground cover was indeed fast and the bed was turning from straw-brown to green. I’d planted the mixtures in many of the beds I’d terminated–even some that were still growing. I wish, I’d done known I’d be making more beds sooner. I could have used the fast ground cover to help make them.
The sun vanished behind the trees while I harvested the last tomatoes. At home, the tomatoes made a quick dinner with some garlic we’d grown. The wet spring and shaded bed had resulted in a small harvest this year.
I don’t think there were enough bulbs to begin with either. This winter, I’ll grow more and in multiple spots. We are hoping for larger bulbs as well, as the tiny bulbs are fiddly to work with.
We ate mixed tomatoes with chopped garlic and herbs many times over the summer. They became a go-to choice when tomatoes were abundant in the garden. As a simple pasta sauce, the start of a casserole, or over some roasted potatoes–they are versatile.
The next day, we ate the leftovers for lunch with some cucumber from the garden neighbor.
And then I finally installed a lock on the garden house I restored last year. It has been high time. A neighbor reporting some things moved and taken finally delivered the necessary motivation to get a locking mechanism onto the garden house door.
The sunflowers still dominated the view in the garden despite most of them having gone to seed. It has been a really good sunflower year for us. I’d even say they were our most successful crop, maybe second to the potatoes.
I’d started them on the balcony in spring, forgotten them multiple times, and neglected the heck out of them, but most seeds germinated, and most plants survived the torture.
We still haven’t decided what to do with all these sunflowers, as they were never the focus of growing these flowers. We would definitely keep some for snacks, as sunflower seeds make a delicious snack, but we would leave the rest of the decision until we knew how many seeds we’d harvested. Some would definitely be seed stock for next year’s sunflowers.
I grew sunflowers for next year’s garden. When I’d taken over, there were three stems from sunflowers the previous owner had left after her final year. They stood strong for more than a year. Beans could have grown up them without issue. I have hope.
While the Tamino and Velvet Queen variants were in full blossom, the regular sunflowers had gone to seed. I added the prettiest heads to a basket to take home–and ran out of room quickly. I harvested those that were ripest, and left a lot on the stems to harvest another day. I still had to get a second basket from the car to take them home.
Most of the sunflowers were planted at bean spacing, so closer together. But I’d also added some to the side of the path. One head grew to a ginormous size. Behind the inner florets, the seeds looked perfect.
To dry the sunflowers, we took off all the florets (both the little inner ones and the larger yellow ray florets). The whole heads were then left to dry on a shelf at home for a week or two. I also chopped off as much of leaves as possible.
Despite a harvest the day before, there were again freshly ripe tomatoes to harvest before heading home. This year has taught me a lot about growing tomatoes. I’ll adapt next year. We liked some tomato varieties a lot more than others, so we won’t grow all of them again. We will also prune differently, trellis differently, and grow tomatoes in multiple spots in the garden.
I’ll be working on bed creation this fall to fill the gaps in this garden. I’ll need all of the room.
Saving seeds for the growing seasons to come has become a normal part of harvesting and cooking. The first marigold heads had gone to seed. I saved some, so I would never have to buy fresh marigold seeds. Only one marigold had survived the spring chaos. It still produced plenty of seeds for the future.
I am excited for next year’s garden. But I have plenty of work left this year.
A week later, I returned to the garden on a chilly morning. Temperatures that night had reached 3.5 degrees, and I’d rushed to the garden to check on the crops. We were still more than a month from our average first frost date, and less than a week from the last hot days of summer. I hadn’t had frost on the horizon while sweating in 33-degree heat.
But the cold had arrived, and I had to switch gears to get the garden ready for winter. Next year’s garden would have to wait.