Putting the Garden to Bed

It’s been a strange autumn. We had a frost in early October then a snow storm and then 70 degree weather again. Then the weekends were rainy. So, it took me quite some time to actually put the garden in order for the winter.

The first hard frost was enough to kill nearly everything in the garden but it was a couple weeks before I could get in to clean up everything. It is always a bit sad to see everything suddenly brown when just a day earlier it was all brilliant and green. But it’s also nice to know that the growing season is done and it time for the next step.

I like to pull out all the dead plants in the fall. Some people let them stand and then till them into the soil in the spring. I like the look of a cleaned up garden bed so I pull everything out. Some of the dead plants I put into the compost bin. Some I leave on the beds. I don’t really have a scientific process for this. It just depends on what I feel like that day. For example, the eggplants, though they barely produced any fruit, set out deep roots. When I pulled the plants, a lot of soil came with them. So, I decided to leave the plants lying in the garden bed so I can shake some more soil off of them in the spring. The tomatoes, I removed to the brush heap in the back. Toward the end of the season the leaves got brown and spotty so I don’t want the plants lying on the soil. Similarly, when the fungus hit my chard and beets mid-season, I put the infected leaves out back. The lettuce, when I finally pull it will go into the compost bin.

Even as I type this, just days before Thanksgiving, the lettuce is still going strong. I was going to tear it out two weekends ago when I took care of the rest of the plants but a honey bee was working over the tiny lettuce flowers. The weather was so hot after I planted the second round of seeds that the lettuce came up bitter. But the plants looked nice so I just let them grow. Now I am pleased that there was something there for the little pollinators to work on later into the season.

Lettuce flowers

The strawberries got their straw and the asparagus got a good thick layer of maple leaves. Conveniently, there are a couple of maple trees near the garden so I just had to rake some leaves over and toss them over the garden fence. And even though it has been quite windy at time since I put the leaves down, the combination of the raised bed and the fact that it has fencing along two sides has kept the leaves in place.

Shh, the asparagus is sleeping.

So, for the most part, the garden is ready for its long winter’s nap.

And here are a few autumnal photos from around the yard.