Putting It To Bed

 

Not sure why I didn't post this sooner but better late than never I guess. Or more specifically, better this than nothing which is where I am at in creating posts right now. 

Earlier in the fall I had lightly tilled up the garden where our spring and summer vegetables had grown. I left the fall things like okra and eggplant alone because they would produce up until the first frost. Unfortunately, I was lazy and didn't put the fence up around them thinking the deer couldn't reach the okra which was by then probably close to 10 feet tall and they didn't seem to touch the eggplant. I was wrong.

The deer indeed couldn't reach the okra but they stripped off the lower leaves. When those were gone they chewed and rubbed the lower stalks until weakened, they fell over and then they ate the upper leaves. They never touched the okra though but killed the plants. When there was nothing else to eat in our garden, they finally decided to eat the eggplant. 

All of this is really an aside to say that a week ago, I lightly tilled up the rest of the garden to break up the mulch to help it decompose into the soil better and allow me to plant the garden a bit earlier in the spring when it dries up a bit sooner. I then deeply tilled a swath up next to the raised strawberry bed on the right side of the garden and planted my saved bulbs of garlic for next year's crop. Then deer being deer, I put up the fence to enclose both the strawberries and the garlic until next spring when I will once again extend it around the entire garden and hook it up to electricity again.

That concludes my gardening for the season. I also coiled up all the various water hoses and put them in the greenhouse for the winter and got it winterized too. I put fuel stabilizer in the tiller and put the cover over it so there is nothing really to do with the garden except watch snow pile up on it and peruse seed catalogs to dream about next spring. The outside work is not yet quite done so I will still probably use the lawnmower to mulch up leaves, weather permitting. Last year we had such a wet leaf falling season I didn't get any of them mulched. 

One more item of note is that my asparagus bed has fair signs of life. Earlier in the spring I worried that much of it had died off but there are a fair number of fern like asparagus fronds that the deer haven't eaten since they had access to our garden. Next spring will be the first year we are supposed to be able to pick any asparagus and I can't wait!