Fall Cleanup Starts

Yesterday I was very busy in the garden. I decided it was clean up day. I was going to do this over the holiday, but I kept going for hikes and came back too tired to even think about cleaning up the garden.

The first chore was to weed the fruit garden. The weeds were starting to take over and the crab grass was going to seed. Whoops! I saw a very bad weed that made me bring out the gloves to dispose of it - poison ivy. I had a little seedling pop up in the middle of the Dutch clover. The clover is also a weed, but I let it grow. I wish it would shade out the all the other weeds, but it doesn't seem up to the task.

The next chore was the patio. It was covered in debris from my trees. I'd been putting this off for months. I get annoyed with it all every time it rains because it turns to mush. The Autumn rains look they might start soon so I swept it all up.

Then it was off to the vegetable garden. I picked off all the dried beans; got some more dill seed; and did a good search on the lettuce plants for little seed puffs. I wanted all of the dried things off before any rain started. The forecast is for very cloudy weather for the next four days. We may or may not get rain, but if we do everything will stay wet because of the lack of sun. This is bad for things that need to be dried.

Katydid that jumped into my harvest bowl

I noticed that three of the bean poles had all the bean picked off so I removed the plants and poles from the garden.

The next chore was to take down my dying tomato plants. I swear the Sungolds and the two black cherry varieties will just keep out growing the late blight on their leaves, but their stems were starting to get infected. The only way to keep the spores out of the air is to get rid of them. So that is what I did. I cut their stems up into little tiny bits and buried them under the tomato patch. I do this with my tomatoes every year. I never compost tomatoes, but I bury the waste in the garden where they grew that year.

Before the tomatoes were removed.

After. A garden without tomatoes. How sad.

I wanted to empty the potato bin out too. The plants were cut down two weeks ago. We have had mostly dry weather. Nice potato curing weather. Notice how I'm being optimistic about having potatoes under the bin? Yup I'm still holding out hope. I hope that Kennebecs don't like bins and only set the potatoes in the level that they are planted. Sadly it was time to go in to make dinner. Actually it was past time to go in to make dinner. So the potatoes will have to wait. I'm hoping for mostly dry weather for a while yet to keep those potatoes dry, but probalby not. I'm busy today, but maybe on Thursday I'll have some time to dig them out.