Finally Ready for Winter

November 3.

With autumn winding down, and the nip of winter on our faces, we headed out to my raised garden beds one last time, to finish the job of getting everything ready for the cold and snow.

The preview:

We purchase a $10 bale of straw from the landscape supply company down the street.  This will be used to cover our strawberry plants, to protect them through the winter.  The straw isn't seedless, so we end up pulling little plants in the spring, but the pulling is easy and the price is right.

We simply take handfuls and spread it nice and thick over the strawberry plants.  I can already tell those plants will have to be thinned next year--they've crept out of their bed, big time!

Now that the strawberry beds are covered, Thomas gets to work on the garlic beds.  We added some organic fertilizer to the soil to help the garlic along next spring, and then I had Thomas plant the garlic seeds.

Below are the seeds we planted.  They were taken from the garlic heads that, if left alone, will flower.  They'll eventually drop those seeds for re-seeding, but I snip them off when I harvest the garlic in July, and let them dry the rest of the summer.  October is the ideal month in which to plant them for the following year's crop, but we're a little late this year.  As usual!

Joseph got busy raking up and mashing leaves down into yard waste bags, which go at our curb for garbage day pickup.  We used to not have to rake at all, but the trees on the other side of our fence have gotten big, and we have a couple of now-nice-sized trees back here.

Joseph gets the last of the leaves in the walkway.

I have one last herb to harvest--my parsley.  It's hardy, and withstood the colder October temperatures, but I really needed to dig it out today!

No more parsley in the garden.

Back to the strawberry beds.  I use plastic netting designed to keep birds out of things, and we simply staple it down to the wood walls of the raised beds.  This helps keep the straw in place so it doesn't blow all over the neighbor's my yard.

The final overview of my winter garden:

She goes to sleep, dormant all winter through the cold and snow, while I dream of tomatoes and peppers, sweet spring strawberries and fragrant fresh herbs.  Already I can't wait for next year!


Back to life,
Christine

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