The Long Tail of Autumn

Given the size of our garden and the crops we grow, it takes several weeks for us to put the garden to bed for the season. It is important work, because anything we can do now to control weeds and build soil fertility sets the stage for spring.

This year we have had the extra challenge of the weather - it has been too nice! Although most of our plants have faded and there is less daylight, it has approached or exceeded 80 degrees on some days. As a result, we have continued to harvest green beans, peppers, kale, herbs, and raspberries. There always seems to be one crop that hangs on, so we adopt a rolling approach.

Our Assistants Helping to Mulch the Garden

The main garden beds have been shut down, and we are starting to spread leaves, grass clippings, and wood shavings to build the soil. The woven landscape fabric was a big success. As a bonus, we were able to save the fabric for reuse. We rolled it up and tagged it for next year. One last round with the string trimmer and lawn mower have been completed.

I had been stalling on pulling the pepper plants, but we finally did a last harvest, collecting baskets of peppers. The volume was a little unexpected. Because we were at a loss of what to do with them, we simply cut them up, dehydrated them, and created pepper powder. Four baskets of peppers were converted into four half-pints of powder. The plants got pulled and the bed mulched.

I also need to prune the lavender for winter, but have also been delaying this project. Because it has been warm, I do not want to prune, stimulate the plants to set new growth, only to then have the growth get killed by frost. The plants continue to produce flower spikes, which has given us a final round or two of cut flowers.

This weekend, we mucked out the chicken coop, which is always a big job. We ended up with enough manure to re-fill all of the raised beds. Because this resulted in partially covering the green beans, kale, and herbs with manure, that effectively ended their harvests. We still have to mulch the strawberry bed; the straw is staged and we are awaiting cooler weather. The raspberries are still producing, which will probably be the last bit of harvesting we have for the season. There is a final push on other projects while we have good weather, but the end is near. While we will miss the summer season, we look forward to the rest we will get, before the first snow.