Fall Garden Clean Up

Last weekend we cleaned up the garden for fall. Even though I planned out what we should plant when for the fall garden, life got in the way and most of that did not make it into the ground. What can I say, life with an infant is hard. We did manage to plant the row cover bed though and some things are starting to sprout including some yummy oakleaf lettuce. 

We cleaned out our compost bin, mostly to try to discover what kind of critter was living in it. We're thinking chipmunk because the holes are small and it stole plastic bags from somewhere and threaded them throughout our pile like a nest. We could put out a trap for it, but it hasn't stolen any produce and if anything it has helped us out by turning our compost a bit so for now I think we're cool. Plus, you can see below how empty it is now, so we may have accidentally evicted it.

The prolific volunteer tomato soldiers on; although, it is looking rather ragged---kind of like a tomato fountain. Somehow though it still has lots of green tomatoes so it may just stay til the frost comes.

Our regular tomatoes are still producing but they are slowly petering out. Still quite a few green ones on the vines though.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the peppers are still going gangbusters as well. This has been the best pepper year we've ever had but we deserve no credit. They have flourished under our neglect (and from the spill over from our neighbor's irrigation set up).

The two basil plants I transplanted to the garden towards the end of the season have set seed (which the bees are enjoying) but otherwise they look great. We planted so many kinds of basil this year I lost track of which one this is.

We mulched our very sad raspberries which we almost killed by stupidly putting wood chips underneath them early in the season. We did not know at the time (but do now!) that woody material requires extra nitrogen to break down...which it stole from the raspberries. Sadly they did not even send out runners this year when we usually have so many we can't give them away. Time will tell if they come back next year or not. But they did set a little fruit for their second harvest (they are everbearing).

The blackberry mini-bramble is doing something, but I already nibbled all of these while I was there the other day.

Now the plot is pretty well cleaned up (if sadly empty). We sowed our winter canola cover crop in the big bed and will probably also do the tomato bed once they are done. Hopefully I can still sow some more in the covered bed and possibly in the pepper bed if those finish up soon.