When the growing season is nearing the end:
Well... it's starting to be that time around here! There isn't much left to harvest in the garden, thoughts of prepping for next year are already taking shape, and yet the corn is finally coming!
Our cucumbers have been done a while. I'm not sure if it was due to the drought we had, or it's just timing... the leaves slowly turned brown, one by one, and that was it. The same kind of thing happened to the potimarron, though it's slowly coming back. There are a few flowers on it, and we'll see what happens there, I think it's too late in the season for new growth.
I forgot to take any photos before getting on the plane!!! Here's the one I took of a small harvest a coiple days ago:
Besides the corn coming out now, we have a yellow pepper (with a couple more on the way), the swiss chard is growing slower than it was, but it's still growing, the tomatoes are on their way out, but they were plentiful, and we harvested lots of seeds. The cherry tomatoes are still going too.
Talking about seeds, I was able to collect a bout half a cup of broccoli seeds, and already made one batch of delicious sprouts! The broccoli that actually gave us a nice head, has fruited again, that was a nice surprise.
What else...? Oh yes, so we had a few eggplants through the season, and it looks like we might have another round. The plant started to flower again too!
I have to take more photos, and after vacation, I think I'll have to make a photo update.
Prepare the soil for next year, now:
There's a whole thing I wanna do to the garden beds to prepare, and nourish the soil through the winter months.
It's a really pretty simple technique that helps with the population of good bacteria, worms and defrosting faster once spring pops up again.
The first thing we should think of is, cutting whatever is growing down to the ground. We don't pull the roots 'cause they'll decompose, and become food for the soil.
Than it's just about covering the ground (or the beds in our case) with different layers of organic material. We start with all the vegetation we cut in the first step, then we move one to chopped leaves. That can be done by running a lawn mower over a pile of leaves, filling a garbage pale a 1/4 of the way and running a weed wacker (string trimmer) through it all. And yes you can use oak leaves too, as long as they're well shredded, they'll decompose very fast too.
The next layer we put on for cover is a couple inches of wood chips. At this point we cover the whole thing with pre-made compost from last year, and finish it off with a black plastic layer.
I can already hear all the naysayers about using plastic in an organic garden!!! But the stuff is reusable for many years, and it really does work wonders in terms of keeping everything contained, and warmer for the winter.
Use the winter months to your advantage, it'll give your garden a head start!!!
| Hive | Presearch | Odysee | Minds | Hipcamp |
Find me on Social Media:
LBRY: https://lbry.tv/$/invite/@MugwortExpress:5
Odysee: https://odysee.com/$/invite/@MugwortExpress:5
Minds: https://www.minds.com/register?referrer=NoMansLand
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the people( @senorcoconut ) sharing the post on Twitter as long as they are registered with @poshtoken. Sign up at https://hiveposh.com.
Thank you for sharing this amazing post on HIVE!
Your content got selected by our fellow curator @tibfox & you just received a little thank you via an upvote from our non-profit curation initiative!
You will be featured in one of our recurring curation compilations and on our pinterest boards! Both are aiming to offer you a stage to widen your audience within and outside of the DIY scene of hive.
Join the official DIYHub community on HIVE and show us more of your amazing work and feel free to connect with us and other DIYers via our discord server: https://discord.gg/mY5uCfQ !
If you want to support our goal to motivate other DIY/art/music/homesteading/... creators just delegate to us and earn 100% of your curation rewards!
Stay creative & hive on!
Thanks very much!!
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I don't mind the plastic mulch either, plus it really works. We use it at the farm because regular weeding and frequent watering is not a priority on a bigger scale.
Yeah that makes sense. I recently realized, the farm we go to for our csa doesn't wayer their crops at all!!! Or weed.
Congratulations @senorcoconut! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s):
Your next target is to reach 95000 upvotes.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!
Check out the last post from @hivebuzz:
Support the HiveBuzz project. Vote for our proposal!
Thank you @plantpoweronhive!!!!!!!
Covering the soil for winter is so good. We can plant all year here, mainly greens, but I always cover mist of the beds with mulch.
I must save bricooli seeds this year! Never thought of doing my own broccoli sprouts! Brilliant.
Make sprouts, collect the seeds for sure. You've seen how many seed pods these plants make!!! There's like a dozen little seeds at least in each one of em.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Brilliant. I leave them to flower for the bees so I may as well keep em going!
Haha I do the same with our grass... I let all the dandelions, clovers, and other ground flowers be a while so the bees can have at it!!!
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
That's a sign of a good human being!!!! xx
Ah thanks River!!!
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta