Putting the Garden to Bed

Saturday was a near-perfect autumnal day. I was, sadly, at work (first time in about two weeks), so I was stuck indoors. When I got home, though, the dog and I toured the yard. It's been many days since I've done that, too. I checked on the carrots, the only produce remaining in the garden, and discovered some critters had been noshing, so I figured I might as well harvest what was left.


Some of the carrots were quite robust:


A few were longer, although none would've met grocery store standards:


Hm...yellow carrots? Only had two of these.


One whole bed had been sampled, as mentioned above. Like the critters eating the apples, they took a few bites out of just about every carrot top.


Considering I didn't thin or weed the carrots (or much of the garden, for that matter) this year, I was (and still am) impressed by the size of the majority of the carrots.

Not the largest crop in the world, but enough to keep me busy for a day, scrubbing, peeling, chopping, blanching and freezing.


Sunday dawned equally nice. It was time to put the garden to bed. After all, who knew when we'd have another nice day like this? So, I pulled out posts, and tore down trellises (took down in a couple hours what took several days to put up). Then, because the weeds were overwhelming, and because I probably won't be here next summer, I opted to cover the whole thing with black plastic - take the garden back to the beginning and just kill off everything. This way the next time one goes to put in veg, it will be an easier start - bare ground and no weeds.

The new beds, on the far left, where the white row covers can just be seen, are still under production: pumpkins. Small pumpkins (Baby Pams), but should be good for pies. I'll give them a few more days to finish ripening.