more winterizing

with employment, such as it is, over for the day i traveled out to the garden on campus...where by the by, i met with an actual member of the community surrounding the garden who shook my hand and thanked me for the garden which she had clearly been utilizing ( the collards drew special praise ) i assured her sh was welcome and encouraged her to utilize what was left ( collards, tomatoes, peppers ) until the season collapses...at least in terms of harvestable produce...i am working on extending the season in my bed in an effort at year-round function...

i put a shovel in the bed of my truck before i left home this morning which made removing the rest of the maize roots much easier...

after i turned, hoed, and leveled the newly opened bed i broadcast more hare red winter wheat...

then i raked it in to about a quarter inch in depth...

and i doused the whole bed with a good soaking to get them going...

possibly not the best of photos, however there are sprouts up among the seed i planted sunday so hopefully things will move along smoothly...

there are deepening signs of autumn everywhere...i count twenty ripening asparagus "berries" still on the plants...

and down the row the beds are dying back...

there's still life out there yet though...plant...

and insect ( the picnicing squirrels seem to have vanished with the maize ) this will go on a while longer...then things will quiet down...still...we aren't nearly finished.

basement sunday I-holy chit

went rummaging around in the basement potato bin and found that some of the spuds are still wintering over just fine ( top photo )...on closer inspection i found that some are not ( second photo ) the ollala in the third photo is indicative of the state i found some in...the early blue in the fourth photo too...sprouts and roots everywhere you care to look...so...off to the garden center for peat pots and potting soil to preserve the tubers that are shriveling...i separated them by varieties, six in all, early blue, all red, red pontiac, german butterball, ollala, and yukon gold...made plant markers for each and took them downstairs to pot them...more on that in the next post down.

garlic III

twenty-five days after parker and i planted...and two days after my last visit, when none was visible, garlic has erupted in both beds it was planted in...this tells me a few things...first the seed garlic i bought is viable ( not that i had expected it wouldn't be )...second, we have root systems developing and being fed that will give us a jump start on spring...third, this growth is pretty much doomed to die back with the first hard frost...fourth, we will be mulching the beds heavily with straw...at least six inches deep...and fifth, we have provided the plants with a suitable environment...they should be fine...garlic is cold hardy and well mulched will be fine over winter even if it gets quite cold...all the garlic we planted in the old garden in fall 2013 came through last winter ( as well as all that i planted in my back yard ) and temperatures reached minus sixteen degrees ( fahrenheit ) and were below zero more than a few days...this is one more plant set to over winter in the garden along with the winter rye, winter vetch, alfalfa, new zealand white clover and the hard as nails jerusalem artichokes...gotta love a perennial ( yes garlic can be grown as a perennial... http://www.onestrawrevolution.net/One_Straw_Revolution/Article_Garlic_Plant_Once.html )