Pea Box

Took advantage of the nice weather we have been having this week and emptied out the pea box.  All of the dirt was placed in the top bed to raise it a little more.  The box was placed there in the summer to cover up the sinkhole in the yard as well as a place to test out growing asparagus peas.  The peas grew pretty well and lasted well into November until we had a couple really heavy frosts.  There really isn’t that much left that I can do out in the garden, so now just going to be cleaning stuff up.  The sink hole is going to be filled with sand from last winter as well as ashes all winter long and in the spring if it still isn’t filled, we will have to collapse it completely and fill it in.

Pea Cleanup

I tore out all of the peas from the middle bed this afternoon and then worked up that soil.  I was going to leave them there but the trellis started to collapse a little bit so I decided to just tear it out.  I also emptied out the pepper box so it can go inside for storage this winter.  Because of the varathane and pain on it I want to keep it as nice as possible which means the less the elements hit it the better.

 

More Leaves

I headed back into the cottage for a couple of hours this afternoon to get more leaves.  Between my father and me we ended up gathering 3 barrels and 14 full bags of leaves.  So far all the leaves have come from the front lawn, there is still part of the front lawn left and all of the back  which I would estimate to be 30 bags.

Paths Mulched

All the leaves I picked up the other day were spread on the paths in the asparagus bed as well as the bottom bed.  In the middle bed I don’t have the paths defined yet and wont until the spring.  Some of the leaves that I am saving until next year will be used as mulch for that path.   I also spread a 6 inch layer of leaves over top of the rhubarb.  They worked well last year but I didn’t have any leaves to follow up after the initial ones decomposed, something that I am hoping to fix this year.

Cottage

It was another great day outside so headed back into the cottage to pick up a few more barrels of leaves to spread on the remaining paths as well as the rhubarb at home.  None of these leaves were chopped and some of them were maple leaves so they should last longer than the ones I used last year.

Blacksmith Shop

Not garden related but we have started to clean out the blacksmith shop.  The last time any sort of cleanup of this magnitude took place was before the garage shut down and that was 17 years ago.

Barnyard Garlic Mulched

Using the 3 barrels that I filled up last night I mulched the garlic at the barnyard garden.  It took me about 45 minutes to get the leaves out of the truck and spread evenly over everything.  I used a full barrel on each half of the garlic and the third one on the path.  I will bring more leaves for the path next year as they start to break down.

Raking Leaves

Spend some time at the cottage filling up barrels with chopped leaves.  These are the first ones that I’ve gotten this year but defiantly won’t be the last.  I like using the barrels for leaves that I am just going to reuse right away because I can compact them pretty tight in the barrel and when they come out of the barrel they don’t blow away as easily.

Mulched

I have been waiting for some cold weather before I mulched the garlic and the asparagus to reduce the chances of mice or other rodents making a home in it.  Last week was all in the negatives and it feels like winter is going to start coming, so I decided this was a good opportunity to put down the mulch.  I have a few barrels as well as a couple bushels of straw I collected in the summer.  The garlic received approximately 4-6” of straw loosely spread over top of it.    When mulching the bottom garlic bed I noticed that the red Russian and Gaia’s joy had both started to sprout.  It is kind of surprising but then again it does get full sun and it has been wet and warm since they were planted.

 

Using the remaining straw I mulched the top asparagus bed lightly.  Because most of it is new crowns, I'm going to spread some leaves on top later for a little extra protection.

 

After mulching I raked up the neighbors leaves from her maple tree to use on my pathways.  I ended up filling 4 bags of leaves and the remaining leaves were spread in the corner garlic bed.  I wanted to use these leaves as opposed to some I might get from the cottage or pick up on the side of the road because I know that they are clean, and don’t have any garbage or pesticides mixed in.  The ones I bagged I'm setting aside to use next summer as the existing leaves as compressed and deteriorate.