Monday, October 6, 2014

Fall Cleaning

Okay, It's sideways, I know, and I don't know how to fix that, but it's still pretty gosh darned cute...



Anyway...Fall cleaning.

There's spring cleaning, which involves scrubbing down the baseboards in the back of every closet in the house, washing out the bowls on any tall lamps, washing walls, going through and purging your wardrobe...but lately I've embarked on fall cleaning. This is new to me.

There's nothing to do indoors, really, but the list of things that need done outside are just endless! However, I feel like this might be why I'm not minding the transition to winter so much this year. I feel all pioneer-y, actually having to get the house ready for colder weather, and it's kind of fun. Yes, I know, this won't last too crazy long, but I'm enjoying it while the inclination is here.

This weekend I've been getting back to work in the garden. It's been lying dormant, more or less, for quite a while, as the melons went kaput, the tomatoes are covered in blossom rot, the potatoes and carrots are dug, and the beans didn't really produce well (that's what I get for buying them last minute at a hardware store). But now comes the time to rip everything out, which, despite the fact that I've been nourishing this garden with my own sweat and blood since April, is incredibly satisfying.

I've ended up with roughly three laundry baskets full of corn.
Holy moly. The crazy thing is that there would have been about
twice that, had our growing season been two weeks longer.


Why is it that cleaning tends to make a huge mess first, though? The piles of corn stalks were absolutely massive, and because of my astounding lack of forethought, I had to move both of these piles over the back fence, rather than just doing it as I pulled them up.


 Aaaand this is where my tomato plants used to reside. In the ground that's all covered in weeds...I was using the pop bottles as a deep watering system, but it didn't work to terrifically. I'm gonna need to go dig those up soon.

These are the only salvageable tomatoes from my eleven plants
this year. Blossom rot is a bummer. I'll be doing some research
on that this winter, to see if I can't get them to do a little better
next summer.


This is the pile of plants now waiting for a compost bin to be built.


Oh! And here's what was supposed to be my raised bed of strawberries! Yeah, that didn't happen. Gonna try again next year, though, since we're almost for sure going to be here another two growing seasons. That means I'll actually get to reap some of the benefits!


Just 2/3rds of one row of potatoes to dig, and then I'm all wrapped up for the season, if I skip out on the fall weeding this year (which is probable).


My poor, sad, lonely, empty looking garden. 

I gotta go start sketching out plans for next year!

3 comments:

  1. That is so adorable! I wonder what it is about phones that little kids like so much.

    You might want to research this a bit, but I think I've read that blossom end rot is a fungus and therefore, you don't want it in your compost. Or even in your garden (i.e. leaving the tomatoes to rot on the ground).

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  2. That video is so cute and your yard actually looks quite lovely to me

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  3. Blossom end rot is caused by uneven watering. Maybe it dried out a little too much between waterings at times. I've never composted my tomatoes because without fail they end up with some kind of fungus or disease.

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