Garden Shutdown

 Chilly but sunny, this past weekend was perfect for some yardwork, as in closing down the garden for the season. We've already had a few mornings of frost, so the tomatoes are done anyway. Most of the trees around us have yet to drop their leaves, though, so that other big cleanup awaits.

We emptied the rain barrels and turned them upside down for the winter. They were both full, but we have little watering to do now. We used several gallons to give our perennials the scraggliest patches of lawn one last soak, and set some aside for the indoor plants, but most of it went into the street, to the storm sewers, where rain water naturally goes when you're not catching as much of it as you can.

We emptied the container garden -- the cut tin troughs of herbs, the large pots of tomatoes, the smaller pots of ornamentals. I have uprooted and potted two begonias to try to overwinter them indoors. If you know me, I am notoriously deadly to flowering houseplants... we'll see.

We also needed to make room in the compost bin for winter's kitchen scraps. I did my best to pull out all the "unfinished" compost, that is, the still-identifiable plant matter -- grass clippings, corn husks, dog fur from the vacuum, recently tossed romaine cores. You know, all the stuff that hasn't broken down all the way. I piled it onto a tarp so I could put back the bin later. 

For now, what we wanted was the stuff filling the bottom half of our bin, the rich, dark compost that looks quite like potting soil. It's full of worms, too. Nice, healthy food for the garden.

So, we spread this finished (or near finished) compost around our fruit trees, hostas, perennial flowers and herbs, strawberries, raspberries, onions, and rhubarb. My hope is that it will sit there on top and then, as the snow melts in the spring, it will slowly leech its way into the soil and provide a boost of nutrients to these plants' roots. Meanwhile, all the unfinished compost goes back into the bin, but now there is room for some of those fall leaves and a winter's worth of kitchen scraps before we stir it again in the spring.

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