October 17th, 2005 - Garden down for the winter; flower garden in for the winter
Over the weekend, I finished up the garden. The primary task was to pull carrots. I was sorely disappointed (and am again now because I forgot about them yesterday and today for snacks!) because they were so small. I planted two types–Thumbelinas were supposed to be small, but the others were regular carrots. And not a single one is longer than 4 or 5 inches! They are regular size around, at least. I had brought out a 5-gallon pail for them…and they fit in the little sand bucket I had for the Thumbelinas. With plenty of room to spare. I had meant to store them for the winter, but there’s little point. I’ll just snack on them this week and dry a few this weekend (as a test to see if I want to do it with more next year).
I also pulled the rest of the plants that hadn’t produced much of anything–peppers, squash, and cabbage. I left the ground cherries just in case a few more would develop enough to reseed. And finally, I planted the garlic. I purchased some Music pink garlic from Seeds of Change, my first organic/open pollinated purchase for the garden! woohoo! The cloves are enormous, compared to what I’m used to from a store. I just hope I planted them deep enough–directions say 1-2″, but the cloves were over an inch long themselves! They also took up a lot of room. I sure hope they grow; we’ll have plenty of garlic for next summer/winter if they do!
And I finished the front flower garden, in between the front walk and the driveway, about a 9×12 area. Eric dug up most of the grass a couple weeks ago, but the bulbs hadn’t arrived so we delayed finishing it. Well, they arrived last week, so I dug in and got the rest of the grass out and laid out my flagstone border. Then I went to Menards to get some bone meal (for under them) and wood chips (for over them)…and decided to pick up a few more bulbs on sale. From Breck’s I’d gotten alium, mixed tulips, and crocus. At Menard’s, I got more tulips (all red–no mixeds were left) and Puschkinia (never heard of them before, but thought they’d go well with the crocus). As I got started, I counted the number of bulbs I had–I had over 100 holes to dig! Amazingly, it didn’t take me as long as I’d thought it would. Later, I planted iris (from Breck’s) on the other side of the stairs. I’m really looking forward to a flower garden next spring! (By the way, this was quite far from simple and inexpensive. I spent nearly $90 just on the flagstones, and over $50 on the flowers. But I plan to enjoy the flowers and the stones for many, many years.)