Last Harvest

Today, 4th of December, the last edible plants, and stalks were pulled from our garden. It was nearly freezing here last night and tonight is going to freeze, weather forecast is calling for snow, but I doubt it. It is, however, safe to say the pepper flowers are not going to turn into veggies any more. We picked two beautiful peppers, and pulled up twelve plants. they will be set aside to dry and be used in the compost later, in the winter. Overall the pepper crop this year was less than plentiful, but satisfactory. We were not able to make stir fries very night, or jar any peppers or hot sauce, but there were enough for salads and sides with dinner.

Everything was pulled today, plants, flowers, lettuce. We gathered leaves from our neighbors, and incorporated them into the soil for some mulch. A little fertilizer for the spring time as they decompose during the winter. We gatherer some more leaves and put them aside for the use in the compost bin later (I say "we", although I did very little of this physical labor, Annie and Saylor were responsible for most of this).




We also had four different kinds of lettuce growing in the garden since early Fall. Three were too bitter to eat, but one variety is very flavorful and will be the final crop we grew that will end up on the table this season. Some people grow lettuce in green houses outside all year round, but we just came back from many weeks of traveling and there was no time to build the little green guys a home before the freezing weather. So I guess we'll have to have lots of fresh salads this week.

Yes, there are some more plants like basil, and lettuce that will grow on our window sill through the winter, but as far as the out-door garden goes, this is it for 2010.

Coming up:

Composting, pickling, late season planting experiment, backyard garden design, masonry heating units, green house designs, cob construction.