2020 gardens

[oldballs]

How do you all clean up the garden at the end of the season? Invariably I have quite a few tall weeds where the potatoes and onions once grew. And then there are all those squash plants and tomato and melon and cuke vines and still producing sweet peppers. My plot is only 50 x 100. Thus I hand hoe the weeds, let them and the vines dry, rake it up in piles, then either burn it or haul it off. It is still a lot of manual labor for this old guy.

I don't like to plow that stuff in nor try to PTO till it with all that trash on top.

Cheers,
Mike

 

[Industrial Toys]

Blew out shallow water line to garden yesterday on account of frost warning.

Salvaged some Tomatoes and ate the FIRST yesterday. Not exactly tasty.

 

[herm0016]

How do you all clean up the garden at the end of the season? Invariably I have quite a few tall weeds where the potatoes and onions once grew. And then there are all those squash plants and tomato and melon and cuke vines and still producing sweet peppers. My plot is only 50 x 100. Thus I hand hoe the weeds, let them and the vines dry, rake it up in piles, then either burn it or haul it off. It is still a lot of manual labor for this old guy.

I don't like to plow that stuff in nor try to PTO till it with all that trash on top.

Cheers,
Mike

we cut down the big stuff and heap it in the compost. till the rest in. we will use a small chipper shredder and run the compost pile through that and back into the pile.

 

[cqaigy2]

Finished the sweetcorn and red shell beans, think we are done with tomatoes for now.


sauerkraut
View attachment 669733
a couple jars of dill pickles
View attachment 669734

season winding down fast here! attached pic is freeze-dried potatoes.

Those lids on your pickles and sauerkraut, look pretty interesting. Do you have a name or source for those?

 

[Sonny580]

I just mow everything down then plow it under IF the weather allows me to do so---if not it lays til spring then I till it a couple times then plant!

the ones on the pickles are "easy fermenter" and the kraut ones are "my mason makes" .--- both are sold on Amazon----also Wal-mart had an ad for them a while back,--so you might check there. Virginia got ours thru Amazon. ---May be other sources out there too.
I know the kraut tops did excellent and do actually work---the pickles were just started a couple days ago and look to be working. Beats the heck out of having to make 5-gallon crocks of something when you only need/want a small amount.

 

[Ford850]

I remove most of the vegetation in my smaller garden, but the larger one gets chopped. Then I till all garden areas light and shallow, and spread oats. They grow a few inches into early winter before freezing off and will get tilled under in the spring.

 

[Sonny580]

Trying to mud the sweet potatoes out by hand now----this is going to take forever!---8 rows 230 feet long!

 

[Ford850]

Trying to mud the sweet potatoes out by hand now----this is going to take forever!---8 rows 230 feet long!

Do you cut the tops before digging? I've heard that cutting them a day or so ahead of digging was supposed to make them store better, but I haven't noticed much difference.
I thought digging 100' of them was bad, so I can't imaging doing what you're doing and in the mud!

 

[oldballs]

Besides the skill and knowledge that you all have, and the equipment.......You guys must be a hellava lot younger than me.:laughing:

Cheers,
Mike

 

[Sonny580]

Ya we cut the vines off and try to wad them over into piles to be hauled out later and stacked in a compost pile. --- the vines here easily get 15 to 20 feet long making for a real job draggin them around.
oldballs,---- on the 28'th of October,---I turn 74! ---- IF I live that long! lol!

 

[Industrial Toys]

Weird year for apples. They seemed to be coming along great and then getting close to Harvest, there realy aren't any to be had. FROST threatening every other night.

 

[oldballs]

Sweaty gardening keep us lean and mean. But I don't mind sitting on ma azz, running a tractor to get 'er done. I'll be 88 in a couple months....if I too live that long.

I had an aunt that lived into her ninety's until they found her dead...........in the garden of course. I guess that's where that saying comes from....."From dust thou are and to dust thou shalt return".

There still are some nice Bell Peppers and Tomatoes out there........but they are coming down today. We've had a week of nice weather and another week forecast. Corn harvest has begun around here.

....well ....back to hoeing/raking weeds/etc for the clean up.

Cheers,
Mike

 

[Industrial Toys]

Cheap way to die. There is probably A SHOVEL NEARBY.

 

[oldballs]

Yeah IT..........what with the cost of hospitals, doctors, nursing homes,funeral home..........Keep that shovel nearby.....it'd be the way to go.

 

[Sonny580]

Well the cemetery that I will be buried in is only 2.5 miles from here so shouldnt cost much transportation !! LOL!!!
We didnt get any fruit of any kind this year either. the late freeze this spring killed the flowers and what few did survive didnt make anything. Got the grapes at the worst time and even killed off the leaves.--they did come back and the vines are overgrown now, so that is going to be a problem for next year probably, unless we have a hard winter!
I kinda think winter is going to be a real azz kicker here this time!----just a bad feeling I have!---no proof of it!

 

[Ford850]

We cleaned up our gardens over the weekend after the final harvests and got them all lightly tilled and planted with cover crops. Harvested the last of the peppers and tomatoes. Dug the sweet potatoes after flopping the vines to one side of the row like a bad 'comb-over'. That made it easy to roll up the vines about 50' at a time. Rolled those large 'logs' of tightly rolled up vines onto the FEL and hauled to the compost pile. Then we dug the Kenebec potatoes.
After everything was cleared, a light tilling over all areas prepped the gardens for the cover crop seed. I used oats on the gardens that will be planted next spring, since they will freeze out this winter and not interfere with early tilling. I've been prepping a couple areas for future plots to allow some rotation in a year or two. Those areas got a good seeding of winter rye. That should grow to at least 6' next year and have some good deep roots to break up the soil. Rye tends to suppress weeds too.
We had 34* Sunday morning, with a light frost, so the timing of our clean up was perfect.

 

[oosik]

It's been over 30 years since I've had a real garden out here. The competition from Mother Natures creatures is just too great. They wouldn't even share - 50/50. They wanted it all. Now I have two brick planters where I grow Acorn squash. My son's gardens didn't do well this year. No home grown tomatoes - my loss.

 

[Sonny580]

Finally got the sweet potatoes dug ---- it did finally get a bit dry on top, so I hit the rest of the rows with the skidloader using the forks to dig with,---sis picked up the potatoes and tossed them in the wagons. ---kinda made a mess in the garden, (deep ruts) but hope to subsoil 3' deep before fall plowing if weather holds up!

 

[Ford850]

It's so dry here it's hard to remember what mud looks like. I don't think we've had a drop of rain since Labor day, but it was nice to have dry weather to clean out the garden and get it prepped for winter. It's supposed to shower this evening which should get the rye and oats to germinate.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

How do you all clean up the garden at the end of the season? I don't like to plow that stuff in nor try to PTO till it with all that trash on top.
Cheers,
Mike

Rotary cut it down, then till it all under.

It works perfectly here in my gardens...

SR