Two glorious days of Indian Summer made the garden part of our winterization list move along very quickly this week. I yanked out the big weeds between the oilseed radishes in the forest garden, where I'd mounded up the earth and tossed down cover-crop seeds without any sort of kill mulch to maintain my cover-crop monoculture. In the process, I found one last hazelnut, plus a half-ripe butternut that the goats greatly enjoyed.

Next stop was the back garden, where I yanked out all of the dying tomatoes along with their stakes. Despite lack of a killing frost, I'd actually stopped picking tomatoes a couple of weeks ago when cold weather turned the offerings insipid. But as I worked Monday, I stumbled across a cache of about ten fruits that were ripe red and luscious. A nice treat!

Meanwhile, I enjoyed the way the oats had filled in between the tomatoes and formed a near-solid sea of green. A much more pleasant view than the dwindling tomato plants!

Finally, Kayla and I got to work on the active mule garden, where kale, mustard, lettuce, garlic, tatsoi, tokyo bekana, Swiss chard, peas, parsley, and strawberries are all still hard at work. I'll need at least one more day of pretty weather to bring this zone into line --- maybe I can squeeze that in before the forecast snow this weekend?

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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