Well, yesterday was the day.  We’ve been blessed with a few absolutely gorgeous days, and I just knew that if I waited any longer to put the gardens to bed that I would be out there in the cold working the dirt.  Most things were dead anyways, they just needed to be pulled.  When I saw all the tomatoes that had met the killing frost, I was amazed.  Really, those heirloom tomato plants are hardy and continue to produce and produce.  I love them!  Tomatoes attached to the vine were pulled and thrown on the refuse pile, tomatoes that fell off were hacked up with the hoe and mixed into the dirt to decompose there.

I left the two broccoli plants because they are putting out more flowerets.  I also left the chard because it’s still green for the most part, and I am hoping the plants will produce yet next year. (They’re supposed to anyways.)  All the herbs I left in for my wintering over experiment.  Of course, until it’s actually frozen I can continue to use them too.  The onions and leeks are still in the ground, as is the celery- which to me is kind of like an herb anyways.  Everything else came out- all the dead vines, dead pepper plants, and the carrots.

The carrots totally took me by surprise! I had quite a few to pick- an entire bowl full.  I’m not sure what’s going to be done with them, but something special, that’s for sure.  My garden also surprised me with a green cucumber.  How he survived I’ll never know, but when I was ripping out dead and brown cucumber vines, I found this one lone, perfect cucumber.  I also picked the last bunch of kale, which I’m hoping to use later today in a soup.   All lovely, unexpected parting gifts from my garden.

I took the time to break up all the soil except where things were planted yet, and I also mixed in a few armfuls of leaves along with the carrot tops, tomatoes, and lettuce plants.  The dirt from all my pots went in as well, adding a bit of lightness to some soil that was a little heavy to begin with.  And now the research begins.  I’ll be doing some research to see what organic fertilizers and materials I need to pick up for next year to work in.  I left my little fences up as I don’t want the soil trampled on when it is under snow, no doubt, some repairs will be in order for next spring, but I think leaving them up is the best idea.

And now the planning and thought process begins.  We have ideas for next year that we need to get down on paper, but I’m also contemplating the removal of one of the beds.  I love having all this space to garden, it’s fantastic having extra space to experiment.  But this fall we had some landscaping done around the house and lost a good deal of yard to the landscaping, leaving little room for the kids to play in.  So my oldest, most established bed may disappear to give the kids more space to play in.  We’ll see.  One of the reasons my gardens are around the shed is because that was not a majorly played in space- but with the loss of the side yard for hitting baseballs and playing catch… sigh…something may just have to change.

I’m not sure that there will be much posting here for awhile.  Maybe as ideas come to me, I’ll jot them down here.  It’s fantastic to be able to look back at my not-so-frequent posts and see my notes from the year.  I need to remember that now, for two years in a row, there’s still been garden production into November.  With a little extra work in covering plants during hard frosts, that seems to be doable with more hardy vegetables.