Leaves, leaves and more leaves.

One of the mainstays of my gardening routine is the annual fall collection of leaves.  It affords me time to get outside, get some exercise and collect one of the most important ingredients for my composting.  Last Saturday, our region was hit by some really heavy winds which meant a good portion of the leaves that were still on my tree were blown to other yards and even over my house. When I looked at my tree after the storms, it seemed mother nature threw me a huge curve ball by stripping away a larger percentage of the leaves from my tree than I even imagined.
Nonetheless, I went out yesterday to recover the leaves that were piling up in my back yard.  Much to my surprise, it seems that I was still left with a sizeable amount of leaves.  When all was said and done, as seen in the picture below, I was able to get 6 heavy duty bags of leaves collected.

  

Not a bad haul given the loss from the storms.  I will take these back behind my garage and let them sit in place during winter.  They should decompose a bit during this time.  If my neighbors do put their leaves on the curb for pickup, I may take a bag or two to augment my supply.  These are such a great additive to you compost that it seems such a waste to see them thrown away.

On another note, I checked in to my mini winter garden to see the progress.  As seen below, so far so good!

The lettuce and spinach are doing quite well while the carrots are slowly maturing.  All the plants seem to be on schedule.  We have had several freezes and temperatures in the 30's and the plants seem quite robust given these conditions.  Of course, the telling factor will be when we get into winter weather.  My hope is that the plants will grow to a point where I can cover them with compost thereby adding a little more protection to get them through the winter.  The lettuce probably will not make it through this.  It was a gamble that, to date, has paid off.  I am told that carrots and spinach that have been exposed to colder temps taste better.  We shall see.  And as I have said, this is an experiment that I undertook just to stay active in the garden.  I will have to water them today which should get them through the week.  Winter gardening requires much less work than summer ones.  

Well, that's all for now.  Hope you are enjoying whatever gardening you are doing.  Happy gardening everyone!     

A lot has been happening.....

Even though I have not posted for awhile, all due to a very busy few months, I have been quite active in both getting the garden set for winter and experimenting with winter gardening.  I hope that everything settles down to a point where I can post more often.

Most people shut their gardens down after the typical season is over and stop all activity after removing all the dead plants.  There is nothing wrong with that.  That was what I typically did every year.  But after seeing a plateau in both the quality and quantity of production in my gardens, I did research on how to improve the soil.  I soon realized the value of using cover crops in my garden beds.  I have written about this in previous posts but I certainly believe it bears another mention.

Cover crops can be a whole array of plants that you grow in your beds that will add structure and nutrients to your garden.  They can be planted any time of the year but I do it at the end of the planting cycle.  I have settled into a pattern of growing winter rye every year.  Winter Rye grows well into early winter and remains quite vibrant throughout.  I was a little delayed in getting it started this year but it has done pretty well given it's late start.  As can be seen in the picture below, it is filling in pretty well.  If I had been able to start it earlier, the growth would have been much more robust.  A reminder that in gardening, it's about the timing.

This will suffice though as it will continue to grow over the winter season.  It will prevent soil erosion, give me a green manure that I can cut in the Spring and the roots will supply structure and nutrients over the next growing season.  

While the rest of the garden is on auto pilot, I decided to experiment with growing cold weather crops in a structure.  It has it's challenges for sure.  In the mid-atlantic area, we get some pretty cold temps and snow during the December through February period.  So, I have decided to utilize the structure as seen below.  

By itself, it will not offer enough protection for the whole season.  While I am not an expert, I am going to use a multiple layer approach to see if it will work.  I have no illusions that I will get robust crops on my first attempt.  As I said earlier, this is an experiment.  But, any crop I do get, will be a bonus.  

So, here is a chronological look at where I am at this point in time.

I planted the crops about 3 weeks ago and they have grown as seen in this above photo I took Saturday.  I have various lettuces in the first set of rows with spinach in the middle set and in the far row I have onions, carrots and La Rosa lettuce.  

Temps have been dropping steadily lately and we are under a frost warning tonight.  So, this morning, I went out and added layers to move my effective zone up probably 2-3 levels.  From my guess, this is now probably at a zone 9-10 area.  That supposedly will get me to lower Georgia or northern Florida zones.  

I first put a layer of vegetable spun fiber over the crops inside the structure.  I put in sticks and then pinned the fabric down on the ends so it would be taut.  The fabric does not touch the plants that way. Then, I took some UV heavy duty plastic and put it over the structure itself as seen below. 

This should allow the air inside to warm up during the day and slowly cool off during the night. Again, no assurances this will work but I think it gives me a fairly decent chance. 

I am also doing the last of composting that can be achieved.  I cut my front lawn for what I hope is the last time.  In doing so, I cut it very low which produced a pretty large amount of clippings.  I collect the last cuttings of the season as I believe they do not decompose fully and thus can cause various issues in the Spring.  So, here is the final collection.

Given they were very wet when I cut them, I am going to let them sit out overnight to dry.  This insures that there will not be any ammonia smell due to their fresh state.  Once dried, I will use them in each of the three composters I have.  This will add bulk and allow me to add leaves to get one last burst before the real cold weather hits.
Another facet of the year end gardening around here is rounding up of leaves that are currently falling.  As seen below, I get a pretty good supply from my tree.  I do have to augment it by picking up my neighbors leaves.  I've even been known to stop on my way to or from work and pick up a few bags.  It always has amazed me that people don't use this free source of nutrients in place of the artificially produce fertilizers that they do use.  I really have no issue with grabbing the bags regardless of what people may think.  I can't seriously remember the last time I bought any soil for my garden.  It makes sense to me both monetarily and environmentally.

Well, that sums up the activities in the garden at my house.  Hopefully you are enjoying the last of the season and are doing your necessary prep work for a great start to your garden season next year. Until next time, Happy Gardening everyone!