Today in the Garden

Today in the garden I spent a good deal of time cleaning up and clearing out the old vegetables of the 2008 season. The tomatoes are gone as are the cucumbers, squash, and beans. The cantaloupe stopped producing weeks ago and surprisingly the watermelon gave us one more last week before its demise. It wasn’t much of a watermelon but it was a tasty surprise.  Everything has an end, or does it?

The leftovers of this season have now been placed into the new compost bin. It’s not exactly new, as it has been fashioned form three old wooden palettes, but it is our newest garden addition. New to us! I put a picture of the palettes in this post but I haven’t taken one since it was completed.  Into the new bin went all the collections from the garden plus those annuals that have faded already due to the frost. My 4’x4′ bin is already full.

In addition to filling up the new bin I also turned the compost in our other bin today, literally. Or maybe I should have said I turned my compost bin…over! I flipped it over to dump out the compost that was in the bin. It needed to move to a more discreet area of the yard and had to be emptied before moving. I sorted the decomposed compost out and dumped it into the garden beds. In the end three loads of compost were added and the rest of the old bin’s contents were moved to the new bin. The partially decomposed compost should help activate the new bin and encourage good microbial growth! All of the 2008 vegetable garden will end up in the garden as compost next year and the cycle will continue.

The last order of the day was to plant a few bulbs.  I put in five hyacinths to the Japanese maple garden.  They are now right next to our new patio and should provide us with some color and fragrances in the spring.  I’ll be adding some of the 91 daffodils I have left to plant to that garden also.  Gardening sure doesn’t slow down in the fall!