Garden 2016: Put To Bed

Today I finally went out to finish up putting the garden to bed for 2016.  It is now done.  Well, except for putting away the last of the garden hoses. I somehow imagined that Dear One was going to wash the car one more time this fall (not that I wanted him to do that, he just seems to do that sort of thing pretty often), but he says no.  Yay.  One more thing can be taken care of before the snow falls.

Front garden put to bed

Side garden put to bed

These gardens do not look appreciably different from the last picture I posted, but underneath they are much happier. I took our four-tined garden fork and fluffed the hay.  I am just certain the soil underneath is happier.  The last of the kale is also happy to have warm feet.  I will probably harvest that in the next couple of days.  I think I will plant more kale next year. I love that stuff.  Now that I know how to raise and, more importantly, harvest it, I am a very happy lady.

Gardening: New old Method--Ruth Stout No-Work Gardening

The hay bale gardening did not turn out to my expectations this year.  The weak link here was the gardener.  As usual.  Anyway,  recently I was talking with my sister.  She is converting their huge vegetable garden in North Carolina to the Ruth Stout method which we learned about years ago.  I thought: why not try it here in Vermont? After all, Ruth Stout lived in Connecticut.  We have ten bales that are pretty much on their way to being compost from this year's garden failure.  They should be great.

Right end of front garden after installing rotted hay.

So, today I went out to the two small gardens and yanked up most of the leftover tomato, basil, lettuce, etc plants.  I laid them right back down where they had been.  I had most of the tomato plants pulled up and positioned horizontally on the ground then stepped over towards the rhubarb to yank off the dead leaves.  Stepped in a hole with my left foot then dropped like a stone and rolled completely over.  I wish there had been a video taken of it.  It was a beautiful thing.  At least today, or right now, it seems like it was a beautiful thing.  This happened about an hour ago and I still feel okay.  Afterwards I got up and kept working for a while longer. I am hoping that later this evening or tomorrow  I do not feel any ill effects.  That would really put me off the work...and I want this garden to succeed next year.

I used several of the ten bales from this year's hay bale garden which did not work as well as I had hoped.  After that I brought some of the rotted hay from the grow-box garden (where the lovely doe deer ate all the yellow string beans just when they were getting good looking...I told you about that...) and spread it over the front garden. 

Rhubarb end of the front garden.

So far I have not gotten the side garden completely covered.  I think I will look for some new "bad" hay that animals won't eat to finish it off.  Maybe even use some of the wood chips we got last year when we were going to do the Back to Eden gardening method....

There are lots of articles about Ruth Stout and her gardening method on the internet.  Plus a couple of YouTube videos with her showing someone around her garden.  (There are Magyar subtitles but the videos are in English.)