Fall Garden Clean-up

I finally finished clearing away the old asparagus stalks. I also worked today on clearing other parts of the garden. There were still some pepper plants in the side-yard beds, and I picked the last of the peppers before pulling up those plants.

Here they are, the last of the summer peppers:



That last Casper White eggplant is also in the box. The peppers were mostly fairly large; the Spanish Spice peppers were all seven to eight inches long. I had been hoping they would turn red, but that didn't happen. The weather has turned seasonably cool, so it was definitely time to bring those in, but I will have to chop them up to freeze as green peppers.

There were still some okra plants, some stumps of corn stalks, aging marigolds, and other flowers that were going to look very bad very soon. I filled the wheelbarrow with stuff, chopped up, for the compost pile.



One wheelbarrow load isn't going to be enough, though, for me to able to say those two beds are clear and ready for winter. There are still some flowers, the last of the basil, and all that Malabar spinach, in addition to a few cool-weather plants (winter radishes, cilantro, and a couple of turnips).



Really, clearing the garden in fall is almost as big a job as getting it all planted in spring.

This, though, is part of what motivates me:



This is the garlic that I planted just last weekend. It is already coming up! It looks like the "one big clove" that I thought I had planted here was actually one big clove with a little hitch-hiker. Two are coming up! However, even when what happens in the garden isn't quite what I had planned, seeing the food plants emerge and grow reminds me that the work is worthwhile.