Winter Garden

At the end of the summer I decided that, all things being considered, it was going to be best to skip planting a fall garden. It was very nice to not have to think about the garden during school and the various trips we took. However, this Friday I was overtaken by the gardening bug again. So on Saturday I took advantage of the beautiful weather (high 60's), and tilled up the end of the garden to plant our garlic for next year.

This is our dormant asparagus at the end of the garden. I wanted to plant the garlic next to it so it wouldn't be in the way of tilling next spring.

Pretty seed pods...

This is my tiller. We have a love/hate relationship.

Sometimes it will start, sometimes it does other things- like today for instance. It hasn't been run for 2 months and it was hard to do the pull thing-a-bob. So, I yanked harder, and.... it tipped over. I attemped to brace it with my foot, but that wasn't working out so great for me either. I finally just went inside and got dad to come start it for me. I think it likes him better.

I tilled up a nice wide row.

I am rejoicing that after about 3 years of improving the soil, I actually have something beside straight up clay!

I marked off my row and dug my trench.

Planted the garlic,

covered it back up,

then covered it all with leaves.

I planted 1 60 ft row and used 7 heads of garlic. It will be pretty dormant all winter, but early next spring it will start growing. It should be ready for harvesting mid-summer. :)

This is our compost bin from this summer.

This is our compost pile from last winter.

As you can see, it's pretty much all broken down. We will put it on the garden in the early spring when we do our first tilling.

So, that's about the extent of our winter garden. I wanted to try some short day onions along with the garlic, but my local suppliers completely let me down this year. Not one of them ordered ANY onion sets this fall. :(
So, I will just go with the long day kind in the spring like I did last year. Oh well.
My goals for next year's garden are:
1. Completely fill the garden. (this year I had some extra space)
2. Stick with all our basic garden favorites but also try a couple new things.
3. Have enough tomatoes to dry AND can for our winter supply. (we had plenty to eat and dry, but not enough to can this year)

I will be ordering all my seeds in the next couple of weeks, and in January I will start to sprout some of them inside. It's a lot of work, but it's fascinating and it keeps me supplied with green things during the dreary Jan-March time frame!

Good luck to anyone else trying a winter garden!