end of season

The garden is winding down, and so is my interest in keeping this journal going, for some reason. I had a final harvest of cowpeas, now there's half a small jar of the reddish dried beans in pantry, waiting for me to try them in soup. We had a few days of hard frost this past week, which killed off my coleus (one sheltered in back corner of the garden lasted a few days past the others), 

then the cardinal climber vine, then finally the black-and-blue salvia. I've mulched most of the perennials cut back, with leaves but need to shelter some hostas and others with wood chips maybe.

Gathered up the last bit of chard, collard greens, one volunteer fall tatsoi and some purple dead nettle, it was just enough for a plate of scrambled egg breakfast. There's still a pot of kale on the deck. I've brought indoors all my geraniums, two potted figs, the cuban oregano, chives, thyme, stevia and bay leaf to overwinter. My coleus cuttings all rooted and are potted up now, brightening the windowsills. Four of the five cuttings I took of that unnamed purple glossy-leaved plant rooted and got potted too. 

Persian shield cuttings haven't grown roots but I refresh their water jar weekly and hope.

Bright pink thanksgiving cactus is blooming right on time, better than ever. One stem of my crown of thorns plant died but the others are growing new leaves. I finally have a row of five different-colored violets all blooming together, so pretty in the bedroom when the light shines through them. The madagascar palm is doing poorly so I'm collecting and saving rainwater for it (the spider plants and asparagus plant will get it too) as I think it's something in the tap water making brown tips happen. Lipstick plant is flowering upstairs and has a new shoot, too.

I mail-ordered garlic bulbs and got them in the ground just in time, I think. Two kinds- hardneck 'Siberian' and softneck 'Silver Rose Silverskin'. I planted the hardneck on the side of the ninth garden bed closest to the stairs, and the softnecks closer to the inside. With space on either end and down the middle, where leeks will go in spring. 

Instead of making hoops and plastic rowcover, I reskinned my greenhouse with actual plastic panels (noted in a previous post). Last year in some pots I just had in there for storage overwinter, weeds and grass sprouted and lived just fine through the winter months. So this time I put all the soil for storage in bags, and planted pots in the greenhouse with seed. Tokyo bekana, tatsoi, chervil, dill and a variety of lettuces. 

Four shelves- not the top one because I can't reach up there to water as these pots have more depth than the usual seedling trays, so the plants will have room to mature. Not sure how well it will work. Most of the seeds sprouted but the young plants are kinda leggy and leaning around seeking light. I guess the pots above shade the ones below too much. Maybe would be better to just use two shelves, with an empty one in between, so they don't block the light from each other. 

I cleaned up more thoroughly this time, rinsing out and stacking to put away in my storage room all the empty pots, tools and things. Very upset that I found a lizard met its end in a stack of pots. Not that he fell in and couldn't get out- which has happened before so I usually put them upside-down if left around now. No, he tried to shove his head through a drainage hole and got stuck. Seeking escape or going after a bug I don't know. Wedged so tightly I couldn't pull the pots apart. I felt terrible. I wish I had been around when it happened, if I'd heard him scrabbling might have found, and cut the plastic to free him. Too late now. I have left the pot in a corner on a patch of bare soil, expecting the decomposers will do their job. Sad as it makes me. 

Stil have pictures to add to a few older posts that are missing some, or to post retroactively fill in for the fall months were I wrote little maybe.

Need to do a final mowing of the lawn (which got fed vermicompost from my bin a few weeks ago), while it has light leaf cover. Then raking of the back yard, turning the compost pile, spread compost on the garden beds, with a layer of last year's leaf mulch over that. And the garden goes to sleep until spring.