Ready for Winter

Today I got my plot truly ready for winter. We had a few night frosts this past week, so I pulled the flowers, Swiss chard and tender lettuces, which all had frost damage. The fall greens are still going strong, so I am keeping them in for a few more days. I also still have carrots growing, which I will pull in a few weeks. Same with the parsley, of which I harvested some today. I am planning to overwinter my leeks.

I finally divided the asparagus, yay! I divided the big clump into six crowns and gave them plenty of space in between. I hope they will establish over the winter. I had planned to do this these past two years in early spring, but this spring I had COVID, which knocked me out for the entire month of April and made me miss the dividing window, and the year before the ground was frozen solid for much longer and then it got warm very quickly. Fingers crossed. The worst case scenario is that I won’t have much to harvest next spring.

November Clean-Up

Today, I finished cleaning up my plot and getting it ready for the winter. The only thing left to do is to take out the flowers and divide the asparagus (or leave the latter for early spring next year). I still have Swiss Chard, leeks, fall greens, carrots, parsley and flowers growing. I spread salt marsh hay on the garlic patch and around the chard and leeks. It has been in the 70s today, and we have not had a frost yet this year.

Front left: next year’s garlic plus parsley. Back left: leeks. On the right: carrots, fall greens and chard. Flowers (cosmos, Zinnias and dahlias) at the fence in the back.
Next year’s garlic

Planting Garlic

Red Russian hard neck garlic (left) and Transylvania soft neck (right)

I planted my garlic today. I planted less than in previous years as one kid is out of the house, and the other one is with me only half of the year. This means I cook differently and don’t have use for 60 heads of garlic over the year anymore. Which is why of this year’s soft neck harvest, I made a small braid to give to a neighbor. Today I planted 16 hard necks (Red Russian) and 20 soft necks (Transylvania). I picked the fattest cloves of the three fattest bulbs I had harvested back in July 🙂

Warm November

We are having an unseasonably warm November. 75 degrees today (November 5) and the same is forecasted for tomorrow. The trees have almost lost all their leaves yet here we are enjoying the sun in our tank tops. I am behind with clearing my plot and I have not planted my garlic yet. Today, I cleaned almost half of my plot and will do more work tomorrow. Trying to get the garlic in tomorrow as well.