Putting gardens to bed

Outside my bedroom/office window is my tomato cages still lined up and full of tired plants - plants that have no leaves or life from the ground up to about 3 feet then there is the tangle of living greenery with tomatoes in all form of green, pink, ripe and rotten - until we get that hard freeze they will suffer into the fall putting on hard green tomatoes. I've even picked some fairly large tomatoes for this time of year - I keep thinking it has to be the bees pollination that is keeping the production size up.

The truck is still gone, the insurance company hasn't settled yet and the customers have been as sparce as hen's teeth. I'm picking and taking to the Presbyterian church in town on Mondays - shoot, that's today isn't it.

We are looking for a truck - David insists it has to be a diesel and a dodge and I found one I think would be a good purchase but it would cost me 6,000 lbs of tomatoes. David's got a job for a while - as long as there are fossil fuels to be burned for airplanes to fly that is.

I am not good with winter - years ago we owned a dump truck service and we did well in the summer but in the winter, we struggled and winter became the enemy. Farming is good in the summer and costly in the winter - heating a greenhouse is no small potatoes. We have dug up over 60 blackberry plants - ready to make the extension of 4 rows but we need a truck - to haul the trailer to bring home a hole digging rental. And then there's the cement that will need to be purchased and the time it takes to plant the 4 X 4 posts. Buying the truck is scaring me - not buying the truck is scaring me. Without a vehicle, we don't have any means of getting our plants to festivals in the spring. We can't bring home mounds of manure. We can't pick up wood chips or mulch unless it is bagged and that's always more expensive.

It is hard to know exactly how to push ahead and what to buy - and what item needs to be finished and what doesn't.

So putting the gardens to bed will be higher on the list as the weather becomes colder. Lemon grass must be dug up before a freeze - all 60 plants and divided to make more. The basil was pulled out on Saturday to make room for the pansies and 5 chrysanthemums in the front flower bed. Then the entire wall of plants on the end of the house were removed - castor beans yanked out, the entire area double dug to remove as much of the grass that had invaded and all the bulbs and corms and rhisomes in the greenhouse walkway were pulled and needed the new location. I had daylilies, iris, daffodils and oriental lilies, sages still in pots were planted, a rose of sharon and a small shrub, and a few canna's were centered a little off center. For mulch I went cheap - a bale of straw and a lawnmower mulched it into finer cuttings and a bit of cardboard cut in long swaths became the weed barrier. A bit of old ground cover was used under the blocks to creat a stepping stone path in the center as the bed is almost 5 feet deep - and 24 feet long. The leftover bale became mulch for the pansies too.

I bought 3 kinds of blueberries - one plant each - just enough for us to enjoy and will plant them in the lavender row - between plants of lavender will be blueberry bushes - I need to dig the holes and add a bale of peat, some bonemeal and bunny poop, part of the existing soil and then maybe in two or three years I will be enjoying my own blueberries without depending on others for this treat. I have a small bucket of raspberries too - now where the heck will those go. I also purchased two pawpaw trees this spring and I am under the impression those need a bit of shade for a few years before they are capable of handling full sun. I have no idea if a pawpaw is good or not but I do want to try growing them as I call David papa much of the time. Those will go into larger pots and be well mulched thru this winter half dug into the ground to prevent the pot from freezing.

There are other beds that need dug up, grasses pulled out and bulbs replaced this fall - and here I sit on a Monday morning writing instead of doing. But it is cloudy out there - and a bit cool and there's a few other things - some review of market taxes, picking for the church, and the fact my husband's shift changed again this month and that means instead of a 3 day weekend, he only got one day off as the shift changes at the beginning of the month and then will get caught back up in 4 weeks - it feels so unfair - but then, he has a job, and I know deep down inside how very lucky we are even when it feels unfair.

Oh, and David cleaned up the scary berries - the blackberries are in wonderful shape this fall - the choice to put them higher on the agenda is paying off.