Fall Clean Up (Part Two)

Saturday we had a lot of non-yard stuff to do, so we didn't get started on any of the yard work until close to 4pm.

My Mister started weed whacking around all the fruit trees while I pulled weeds from the strawberry bed, and cleared a place for garlic in another bed.  I added compost, and got nearly a pound of garlic cloves planted.  We planted Music that we ordered from my favorite seed company, Seed Savers Exchange, and covered the garlic with a thick layer of straw mulch.

Next was to weed whack all the strawberries down to nubbins and cover them with a thin layer of straw.  Next spring the plants will grow up through the mulch.  By weed whacking the plants now, the plants will be healthier and have better air circulation next spring.

We also gathered up the watering lines from the raised beds and pulled the tomato plants that don't have tomatoes on them still.

My Mister checked on the bees, and there aren't a lot of them.  He's a little concerned that last month when he cleaned out the crooked comb, he might have killed the queen.  We'll continue to watch the bees to see if their numbers continue to decrease, or if they build up again.  There were some brood cells, but not many.  Worst case, we may be buying bees again in the spring.  Hopefully we learned enough this year, that we can avoid the crooked comb in the future and don't have to do such invasive work on the hive.

My Mister shucked all the corn, and put it in a bucket in the chicken coop storage area, the birds have already eaten/scratched all of the grass in their new run area, so they'll appreciate the corn cobs to play with.

The big pumpkin is finally starting to turn orange, but I don't think it will be orange by halloween.  We'll see.

We moved the leftover hay into the chicken coop storage area, and will try to keep the kids out of it so we can use it in other areas.  I want to use it to mulch over the artichoke plant once I cut it down.  I'm still waiting for it to flower so I can collect some seeds.  If I could get five or six plants to survive a winter, we'd be pretty set for artichokes.