Our Garden This Year

The garden is being put to bed. It's taken us this long as the weather had held off for a good long while. We were also covering sections of it to protect it from those early light freezes and frosts. And, the only things left in the garden were cold tolerant plants.

Yesterday I finally got to the brussels sprouts and cabbages. They were pulled or, plucked, cleaned and checked for bad spots or, bugs. And, processed for saving for winter eating. Oh, and plus we each had a big dish of sprouts for our dinner. Dusted with a bit of nutmeg.... my, oh my, was that ever good.

We are still eating fresh, red, huge beefsteak and best boy tomatoes! When the time was upon us, we went and pulled and wrapped in newspaper the most perfect of the greenies left on the bushes before the first hard freeze happened. I am so glad we did. And, it's been about a month or, more since we did. And, that's why fresh tomatoes are still gracing our dinner table every night.

I also pulled or, cut the chives and the parsley out of the garden. Cleaned and washed they are in the dehydrator. I will fill a couple of my smaller mason jars with those handy little herbs and vacuum seal them. I use parsley in just about every dish during the winter, primarily for the color and..... because mostly it reminds me of summer time.

We added manure to most all of the empty garden beds. We have built with Freecycled material, a 3 bin composting system. And, we have that "hot" cooking right now with extra manure in it to break down some of the load of stuff being dumped into them out of the gardens.

It's been a grand year for our garden. We have eaten well from it, have stored a whole bunch of goodness from it to feed us this winter and we have shared it's goodness with friends. What more could we have asked for?