It is time to start putting the garden to bed (heh), so I deconstructed the bean fence, raked off the mulch, broadcast some winter rye, sprinkled the bed with compost, then added a light covering of straw.
In the past, I have had some success with green manure, and some failure; I attribute the latter to birds eating the seed. Hence, the straw. Unlike chickens, wild birds don't seem to scratch as they forage.
The other night I made spaghetti sauce with my own tomatoes, onion, and garlic, and fresh basil from my daughter, who got her basil plants from me. The rabbits ate mine, and in the flurry of summer gardening, I never got around to restarting any. Toward fall, however, I did, which I repotted yesterday.
They are still outside, but high enough off the ground to discourage the bunnies.
Oddly enough, the rabbits did not disturb the parsley. Instead, the lemon balm overtook it. The parsley in my herb pot went to seed this year, so yesterday I uncovered a couple of the parsley plants in the garden and moved them into the herb plot.
It looks a bit droopy, but never fear, it will revive.
Despite the poor showing of the potatoes from the back bed in the garden, I emptied the potato sacks with some optimism. The dirt in the sacks went into the raised bed by the patio, where I plan to plant garlic in a couple of months.
(Note rabbit-trapping cage above. It is not triggered right now, as I have smelled skunk in the area. I do NOT want to catch one of those!)
The potato harvest from the sacks does not look like much, but these plants were the ones I periodically groped when in search of new potatoes.
It is difficult to tell from the photo, but most of these are Red Gold, with a few Carola mixed in. The Carola are supposed to be particularly good for new potatoes, which is how I used them. The Red Gold is an all-round potato, good for most uses, but not for long term storage. Guess I will have to eat them first.
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