Putting the garden to bed is only one of the fall chores around here, but it is by far the most important. This morning I harvested the last of the green beans and tomorrow I will likely take down the two monsters (see the previous BLOG for a photo of them!) and clean out those two corners of the beds. There are still tomatoes on the vines in bed #3, and the frost doesn’t seem to be bothering them, so I think I’ll leave them a few more days – my windowsill in the kitchen is already full of almost ripened tomatoes, no room for any more, so I hope the ones that are left will start to ripen on the vine.
Most of the beds are dug, and composted ready for next spring. My onions and garlic are all planted, so now I have to compost bed #3 once the tomatoes are finished. Then I’m done – here – still work to do out on the allotment.

Did I mention we have to move from our old allotment/community garden site? Yes, they are bound and bent on putting a helicopter pad right in the middle of our gardens, so we have spent all summer trying to get the ground prepared on the new site – about 500 yards north of our present site. Everyone has chosen their new patch and we have welcomed three new gardeners to our circle. I expect we will see a lot more people come forward to take plots and grow their own food. After this terrible year I’m predicting (and so are others) that the price of veggies will go through the roof – people are going to want to grow their own. Besides, if COVID persists, then it’s food safety people will be worried about – and grown at the community garden (which is organic) will be nice and safe for all.

In between getting all the garden plots ready for bed, I took a previously self-printed/self-published book and re-formatted it – Dyeing With Wild Plants. This is the last of the ‘wild plant’ books to be reformatted and printed from the original 10 or 12 years ago when I couldn’t afford to take books to the printer for a ‘proper’ job.
This coming Saturday, Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, we are putting together a work party at the gardens to move the last of the items over to the new site – 3 big compost bins that we built a few years ago, and the kiddie play thingy – it will take 4 strong men and a boy to move the darn thing, it’s that heavy! But the kids need something to do while Mom and Dad are slaving away growing the food for the table.
At the original site I off-set the paths so that bored kids wouldn’t be tearing along them. On the new site all the paths are straight as a die and they will be able to race until their hearts content. I hope not!! We will have a pizza lunch at the work day – I couldn’t think of anything else that would have been as easy or as inexpensive. A couple of us are making muffins for dessert, and I’ll see if I can get a large coffee urn (a cardboard one) from Tim’s. It should be fun, especially the moving of the big water tank which I think will happen that day too! The last item to get moved will be the pallets/skids that the water barrels sit on. They are far too heavy for me to move or I would have done it already – hardwood pallets are HEAVY!! But we’ll put our best fellas on them on Saturday and they will get moved without too much fuss. Busy, busy, busy – what’s your life like?
So, for the rest of the month I might just veg… Or I might do some dyeing – I had to cut some branches off my apple trees this fall and I’m itching to see what colour I get when I boil down the apple wood and put a bit of something in it to dye – a bit of silk for a new scarf might be nice… I’ll let you know next time.
Thanks for visiting.