Ready For Dung

The days are few and short. Between work and the weathers, I can't afford to procrastinate. When a day off appears with the new warm of 45, it almost made it to 50, it is time to get moving.

The roadside vegetable garden needed to be cleaned and readied for a fresh layer of composted dung and then topped with new wood chip mulch so it will be ready to go come spring.

Another round of rinse, snow and mega cold is on the way. There wouldn't be another opportunity to tidy the vegetable garden for at least a week and there is no guarantee of that.

I suspect I will be saying goodbye til spring to a number of gardens in the next few weeks. That will give me more time for the list of winter chores I need to tend to. It's a long list and it covers three acres. That gives me about one month per acre to get everything done.

I went ahead and started on the chop down of the wildflower surround. I still want to completely redo the planting in the strip between the vegetable garden and the scenic byway. It has too much goldenrod and not a long enough bloom time.

The roadside vegetable garden is now open to view. A public lesson in a no-till, mulched with wood chips garden is about to commence.

By now the regular traffic knows what is hiding behind and among all those wild flowers. The scenic byway draws all kinds of rubberneckers from far and wide though. Some of them might drive by and think, this garden is different. What is that about?

After collecting and tossing some Ironweed and Joe Pye seeds, the remaining dead sticks were burned. A little dash of terra preta in the vegetable garden can't hurt.

Would you believe I still have food to harvest. One more cold snap, then I will start eating my parsnips. You are not supposed to harvest them until after they have been chilled. The root gets sweeter when it goes into dormancy. They are biennials. Any left will return in the spring and pretty quickly bloom and set seed.

One roadside vegetable garden is ready for dung. I also have a winter art project in mind. Stay tuned.

The dung pile is also freshly weeded and ready for screening. It has been coming with 3/4" gravel from the horse's paddock and I don't want that in the garden.

Miss Dinah has settled in with no objections to her winter accommodations. She and Miss Collar actually seemed to enjoy each others company.

They are already froze, but one more deep freeze and there will be no more excuses. Tuesday's high after the snow is showing 26. That's the high. In November. We are talking really frozen now. It will  be time to go and cut out the bent stalks in the grasses simply because they annoy me. If they aren't going to stand, they have to go.

I want my winter interest to be perky.