Since I'm pretty much stuck at a point where I really can't do anything else on any cars until I buy something I had to find something else that was free that I needed to do. This time it was some work on the garden. But first I took the push mower and cut some high grass in the central drag that goes between the house and garden. After getting that done I made my way into the garden.
I started at the first two raised beds right by the gate. These two beds were made to adopt a food forest concept where fruit trees are at the center, berry bushes are right at the bases of the trees and strawberries cover the ground around the outskirts. In one of the raised beds the strawberries were sending out runners that were taking root in the mulch walkways. My first job was to pull up all the runners and separate them into individual plants so I can replant them. I ended up replanting these baby strawberries in the neighboring raised bed by the gate since that one was getting kind of thin on the strawberries. At least by planting now it'll give the plants time to take root before cold weather sets in. The hot weather won't be a factor at all in this case. Even the cold weather is better for these baby plants than the hot weather. After pulling up all the runners I could find I went ahead and planted them in the other raised bed, covering a good portion of the garden. With that done I turned my attention to pulling up weeds and other trash. In the mulch beds there were many little weeds that I had to pull up. I made my way over to a centrally located raised bed in my weed picking endeavors as this bed was overrun with mint plants and other invasive weed plants. After pulling up weeds from the mulch up to this raised bed I went nuts pulling up everything in the bed that wasn't a fruit tree, errant strawberry or berry bush. I really wasn't too concerned with pulling up the mint plants as the root system is probably all through the raised bed and the neighboring ground so this shit will be back with a vengeance later. My only chance of stifling this damned plant is going to be to put some type of ground cover on the raised bed and accommodate the fruit trees and berry bushes by poking holes or cutting the plastic I'll probably end up using to place it around the trees. The few strawberries that are present will probably have to be uprooted and planted through holes in the plastic then a mulch cover put on top of the plastic afterwards. We'll have to see on that one. But with that bed done I made my way over to the raised bed I used for tomatoes and peppers.
In the tomato bed were a bunch of tomato stands, those wire things that look like an ice cream cone, to this day I still don't really know what those damned things are officially called. Anyway I pulled up all of the tomato plants as they were pretty much done for the year regardless of how much greenery may have still be present. I placed the tomato stands inside each other for storage and pulled up any errant weeds that were present in the garden as well. I also had to come through with the shears to cut some weed trees that were starting to grow around this raised bed as well as a couple other beds as well. After getting the tomato bed done, I moved on to the final harvest.
The last thing that I did for the day was harvest the jalapeno peppers that were still on the vine on the pepper plants that I had in the tomato bed and the raised beds I made from some oil drum halves. I got a good handful of the peppers, which I figure is probably going to be the last harvest of the year. Even though I didn't pull up the plants as they were still full of foliage, I really don't expect the plants to really do much else, between the temps dropping and the lessening sunlight these summer plants are pretty much done. I will probably end up pulling the peppers up in the next couple of days. At this point though I pretty much have to just go full frontal assault on the garden as I neglected the thing through the summer in exchange for working on other projects. I'll have to cut and trim a lot of the fruit trees and berry bushes as well as pull up weeds galore. I'll have to cut high grass through walkway areas and continue to lay down plastic and mulch to establish walkways and repair/rebuild raised beds. Even the raised beds are going to be open to redesign as I decide on how to situate the beds around any given fruit trees in order to keep up the whole food forest concept. I also have my future hydroponic gardens to set up throughout the garden as well and this will add to the mix the plumbing and electrical hookups for the equipment to run the gardens as well. I will probably end up pulling some things up and moving them around or even outright eliminating them. We will surely see as time progresses and I continue to clean up the gardens.
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