Well its the end of the season and except for a few remaining carrots, the plot has been cleared, tilled, and covered with some shredded leaves from the yard. All that remains is one last pass with the tiller assuming it ever dries out enough before the first big freeze, and a straw mulch cover for the strawberry patch.
Overall it was a successful season but there will be a few changes next year. We'll probably go with bush beans for a change since the pole beans continued to have variable yields. However, the bean wall will stay up over the winter as a ready support for some early spring peas. These will be started indoors in peat pots in February to get around germination issues and then set out as soon as they are large enough.
The peppers will be caged and sprayed to get around breakage and stink bug damage. We'll probably also trial a couple more different varieties of grape tomatoes since we had severe split damage with the two we tried this year.
So the outdoor work is done. There is one more batch of tomato juice and one more batch of strawberry jam to be made from frozen stock in the freezer. From then on it will be settling down for a long winter's nap and the anticipation of next season.
