End of Season Wrap-up (2013)

2013 has turned out to be probably the most productive year ever for the Food Patch. Much of this was due to taking up the Paleo lifestyle in 2012 necessitating the planting of more leafy vegetables and brassicas. This also was the very first year we were able to succession plant lettuce so that we were totally supplied from Memorial Day well into November. We even have some lettuce left under one of the tunnels that we are saving for later this winter.

Yesterday was an unusually warm day and with the melting of all of our earlier snow pack from the last two weeks we took the opportunity to clean off the plots.This is a chore that I usually have done by mid-October in year's past but with a lot of late season brassicas and lettuce it just didn't get done until now. We still have an open row of spinach and a fabric low tunnel that we are saving for later in the winter. This tunnel contains Russian red kale, arugula, chard, beets, and regular curly kale. The small plastic tunnel still has the last of the fall lettuce that even though it hasn't gotten much bigger has somehow managed to survive several major freezes.

We also got the leaf pile off of the strawberries where they had gotten completely packed down from the snow. They were spread over the open areas and will be worked in during the first till of the spring. The last chore will be to spread a little straw over the strawberries. Even that was off schedule because the bales got water logged and were still frozen in places.