End of Summer : Garden Clean Up

How we are spending our Labor Day weekend? Cleaning the yard and putting the garden to rest.

Remove any dead or diseased plant from your garden. Dead plants go into the Compost. while diseased plants go into a bag in the trashcan.
Save Seed from the plants that performed well for you this year. Put them into an envelope, label the contents, and add a date.
Take cuttings of plants like coleus and geraniums to root for next year’s garden.
Eat up your veggie garden harvest. the crops you can’t eat or give away to family and friends.
Dry Herbs to be used over the winter. Good choices are thyme, rosemary, basil, lavender, and chives.
Clean up your patio furniture.
Resist buying and planting cool weather veggies, flowers, and herbs too soon — while many garden centers will offer them, the end of summer is usually still too hot to plant them. Wait a bit to give these beauties the best chance at thriving in your Fall garden.

Compost : 101 Basic

Recycling food and other organic waste into compost provides a range of environmental benefits, including improving soil health, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, recycling nutrients, and mitigating the impact of droughts.

Weed garden
Dead plants, leaves and grass
Start a Compost Pile

Improves Soil Health and Lessens Erosion

Compost is an essential tool for improving large-scale agricultural systems. Compost contains three primary nutrients needed by garden crops: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. It also includes traces of other essential elements like calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc. Instead of relying on synthetic fertilizers that contain harmful chemicals, composting offers an organic alternative

My Garden Journal :

Make notes of what went right and what went wrong in this year’s garden. That variety of cauliflower didn’t do so well for you? You might buy it again next year if you don’t have notes warning you otherwise. Planting yarrow next to the veggies attracted good bugs? Score! Do it again next year.