Putting the beds to bed

This weekend I have spent a little time putting some of the garden squares to bed for the winter. They have produced nicely this year, but I want to ensure that the soil is nice and fertile when spring comes and I plant them again.  First I pulled all the plants and cut the vines off the trellis; more stuff for the compost pile! Then I added a wheelbarrow full of chopped leaves and a wheelbarrow full of manure (which amounts to about an inch of manure over a 4x4 square).

The leaves I chopped with the bagging attachment on our leaf blower, however I think the lawnmower attachment would chop them finer and may use it for the next batch. I'll need a bunch for the strawberries too. For the organic gardener, a friend with manure producing animals is a gold mine. We have a friend (Cynthia) who has horses and is just as happy as can be to let me run off with a truck load of manure, much of it already composted. I just put it straight on the beds with the leaves to compost over the winter, since it will be at least four months before I plant-plenty of time for it to break down. I would use chicken manure the same way, and may have my own little poo producers next spring, but unless it is going to sit for a while, compost the manure first or it might burn the plants. Rabbit manure is so mild that it can be put straight on the bed, plants or no plants.
After putting the leaves and manure on the garden I used my garden claw to mix them in.  In the first bed I put the manure out first, then the leaves, and since the leaves were still pretty big, they mostly got clogged up in the claw; the manure over the leaves mixed much better. I'll turn the beds another couple times in the next few weeks to mix things up better. Once I get some lime I will add some of that too since I haven't used it in a few years and my soil tends to be a bit acidic, and oak leaves, which I used, are high in acid. Great for blueberries, not so much for vegetables. I'm also going to have a soil test done for various areas of the yard/garden so I can spot any deficiencies before I plant.Our Agricultural Extension Agency does this for free. I also have a home test kit, but I like the professional analysis too.

So there you are, one bed, put to bed for the winter!

By the way, one of the by products of cleaning up the beds is harvesting the turnips; we are having turnip greens and boiled turnips with dinner tonight. Everything is better with bacon, right?