Good night garden

Today we pretty much put the garden to bed.  We had already laid down tarps to help kill the weeds/grass about a month ago.  Then a few weeks ago Pat tilled up the ground where we had laid the tarps (the tarps didn't really kill the grass, but it kind of knocked it back some.  Would have worked better in the springtime. 

This weekend we spread a mixture of winter and annual rye to act as a cover crop in the tilled area.  We tried to use Earthway seeders, but the seed was just too fine and it created "flour" instead.  So Pat used the broadcast seeder and I lightly raked it in. 

This past summer's garlic--today's seed source

Then we planted garlic.  We set aside part of the tilled earth for the garlic patch.  We had a lot of seed garlic saved from this summer's crop.  We set aside the biggest, best heads to plant for next season.  This was the 2nd year we had set aside seed garlic.  We didn't have quite enough, so we supplemented with store-bought garlic.  Altogether we planted approx. 180 cloves of our saved seed, and 60 of the store bought.  We'll compare them next year to see if there is any difference.  To plant the garlic, Pat turned the soil with a shovel, then we levelled it off and raked it smooth.  Next, Pat made a furrow with a hoe and I sprinkled in some bone meal.   We read that calcium is good for garlic so we added that supplement.  We planted the garlic 8" apart, then covered the furrow up with about 4" of soil.  Finally, we piled straw on top to make a thick mulch.  You almost can't mulch garlic too much. 

We have some seed garlic left over, and a lot in the basement still.  So we're going to try to freeze the cloves and see how it does.  We ended up loosing some of our garlic over the winter to rot, so hopefully that does not happen this year. 

There are still some peppers growing and the tomatoes are dead yet.  We left them for Dad to pick what he wants.  But pretty much that is it...the garden is ready for its long winter nap.