Final harvest of the 2006 gardening season-again

Really, it's the last harvest. I'm sure this time. . .maybe. We did pull up the remaining mustard greens, and James made some bitter greens. We had the last of the tender baby kale leaves in our dinner salad last night. The rest of the plants are now buried under the sheet mulch. (I did realize that a few greens are still growing out in the front bulb bed- if they survived the freeze.)

We finally have winter here. A bit of water left in one of the hoses after watering in the sheet mulch last night dripped out and froze. (Thought I'd done better than that when I drained it.) The pond had an inch thick layer of ice on it when I checked mid-afternoon today. Not enough to support weight, but enough to complicate the next stage of sheet mulching.

I'm glad we got so much done over the weekend. With the weather getting cold, it's been less enjoyable preparing the beds. James had to break the ice on the pond so I could soak the boxes to lay out on the big bed on the side of the house (between two layers of manure that he spread out). The cardboard layer serves as a weed barrier while the other layers are breaking down into lovely rich soil.

We've more than doubled our garden space this year. And have plenty of seeds to fill it up! I'll be starting artichokes and parsley this week. I have to start the artichokes early enough to get them outside while it's still cool- to trick them into thinking they've had a winter so they'll flower their first year. Otherwise, they won't bear flowers until the second year, and that's the part we eat. With luck, mild winters, and some loving care, I may be able to keep them bearing for three or four years. We'll see.

Other than that, what's going on? Well, we met with a group of Friends from Quaker meeting with a concern for the environment. I realized that I do care about political activism, and I'm looking at getting more involved in writing letters and maybe testifying on some bills. I also realized that I prefer other approaches to change-like figuring out how to live so that we minimize our negative impact on the earth and sharing that with others. The political (top-down legislation) action is a supplement to that, rather than the focus with personal action as a supplement.