Fall Cleanup

Now that fall has hit my garden, it's time to clean it up (big time). I haven't had a frost yet but it has been cold enough to shrivel up the petunias, fade the dahlia and simply stop everything else from growing. The annual hollyhocks have finally given up the heavy blooming and even the perennial geranium looks like it is slowing down.

So today has been declared the first day of fall cleanup. I'll be out there pulling out the trial petunias and clearing out the foliage of various and sundry annuals. I note this morning a few weeds have put their sneaky heads up there so I'll whomp them out of the ground at the same time.

This is the first step in fall cleanup - to get rid of all the dead or dying foliage and clean up the garden. And this should take me a noon-hour work period or two to get this done. Everything will wind up over at the compost bin but because there's going to be too much for the small bin, I think I'll just pile it to the side and start a loose pile for stalks and woody stems and the like.

Coming up - harvesting the parsley, planting bulbs, harvesting horseradish, mulching. There's no lack of work to be done out there before freezeup (whatever that is).