Putting the garden to bed and taking stock

We've had an amazing fall here in Flagstaff. Our average first frost date is September 15, but I was harvesting tomatoes till about 2 days ago, when the warm spot in my front yard finally got below freezing. We seem to be getting our cold weather at last, so I hereby declare this weekend the End of Gardening Season for 2016.

It's been a good gardening year for me, when my enthusiasm for my favorite hobby rekindled, and I got to work on a bunch of projects (see the About page for my saga of gardening in Flagstaff to date). This year's accomplishments include:

1. Finishing the drainage ditch/dry creek bed in the front yard:



2. Hauling a crap ton of manure (tee hee. "crap ton" "manure" Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.) to attempt to create decent soil in our front yard garden. I still need to haul tons more, but the plants are already doing better (not that you can tell from these pictures; freezing temps killed off most signs of life).





3. Creating a container garden in a warm, sheltered corner by the front door, in hopes that I will have fresh herbs and green onions through at least part of the cold months. This plan is working so far; I harvested a big bunch of parsley for chimichurri last night, as well as a big bundle of green onions for topping baked potatoes.







4. Started constructing a new kitchen garden in a boring, formerly-unused corner of our front yard:





The new beds are filled with barn litter, straw and chicken manure from our coops, horse manure from a riding stable a few miles away, and old straw my husband scored from a guy at the dump. One of these days I'll write a post on frugal gardening and scavenging.

I'm using the Lasagna Gardening method, which I prefer to tilling. It served me well in Portland and Southern California; hopefully it will work just as well here. If you want to try it, here are a couple of books to get you started. The first one is the original Lasagna Gardening, and the second one adapts the techniques to smaller spaces. Both are excellent. And fall is a great time to gather materials for new lasagna beds!




And so another gardening year comes to a close. Time to celebrate the harvest and give thanks for our many blessings. Today I give thanks for the year that was, for the lessons I learned and the many joyful hours I spent in the garden.