Winding down the garden

Autumn is here in Ohio...

and we are getting festive for the season!

Check out all our homegrown pumpkins and gourds!

Our garden is winding down though we are still harvesting chiles, tomatoes, beets, carrots and many herbs.  The carrots and beets will be fine for a few more months outdoors. The parnsips will soon we ready and we are so excited!  We planted new patches of cilantro, spinach and lettuce in our cold frame so that should keep us going for a few more months and for the first time ever we planted garlic.  We planted the cloves about two weeks ago in one of our raised beds.  See the straw covered bed below.  They should be ready next summer!

We are preparing our finished beds for winter by weeding and edging and throwing those organic materials directly into the bed.  

Once we've piled up some nice organic matter we top the whole bed with compost, straw, mulched grass or mulched leaves depending on what we have on hand at the time.  The beds pictured below grew our squash this year and will grow our tomatoes next year.  We will pull the mulching back to plant, but otherwise leave it in place to compost and feed the soil. 

These beds were our main tomato growing area.  The goldfinches are loving the sunflower seeds!

We will tackle more of the garden once we receive our first frost.  Overall, our first garden here in Ohio proved INCREDIBLE!