The Fall - Garden Cleanup

 I can not say this year was a great success in my gardening efforts, thwarted by allergies to the vaccine for the virus and the overall painful joints and tiredness, I was certainly not in a place physically to do so much.  I was very upset because I had made plans to do so much in the garden this year but one can only do what our bodies allow.

My strawberries did great and I froze them until the Noah's Ark weather came and the snails decided to party day and night in the strawberries.  I really hate the snails, they make me physically sick when I see them, they are just nasty and gross.  One reason why we have so many in our gardens is open composting, (of which I am not a fan), it's a breakfast buffet for the snails and of course they reproduce and make more very quickly.  Here in the Netherlands there are over 200 different types of snails (slakken) -- with and without houses, huge sized snails that are too big for many of the birds to carry off, and I've seen brow, black and white, black, black with white underside, many mutated colors of shells on the house snails.  It seems the only real effective method is going at night with a blue light or flash light and picking them up and disposing of them.  I didn't have this issue in the States, and here it's really a job to attempt to keep them at bay.  I inherited one open compost and I am going to rethink that for the following year, perhaps wire mesh around and on top to keep them out, but I guess if they are eating in the compost they are leaving the rest alone for a bit.  

My fruit trees did not do well, too much rain and the late freeze//frost was not kind to them.  My raspberries and blackberries have done extremely well.  I have this past week cut many of them back to the ground to regain some order and to reinvent the wheel as to how to maintain them.  My herbs did really well, and I am extremely happy that I made the decision to put the most of them in pots and sink the pots into a bed with black weed block.  It gave me more control over their health because the water was not standing when we had downpours and drowning them, and I could maintain the soil easier.  I will be moving some to the greenhouse for the winter months in hopes that I can maintain them for next year.  My yacon plants did great, but I had to remove them too early due to a bizarre situation where they were planted.  

My favorite things I grew this year that did well were:  Comfrey, Catmint, Lemon Balm, Strawberry Balm, calendula, nasturiums, and snack paprikas (bell peppers).  I also grew aloe and a ginseng tea plant.  The borage went wild and I have harvested flowers for oils.  My other favorites were the strawberry plants that have white berries, very small but lovely taste, sage, mint, basil, chives, garlic, onions and of course all the berries.  

My prei, I had around 100 plus a few plants and I trashed I think 6 -8 that went to seed, the rest resulted in 45 liters in the freezer for the winter and some I stashed in sand to use fresh until it's colder.  

Unsuccessful -- bitter melon, (although courgette produced a few, not normal like the one or two everyday to harvest as in previous years), most of my bell peppers the snails ate, and my tomatoes were not their typical growing selves, less fruit and after I babied those plants inside for months GRRRRRR.

The beets,  the colored swiss chard, heirloom spinach, lettuce, cabbage, celery, all did great, but I did find that my celery in containers grew more than 3x the size of the rest of what I saw in the gardens around me, so I am going to stick with that next year.  

I've planted alot of mustard seeds this week and it came up in three days because we had the warmest days of all summer and it was dry until yesterday, so I should have plenty for the winter and I hope it will also help retain the good soil that I am finally managing to create here.  The soil in my gardens was not at all healthy, and I've continuously added compost compost and more compost but the best thing that I have found is still covering with leaves and letting that compost down, the microbial bacteria really helps in this wet country, and in the beds with the heavy amount of leaves the worms were huge and the soil was fluffy.  So I need to find a good place to get good leaves for all of the beds for next year.  

My rambling needs to stop now, I have to do a quick cleanup before my company arrives and bake some cookies that I can't eat. 

Oh snap, before I forget, I did mail out 30 or so packages of  the heirloom spinach seeds this week, and I'll hopefully get the rest done within a few days.  My helper has used up all the vacation days so I am back to doing solo again so I have to choose my priorities carefully and plan around when I can go away, and that's not always easy for me with the different time schedules around the work times.