Getting ready for winter

The past couple of weeks we got our garden ready for winter and all the weeds. Our yard has been riddled with weeds of all kinds. Slowly we have been trying to eliminate them (most importantly without the use of any chemicals).

Every year we have been covering unused areas with weed fabric or newsprint and a few inches of wood chips. (Read about our experience with Oak mulch here).

 Some of the woodchips we put down in 2008 have already started to decompose really well and are turning into organic matter. I now see weeds growing in them. I am not quite sure how I should deal with this. Add more woodchips on top maybe? or should I first remove the decomposed matter and them add new chips?

In areas (where I intend to plant this summer) I have not put down any weed fabric. Just a nice thick layer of woodchips.

Now that this big task is done...I can rest easy knowing that weeds wont take over my wonderland.

From the summer of 2011

This was very early on in the summer, because after the vegetables started coming in, there was no more time for pictures of the garden.

This picture now adorns my desktop, reminding me how far we have come.

Brrrrrrrr......it is cold

The cold weather has set in almost everywhere in the US, and even in sunny California. We have been busy getting the garden ready for winter.

This is our first attempt at setting up winter protection. The past few years, we have either left the plants to fend for themselves and die in the process. We also housed a lot of the precious ones in pots that were moved indoors.

The precious plants were put inside the ground this winter, to give them the nutrition and the space to grow. So we had to built some protective cover for them.

This is the biggest structure, and it protects 5 Drumstick plants that I carefully grew from seeds (read it here and here)

This protects the Malaysian Guava that died every winter but has successfully managed to come back.

The most treasured possession i.e. my curry leaf plant looks lush in this picture. We pruned it well (with just a few sprigs to spare) and covered it p with some shade fabric and Burlap cloth as with the rest.

The foliage on this plant does not seem like much but the pruning yielded us at least a pound and a half of curry leaves (which is quite a lot, and should last me all winter)

The Loofahs are here

I finally managed to clean up and dry the Loofah Gourds I grew last year. (Read here)

This has been a task waiting to be done since the spring of 2011. This ended up being ZBB'd.

ZBB'd is a jargon (among a million others) that is often used at the new place I have joined and just to get a hang of them I have been using them everywhere. It just means that it is a low priority item and there are other tasks that are higher priority that need to be addressed first.

Now that the year's quota of sunshine was quickly running out, it was time i got these cleaned up. Almost half my Loofahs had some kind of dark discoloration and needed some cleaning. I skinned them and dunked them in a solution of baking soda and bleach mixed in water. After an hour of soaking they were rinsed out separately and left to dry.