Yesterday was one of those perfect fall day’s, sunshine, light cool but not cold breeze, falling leaves and a willing husband who wanted a full day of physical work. I on the other hand, wrapped myself in way to many layers, hauled a chair with me so I could sit and took to short walks and then leaned on things.. but at least my mouth moved and was helpful in the work process. (I also cooked and prepared meals etc)

The first order of the day was to finally finished moving the last of the natural cedar mulch, there was 18 wagon loads of it left to be moved..  because I wanted it moved to the very front paths of the kitchen garden pathways.

This is the view of Kitchen Garden Bed 1 on the left in the photo..

It meant that we needed to fix the issue with kitchen garden bed 1..  Now I put so much soil to level this bed out this spring and it produced like a house of fire.. But the soil leached on the yard side.. with no real break between the bed and the pathway.. they were already blending in a way that I knew was a issue and would continue to be a issue.

So edging is the answer.. 4 six foot older pulled posts were laid into the ground to create a bed edge.. the pathway was cleaned out, at least a dozen rooted out strawberry plant runners where taken out and that pathway was refilled with a number of cedar mulch.

Then it took 4 wagon’s of well done rabbit compost added at the rate of a 1 inch layer over the whole bed.. And then 8 wagon’s more top soil over top of the compost to finish filling up the KG Plot 1.

I am still struggling how I want to cover that new soil..  I am not keen on having it left bare for the winter.. leaves I think will be the answer.. we will see..  This plot has been worked, feed and prepped to be a root garden next year. I am hoping to work it as a two season garden.. I want two plantings out of it..

Below is Plot 3 (my widest plot of all of them and the back side is done with a wood stopper to level out the bed..  This bed is a full 6 feet across and 22 feet long.

Kitchen Garden Plot 3 had a wood chip cover on it that will need to be turned into the soil and does not make plot 3 a good choice for fine seed planting next year.. however plot 3 was a multi-growth plot.. It produced a massive amount of food and its sheltering a large number of little shrubs in the back row that will hopefully live to be moved next spring into their prepared more full time gigs.. The big row of pinks are still flowering and so I have not pulled them yet..

Still 4 wagon loads of well done rabbit compost was placed on the bed on both sides of the flower row, and once they are dead and pulled out, we will turn it in to the whole plot.

We also added rabbit compost on top of the rhubarb plant in plot 2 and on top of the strawberry bed, once it dies back a bit more.. It also needs soil top up..  The pathways around plot 1, 2, 3, circle garden and rock garden all got full re-bedding down.

The perk of Plot 2 is that its all come backs.. other then trimming some of them down, and splitting in the spring to give them extra space and to have splits to move to other parts of my garden.. its done for the year as well.

One plot at a time it will get done and next year.. I am very hopeful that we will have much more of our normal garden on the go!

So are you putting your garden’s to bed.. how much compost do you like to put on them in the fall? What improvements are you working on? Did you have a new area that you did this year? what did you like about it? what did you find needed improvement? What is your plan on getting it to work harder for you in 2020?