Ready For Winter

This week we finally put the garden to bed. We pulled up all the pathetic excuses for tomato plants. We had about 7 or 8 tomato plants and they just didn't do crap. They did a lot better than my potato plants did. I got nothing. One potato that was fairly decent and a couple of acorn sized babies. Of course, I started out with sprouts from the kitchen that were on their way to the trash.

The one thing that took off was the strawberries The Girl planted all along the sides of the garden. She planted 10, and got a good amount of actual berries. I heard you're supposed to pinch off the flowers to encourage root growth, or maybe to make the plant send off more babies, I'm not sure which. Anyway, we ignored that advice and still ended up with a ton of little strawberry babies. We had to do something with them because we need to till up the garden. Our soil is really crappy. Lots of clay. Doesn't even make nice mud pies. Anyway, The Girl and I dug up around the ash tree in the back yard and planted them all around it. We took bricks from the big front bed and circled it up so it matches the tree in front, except that one surrounded by irises, not berries.

I also dug up my rosemary plant. It grew pretty well considering it was overgrown by the tomatoes and strangled by the cantaloupes. I also have a baby grapefruit tree that I brought inside. I ate a grapefruit one night that was full of big fat seeds that had already sprouted. I decided to plant them in the big flowerpot by the driveway and see if they grew. They did. One got taken over by weeds, but one is a nice little plant now, about a foot tall. I'm as proud as I can be.