In September and early October, gardening waned. The tomato plants fell to disease and gravity. The lettuce bolted. The deformed carrots had been pulled. The chives were wilting in the heat and the drought. The marigolds were more deadheads than blooms. It was the end of the road for the garden. We'd kept up a steady two hours of work a week in our small plot. But once the tomato plants lost the fight, there really wasn't much to do but clean up. Given that we'd planned a road trip for mid-October, we put everything on hold until this week. We pulled out the remaining tomato plant tangled in its cage. We picked up all the tomatoes we could find in the mulch. We'll have volunteers next summer without a doubt, but we did what we could to limit that. We pulled out the old salad greens, but there's signs of self-seeding. Looks like we may have more arugula.
A shared adventure in organic backyard gardening and composting