The Fall Garden

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Here's a view of the garden from on top of the barn. The summer plants are dead and gone - the massive sunflowers are now hanging from the ceiling in the cabin to dry. The corn is gone - only Brassicas and root vegetables and chard and peas and lettuce are left:

A view from the duck pen. The masonry tub is the ducks' pool which they bathe and shit in and my source of high-nitrogen duckwater:

Here you can see the duck nest box which I built for when they're ready to lay. Wooden eggs are inside on a nest of mulch:

Brassicas. Cabbage, kale, collards, brussel sprouts, etc. The green beans in the middle are dead, soon to be pulled. This is a bed that was added onto the garden for potatoes in the spring. The potato harvest had been seriously reduced from flea and potato beetles, and a late May 4th frost. The newspaper and cardboard keeps the weeds down beneath the fence line:

Inside the garden - Brassicas and chard and peas. You can see I've wrapped the raised beds in plastic using old tarps secured with long U's of wire. This reduces erosion and keeps weeds down. There is a heavy mulch layer of grass clippings across the beds . . . a very successful garden strategy, keeps weeds down, softens rain, reduces erosion, fertilizes the beds, evens temperatures and keeps them moist. The chard was slow to get going but once established nearly indestructible - can be cut from again and again:

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