Putting the garden to bed

At the end of a tiring but mostly successful growing season, the garden deserves a good rest. Last week Christian helped me to lay the garden down for a long fall and winter's sleep. First a shot of how overgrown and unkempt I allowed the garden to get in the last days and weeks of summer:


Some knowledge to apply to my next attempts:

-Always and judiciously prune indeterminate tomato plants; mine got too out of hand and terribly tangled, making it difficult to discern one plant from the next and also hard to pick the fruit

-Bigger does not always mean better: It would have behooved me to focus my energy on fewer plants and given more individual attention to those specimens

-Allow adequate spacing! Even with my crowding problems last year, I still did not allow enough room for rows and individual plants to really flourish. Spacing is of utmost importance

Christian and I filled several large containers with the season's final peppers, sparse eggplants and green tomatoes (at this moment ripening in the windowsill). The plants were pulled and gathered into a compost pile. As a final measure we broadcast seeds of a winter green cover (crimson clover, buckwheat, etc.) over the newly bare soil. Hard to say if the seeds will sprout before the frost kills their chances, but we shall see.

Most of the garden lies in shade by this time of year, thanks to the condos next door. The back of the garden, nearest the hedge, does still receive a fair bit of light in the late afternoon.
The cloche was set up again to house the carnivorous plants I've gathered over the summer, and the cold frame has been re-appropriated again, this time to house additional carnivorous plant seedlings that will not fit in the cloche.

The inside of the cloche lined with flats of carnivorous plants

Five flats fit inside the cold frame just right.