Cleaning out the garden today...not even a tenth done and already deposited two heaping cartloads of stuff in the coop. Those birds won't be walking on the ground for weeks!
Every year I promise myself I won't let the weeds takeover near the end of the season and every year I break that promise. It was just too much vine tangle in the corn to even get in there and roust out weeds. Next year, if I'm still here, I plan to plant less and manage it more....someone had mentioned twirling the vines around the plant base in a circle and I like that idea. For sure these big pumpkins can't be trellised but I'd love to keep them off my fences and from taking over the garden.
Next year...plant less, manage it better, keep it neater. I promise!!!
One thing I have this year from last year's few that I planted....Black eyed Susans!!! Many good plants and starts of them! These will be moved to the front and side flower beds and some will be moved to the front of the garden, along the fenceline.
The red flowering everlasting strawberries survived and produced better than the regular white blooming everlasting plants...some of those just up and died. The others are still producing wads of berries! I'll be filling in the gaps where others died with cultivars from the reds come spring and just keep growing those.
That blueberry plant has survived but hasn't grown one inch nor produced any bloom at all...it's just there.
The chives were not harvested at all this year and were let go to seed and do what they wanted...as a result, I have two huge clumps of chives that I can now split off in threes and replant in a line along the fence. Chives seem to thrive in this BTE, so the more the merrier. Can't get an onion or garlic to grow, but I can get chives to grow like crazy.
I'm thinking about planting more garlic this fall and see if it does better than the spring planted did.
Harvested all the various squash, pumpkins and watermelon and they don't amount to much when one views it in the light of just how much vine had filled my garden. Never again. No more watermelon...they just don't do well in my clay soil. The same seed was planted in Joel's little plot with his sandy soil underneath and his watermelon produced BIG, ripe and very flavorful melons...around 13-14 melons from 5 plants. I had about a million seeds planted in my garden and I harvested three or four and not a one matured and ripened sufficiently.
If I plant it again it will be two seeds in one hill and the vines will be twirled in a circle or laid out in straight rows only. I like this variety because the leaves and melons are so very pretty and they are pretty disease and parasite resistant if they get enough nutrition. I had planted Joel's in a hill of horse manure while mine were just seeded in the soil, no hills and very little manure.
I'm leaving the 4 ft. jalapeno plant for a bit, though the three branches have all split off the main stem due to the heavy peppers on them...just staked it and tied those up for support and will see about finishing off peppers there.
Got two yellow squash plants that are still looking good and blooming but are covered over with squash beetles and such of all kinds and not really producing anything, so will be pulling those up.
The chickens are all in the garden now, having a heyday from all the bugs we are disturbing and all the left over tomatoes and strawberries we are dropping here and there. I'm going to have to put netting over the strawberries to protect them but everything else is fair game for a bit.
It's fun taking this garden from disaster to clean...I think that may be why I let things go a bit, just for the fun of cleaning it up and making it look great again. I do the same thing with my bedroom now and again....let it get cluttered so I can work a miracle.
. We've got such a long growing season here and I love that, I've still got cucumber blossoms and squash blossoms that'll produce soon. 
Sweet chickens. Thanks for sharing!!
