Closing the Vegetable Beds

It's the end of the season for our vegetable garden, so it's time for us to do a little maintenance on the garden beds!  We use the Vego Garden beds, because I like that they go really well with the designs we used in the backyard, and they are able to be altered and shifted to fit what we need.  This is the second configuration, and while I plan to adjust the trellis situation, I do like how this layout works in our yard.  

​First things first: harvest.  Anything remaining in the beds needs to be harvested.  For this year, that means tomatoes, the remaining summer button squash, and our pumpkins and winter squash.  The winter squash are a really cool hybrid from some of the varieties I grew last year!  I love how lumpy they are. 

So, I'll go through each bed, with gloves, and pull all that I can in the tomato bed first, since this one is in the middle, it'll give me the best access to the surrounding vegetable beds to get this out of the way.  The tomatoes will go inside, and the plants will go in the compost bin. 

Then, I'll move to the summer squash which have barely been hanging on.  Since I had a pretty major infestation of squash beetles this year, I'll need to be more intensive with how I handle these plants: my plan is to take the plant matter from these and move them to the burn pile instead of the compost pile.  This has been a decent way for us to manage problem plants without adding them to the waste stream.  I'll use a similar process for the pumpkins and winter squash, leaving the fruits of these on the deck to finish maturing in the sun.

​There are a few beds that are already emptied of plants, so I'll pull any weeds and till any beds with known pest issues.  I'll move the soil from the potato pots into the empty new bed, (or into other surrounding beds), and cover all the beds with a layer of wood mulch.  I have a lot of cedar mulch left from last spring, and it'll work just as well on these beds as straw and compost.  

I also have the issue of the enclosure structure to figure out.  With the out of control pumpkins this year, it got pulled apart by plants.  I plan to redo most of it next year, with a shorter enclosure and no bird netting over the entire thing.  That will allow me to supplement different beds with the covering that works for their specific needs.  With a changing climate and the desire to extend our growing season, I see hoop houses, shade cloth, and soaker hoses in our future.