Hi,
the autumn is here and there is not much more work in my garden to be done. I did some late summer vegetables seeding and the results should be here soon. But now is the time to start thinking about the next year, it’s time to start preparing garden for new 2018. In order to start preparing let’s first do the recapitulation of this year success and failures.

Failures in garden in 2017

I think we should first start with what failed this year, and then move on to the successes.

1. Still lacking the pollinators. Even though this year was much much better when it comes to pollinators that visited the garden, there were still periods when there were none. So I have to add more versatile plants to draw the pollinators.When we had pollinators in the garden we had much much more fruits on plants. And even managed to get a couple of watermelons.
2. Salad was nonexistent thanks to our cat This wasn’t a failure itself, but we ate only one lettuce head. The rest were subject to our cat’s naps and heat. So I have to find a way to prevent our cat from napping in the salad. I tried starting the salad indoors and then transferring the young plants outside, but that didn’t stop Antoaneta from napping on them. She did get a new nickname – salad destroyer.
3. Need more then one tomatillos. This year I planted one. It did give us some fruit, but it does need to cross – pollinate. So a complete rookie mistake in growing tomatillos. It will be rectified next year. The bees are very interested in it, and it’s still blooming. We may get some more fruit till the first frost in the late October.
4. A ton of grass grew in the street garden. And I mean a ton. I don’t know how much grass did we pull this year. But there were bags and bags of grass. I need to think of a solution how to stop it from growing until the siberian dogwood arrives.
5. Blueberries died They managed to hold on till the last heat wave followed by a storm. But this year proved to be too much for them. I don’t know if I’ll try to grow them again.

Successes in garden in 2017

This year was also year of success. We did some nice pallet projects and had an abundance of tomatoes. Here are all of the successes.

1. Our bin storage We finally did a bin storage from pallets. And its greenroof with succulents is looking great. I’m really pleased with the result.
2. Lots of tasty tomatoes We’ve been plucking and eating our tomatoes entire summer. Even hubby is pleased with this year tomatoes. Likely the tomato flowers were in bloom together with lavender. And lavender drew a lot of pollinators.
3. Lavender improved the number of fruits It was a real winner. Those lavender plants really improved pollination.Now I have to find plants for other times of the year.
4. Tulips and daffodils in the spring Oh it was wonderful to look at them out of the window. I can’t wait for the to return in the next year.
5. Pallet planters and covers I did a couple of planters from the rest of the pallets and I covered the planters in front of our house entrance in pallet wood. I’m really happy how it’s looking. Especially the planter that I planted with mums and heather, and muehlenbeckia and tulips. It’s looking great, and should be awesome all year long.
6. Lemon grass I finally managed to grow and preserve lemon grass. Me so lucky 🙂

Preparing garden for 2018

We already had started preparing garden for 2018. The side and front street garden has been weeded out as soon as the soil was wet enough. I still have a bit of grass to pull but it’s much better now. Also I have to put the gravel by the neighbour’s drive way to keep that place weed free, and more gravel is needed in front of the house TO stop the weeds from coming back.

I finally have enough compost to renew the soil in the containers. So my main task is to make the compost hot enough to keep composting through the winter. Then in spring I will dump all of the soil from the containers and mix it in with the compost. It should improve the soil greatly and allow me to have a bounty of tomatoes next year as well. I let the soil sit in the containers during the winter so it freezes, and pests are minimized.

Taking care of roses

One thing I still have to do is plant the mini roses I bought this year. I don’t want to plant them in the big containers, I want to be able to use those really mini ones as a table plant. But they still need a bigger container then they are in now. I will also divide them, ’cause right now they are crowded.

The next thing to do is to try to propagate my standard almost yellow roses that turned up yellow this autumn, because I lost one this summer due to weather. I wanted to replace them with those yellow ones but decided against it in the end, when the rest of the roses pulled through the summer and started blooming again. These were blooming almost entire year, except winter and periods of extreme heat. It would be a pity to lose them.

Preparing garden furniture and containers

If you have wooden furniture and container covers like I do, make sure you protect them with the right coating. Mine is all oiled, so I will be doing some re-oiling of furniture before putting it in attic and will oil the planters and covers as well. Make sure you do it in the warm and dry weather so that oil can penetrate the wood.

I have a lot of small containers that I use for seeding and propagating plants. I need to wash them a bit and put them in the storage area. Some of them will be used to propagate roses and geranium. You want to wash them to remove possible spores and make them better for plants. I still didn’t manage to get hydrogen peroxide, but if you manage to get some peroxide you can also desinfect them, I’ll trust my soap and sun to make sure thy are as clean as they can be.

Big containers will be freed of annual plants and lest to freeze. The ones that have the perennials like clematis will be protected from the cold by wrapping them in the felt or similar material If i don’t manage to make covers for them.

Also our brick barbecue need to get an improvement So we are able to keep the wood by it side. I need to do that this weekend if the weather permits it. Then we can stash some wood that we currently have laying around the yard. There should be some more nice sunny days for autumn barbecue and this would help a lot.

I think this is it for preparing garden for 2018. I still have to plan for spring next year, I have to find good annuals to help control the weeds in the side street garden. Hopefully some yellow summer flowering annuals seeds will be in garden center this year.

Cheers 🙂