Getting the garden ready for winter

[Gardening with Rabbits]

i bury almost everything grown and try to bury it in the garden it was grown in to keep the nutrients cycling in place.

the things i do not bury are weed roots which may regrow (those get tossed on the weed pile to dry out).

for weeds with a lot of seeds i might dig down extra deep and scrape the top of the garden soil to sequester those weed seeds down deep below the germination zone. the worms may eventually eat them.

this way i am usually only digging up a small part of any garden to bury things (often 10% or less) so it is nearly no till gardening.

i wish i could then plant cover crops for the winter, but i am not the owner here so i have to leave things barer than i'd like. she likes things naked.

with the number of gardens i have to do here and how large they are some of them get done right up until before the ground freezes.

i also bury leaves and any other woody debris some friends bring me from their yard in a nearby city. leaf mold is similar to peat moss when i dig it up again in a few years (when i get back to digging in that part of the garden, i try to cycle my digging through so the whole garden gets turned once every five years and then keep on with the cycle).

Thank you. I am going to bury some of this and see how it goes. I would like to get to the point of a no till garden.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I am a big fan of let it rot myself. But there are also bugs and diseases to consider that might haunt your garden next year. Badly infested stuff I burn. The rest I would pile up out of the way, toss on some hot horse, chicken or cow manure, leaves, all that good stuff, and let it sit til next year. But I'm a lazy gardener like that.

I mostly do that, but this year just too much left and I am a little worried about disease, but this was the healthiest garden I ever had, other than that weird thing with the potatoes, which was just a few plants and I had nice potatoes this year. The only thing I really had in the garden was aphids on the kale towards the end of the season. I picked kale the other day and the aphids are gone, froze I guess.

 

[thistlebloom]

I make applesauce from my trees, and I had so many over and above what I wanted to sauce that I made juice. I don't have any equipment for juice making, I just cooked them until soft then lined a large colander with cheesecloth and let it drip overnight into another large pot. I squished them down occasionally to get as much juice as possible out, then I canned the juice. It turned out really well. It's more the consistency of a fruit nectar, but pretty tasty. Especially warmed.

I use it in fruit smoothies also, and it would probably be good in baked goods instead of milk or water.

I have 4 trees that are unknown, the graft died and the root stock took over. But a couple of them make good fresh eating apples, and one makes huge apples, but they are too tart for eating out of hand. Those make really good dried apple chips though.

 

[Nyboy]

Crab apples are great for pollination of apple trees. If you want to try something new graft branches from a tree who fruit you like on to your tree.

 

[thistlebloom]

I don't think that pollinating apples with a different variety affects flavor.
I agree with Nyboy, if you have a crab in the neighborhood it's a benefit for everybody's apples. Plus very pretty.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

Well, I feel totally stupid, but really part of it is not my fault. I just did not care since all that happened with DH. Apples were the least of anything on my mind. I went out and looked at the tree and there are still apples on the tree. I picked a couple and took in the house. Very crisp, very sweet. Some have a worm hole and they look odd. I think they have some kind of virus or fungus that I need to try to spray for. The inside is not white white, has just sort of a brown, but not all over like they did last year. The leaves that are green look healthy, but the yellowing leaves have brown all over, which the plum and cherry bushes do too. This tree needs to be trimmed. I think I am trying to eat these way too early. I am not sure what month, but apples start falling off, tons of them. I will pick an apple and still green. Why do the apples fall off so early? This picture of the apples on the ground is just one little spot.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I just read that Pixie Crunch apples have a greenish/yellow base. I think I am checking my apples too soon. I think they have some type of fungus or virus. I would have to cut every apple to check before juicing and really a diseased apple does not sound good, but maybe I am comparing to these apples in the store with wax and sprayed and I have no idea what a normal apple looks like. I cut the apple and took the picture right then, so it did not have time to start turning brown. I can see now the yellow I thought was not good is normal for this apple and I was looking for white inside. The apple I ate looked better on the inside, worse on the outside. I would not eat this apple. It is solid and crisp, but maybe it is good enough to make sauce or juice? Do they look like they have some kind of disease? The whole apple when I cut it had a worm hole inside, so tossed it. The cut apple is not the same one, but looked about like it.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I don't think that pollinating apples with a different variety affects flavor.
I agree with Nyboy, if you have a crab in the neighborhood it's a benefit for everybody's apples. Plus very pretty.

I just found that out. I thought they were supposed to be bigger, but read Pixie Crunch is small. What I tasted today was very sweet.

 

[thistlebloom]

Oh Rabbits, don't feel stupid, you have obviously had a lot more to worry about than apple trees for a very long time.

Here's a site that may help you figure out why your apple is dropping apples prematurely.

When the apple trees on my driveway that grew from the root stock started producing I didn't think any of them were worth using. I had tried a few and they were awful.
One day my neighbors were out for a walk and stopped to ask if we were going to use all those apples. No, I replied, they taste terrible.
My neighbor tried one and pronounced it as good as a Gala. So I tried one too and he was right! I just hadn't waited long enough for them to get ripe. Now I know that it takes them until late September/early October before they're ready.

 

[baymule]

I wish I had the problem of too many apples.