With the leaves turning brilliant colors, the shorter days, and the cooler nights, we know that autumn is upon us. It is time to prepare the gardens for the winter. In the past couple of weeks, we have been blessed with warm and sunny weather thatwe’ve taken advantage of to get a lot of outdoor work done. While some of the crops will continue to produce for a little while longer, others cannot handle the cold weather. For those plants, such as tomatoes, tomatillos, beans, and melons, we harvested the last of their produce for the year. Then, wepulled out the plants to put into our compost bin. Before throwing them into the compost, however, we chopped them into smaller pieces to allow them to break down more quickly and efficiently.

We also took advantage of the warm weather to dig up our sweet potatoes. The foliage of these plants was also cut up and composted.

In some areas of the garden, there was still quite a bit of plant material present from the preceding crops. A rototiller was used to mix crop residues into the soil where they will break down and provide nutrients. After tilling and raking the soil, winter rye was sown as a cover crop. A cover crop is used to reduce soil erosion, manage weeds, and enhance soil fertility.