No longer do I hear the throaty and extended songs of the birds in and around the lottie. Their songs have become short and a bit quieter--It is a sign of the times, the time of year...Fall. Time to winterize, or as we say here, "winterklaar maken". There are a number of things to do at this time of year: veggie plots need to be cleaned, soil loosened and covered to protect against the elements and UV rays. The greenhouse needs to be completely emptied of its tom and cucumber plants. Green manure will be pulled-up and lain flat on their plots. The flower garden will be left with a low level of dead plant debris to protect the roots during the winter; however, the taller stems will be removed and laid on paths or on plots that need a bit of extra thickening. The bees--they also need to be made ready for the winter, and their hives secured to the frame on which they stand. Fall transplanting/planting is on the schedule as well. It is alright to mention these things, but I will place some foto's to illustrate more clearly how it looks here. To begin with; the plum tree, Reine Claude d'Oullins had been taking up space on the lottie and had not yet produced the first plum (in six years). That can happen. It is supposed to be one of the sweetest plums one can have, but alas....and so now my partner and I have selected another fruit tree to go in its place, an apple tree--the Malus domestica 'Schellinkhouter' . This is an old and local race. Schellinkhouter is a village close-by where I live and so the tree is a good West-Friesland tree and something to be proud of. Early november is a good month to plant, so it was off to a nursery which had them on sale at 50% off. Just my kind of purchase. Here it is planted and staked: The bees are ready for the winter. They have filled their honey stores for the winter, and they have had their first mite Rx. I will give them their final Rx somewhere in december. When the hive is closed the, it will not be opened until the spring. We have almost no honey left from our bees, but what we do have, we made creamed honey from. One takes a jar of one's honey, and adds to that about 1/10th from already creamed honey (from a sort that makes tiny sugar crystals, instead of coarser grains). It sort of works like yoghurt in this sense. Then I would stir it slowly for ~ten minutes each day until the crystallization began to spread evenly. The honey becomes thicker and thicker, until it is ready to just let sit. Here is one of the jars that we made: Why do we do this? Because honey will eventually set-up with sugar crystals. The thing is, that my honey may make coarse crystals that would then have to be "melted" with the au bain-marie method--a time-consuming and precise procedure, just to get the honey back to a liquid state. When you cream honey, then it is effectively already "sugared", but with crystals so small, that they are imperceptible...and thus preserved for a very long time. The last look at a young colony. I hope that it makes it. Right then, moving along--Harvesting. I harvested leeks and parsnips. I did not take them all, however. I shall leave the rest and harvest as needed. We cleaned out the greenhouse and placed what toms there still were, on the plank to slowly turn red. Here you can see the roots of the toms that I extracted. You may recall that I do not plant my toms vertically, but rather I lie them horizontally in a graded furrow, as it were. The long stretch of root that you see was actually the stem of the elongated plant, which I planted in May. Toms are wonderful at producing roots for water uptake as well as feeding. Now, finally--the covered plots. Two plots on the southern front: More plots alongside the path to the greenhouse (it will need chipping later on in the year). A closer look: Here, a plot with Phacelia (green manure). The open space is where garlic has been planted, but has not come up yet: Finally, an overview: You know, I almost never am aware of the trains that pass by the lottie because I am so used to them. One day, when I was working to get the bees ready for the winter my partner took a couple of pics, and just at the moment a train zoofed-by. At closer examination (foto enlargement), I saw that this girl was taking a pic of what was going on. I had no idea that gardening was THAT interesting...well, bees, yes--but still worth a piccie?
How on Earth do you do it, Sjoerd? Your plots look marvelously tidy at all seasons. I'd say the winterizing job's well done. Maybe the girl's a tourist trying to document everything she passes? Or else she just loved your garden, and I don't find that strange at all.
I was thinking the same thing... everything always looks so tidy and healthy and pretty and interesting and...
Thanks very much, DROOPY-- What a nice thing to say. Well, I do put a lot of time into the lottie, so it ought to have a bit of acceptable appearance. Many of my fellow allotment members do not see eye-to-eye with the way that I protect my plot soil, as they are from the old school and have their methods chipped into stone. Well, I guess that the plots may look messy with the protective debris on top, but when you see the wonderful condition of the soil the following spring--it makes it all worth it. It WAS interesting--that photographer in the window. Thank you so much, CHERYL--You are so kind. Ach NETTY--but your garden IS just so nice. In fact it looks even nicer than mine. (I saw your recent foto's). Your spread looks particularly attractive in layout and plant choice. I recognise that.
I'm a bit behind this year. Winterizing is taking longer than usual---or more likely, it's been the warm fall that makes me hesitate to shut down some beds. Your garden looks really nice and tidy.
Thanks Prickly-- You know...I am late here as well. The season has just gone on and on, annnnd the season was late in beginning this year as well. Good for my bees; they are still bringing in pollen, I see. I still have quite a bit of green foliage in the flower garden, but I shall soon remove that. Thanks so much for saying my veggie garden looks tidy. That was a nice thing to do.
