Monday, October 09, 2006

2006 - October - winterizing step 1

For the last couple of nights we have had a bit of frost. That is our hint that winter is not far away and we should be starting the clean up and winterizing of our container garden.

2006 Last tomato harvestThe first major task was to remove the tomato plants and harvest what we can. We picked three containers of tomatoes (photo 1). The removal of the tomato plants and cleanup is a semi-dirty job. If you have a pair of work gloves I would recommend that you use them or you will be having fun cleaning the green stain from your hands afterwards. The rootballs were quite small and it took only minimal effort to remove from the planters, it also helped that this year we mixed a lot of peat moss in the soil mix too.




2006 before tomatoes removedThe yard is now starting to look a bit bare with our 'jungle' removed. Next year we will not be putting in tomatoes again. As much as we like them the space they take up can be used for a lot of other plants and/or herbs/spices.

2006 after tomatoes removed
This is the first step we take to prepare our planters for winter. The next step later on is to physically move all of the planters to the east side wall (along the fence in the last two photos) and then cover them up for the winter. A future blog will be written (with photos) to show what we do to protect our plants from the effects of an Ottawa Winter.

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