Wagon Hill Farm Community Garden growing greater good

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind when trying to decide what to put on the compost piles:

• Avoid adding any plants that seem diseased.  Bring a trash bag and bag those plants, take the bag home and dispose in your own trash.
• Try not to add plants or vegetables with seeds that will sprout next spring.  These can be thrown into the fields.  For example, all my tomato plants and damaged tomatoes went into the field, as did my marigold plants.  I know that some of you have already put tomato plants and tomatoes into the compost but it’s a good idea not to continue to do that.  Squash are also notorious for sprouting “volunteers”.  I find I am always sympathetic to these volunteers in the spring time (after all they have weathered the hard winter along with me) but generally regret letting them grow later in the season.
• Chop up vines, stems, large leaves, in order to speed up decomposition.  A sharp shovel blade or edger works well for this.

Here are a couple of examples of how the raised beds should be “finished” off for the season:

• Cold weather crops can be left in the beds until November, but the rest of the bed should be cleaned out.
•  People who have in ground plots should also cover the soil with mulch to protect it.
•  This is a good time to top off your beds and add manure since it will have time to “mellow” by spring.  I bring the bedding from my chicken coop and add it at this time.  Also you will want to cover your beds with leaves and/or straw.(Straw is available for your use at the garden).  Some gardeners have found it helpful to lay stakes or tack string across their beds to keep the straw from blowing off.