GA: Completely finished for the year

I've officially finished pulling all the things, after a final harvest of chard, leeks, carrots, and beets.

It was a fun and rewarding year!

Key take-aways from this year:

- Insects were NOT a big problem at all!

- Weeds were a HUGE time-sucker!

- Next year I hope to put weed cloth or whatever it's called on the paths to reduce the amount of weeding needed.

- I loved it!

GA: Beet harvest (wimpy)

Harvested all of the beets sown July 18th.  They never bulked up -- a lot are quite small, a few are a bit bigger, but no really good nice big ones.

The yard beets never did great this year either other than a few big ones.

GA: Final carrot harvest -- TONS AND TONS!!!

Wow, I had no idea how many carrots there were!  Will definitely be donating a good chunk of them!

The original sowing, of Bolero, whose greens always looked wimpy so I thought there wasn't much carrotness underground, actually were great!  Tons and tons!

The ones sown July 17th -- "Red Cored Chantenay" -- their fronds always looked strong and sure enough, a great harvest there, too.  These ones were broad at the top with a quick taper, a shorter carrot overall.  Definitely a different shape than the narrow Bolero.

Did a taste test -- at first I thought Bolero were sweeter, but really actually I think they all taste the same!  (yum)

Leaf collection in full swing -- putting pre-soaked alfalfa below leaf layer

So far, have collected 2 garbage bags and 1 garbage bin worth of leaves.  I estimate 2 more garbage bins will probably be enough to cover the rest of the yard.  It's a lot less now that the central bed has gone back to the dogs as of a month or two agol

Below the leaves I'm scattering pre-soaked alfalfa pellets.  The only place that doesn't have the alfalfa is under the big rock pile in the south part of the west bed -- that's where I'll put carrots next year.

Garlic: Planted the rest of it

The second half of the garlic (some Elephant, some "regular") went in today.  Elephant in the north section, Regular in the lower section.  Two of the elephant bulbs were MASSIVE (they're the first two from the left in the northmost row here).

And, I added kelp as well as pre-soaked alfalfa to these ones, and scattered that over top of the first half garlic too.

All is covered by a thick layer of leaves.

One of the "regular" garlic bulbs was half-bad/shrivelled -- very disappointing at $25/pound plus tax!  But overall I still had enough to fill my ~4x4 foot garlic bed area.