Garden Cleanup

We had our first "killing" frost a couple of weeks ago and the garden is ready to be put to bed for the winter.  Tom has been working on the dead plant matter out in the field, while I've been working on the raised beds.  I try to do a little bit every time the weather is nice.

This weekend we had some beautiful fall days and I tackled the tomato vines.

These are the ones pictured from behind in the following post about the stripped tomatoes.

http://windyacresnaturalfarm.blogspot.com/2013/09/remember-stripped-tomatoes.html

First, I had to round up the appropriate gear and tools.

And, since I'm basically lazy, I had to have a stool to sit on.  This is my "rocker" stool.  It does not sink down into the dirt like a stool with legs would do and, since it "rocks", it also allows you to lean over to reach things easily.

Here's the pile of tomato vines I ended up with.

It is amazing how big some of the stalks were.  Here's an example.

The vines all went into the compost pile there by the bed.

The black plastic bags there contain leaves that Tom collected from a friends house.  These got put on top of the tomato vines.  

This is a concept that I learned about composting many years ago.  It is good to "layer" your compost ingredients.  I like to use fibrous material, like tomato vines, for at least one of the layers to introduce air into the compost.  This layer traps air pockets that contain oxygen, one of the essential ingredients to have aerobic decomposition take place.  

It is best if you can also "turn" your compost pile ever so often to mix everything up and introduce more air to help keep the aerobic process going.  I don't usually do that with this compost pile, since it gets mixed in with the BIG compost pile that Tom has going out in the field.  Here is a link to one of the posts I have written about that one.  It gets so hot from the decomposition process that it produces steam when turned in cold weather!

http://windyacresnaturalfarm.blogspot.com/2011/12/smoking-compost.html