Fall is maybe my favorite time in the garden. It's much, much cooler but not yet cold, so you can get a LOT done easily. The type of thing you're doing is much easier, too: digging up old crap and getting beds ready for winter/spring. You can be almost entirely indiscriminate in your approach, which is probably my favorite way for things to be.
Which brings us into the weeds.
By this time in the season, I've got dwindling actual plant growth in the garden, and what is there just needs to be cleared away. A lot of this is weeds, which usually get pulled, but since there are no useful plants to save, I use a long garden fork to just dig those things right out. It's super fun because it's super easy. You just pull them up and then pick them out.
Right now I'm getting two late summer carrot beds ready for fall planted onions. Next up is tilling the soil so it's nice and loose for the new plants. I use a small electric tiller for the beds, since I only need to dig down a few inches. Then it gets smoothed out with a rake.
These beds will get filled with onion sets, which are tiny onions that will be placed into the beds, covered with mulch, and allowed to over winter in the garden before popping up in spring and growing through the season. It's like planting ahead for spring in the fall, which frees you up to do other stuff then. Note: This is not the same as planting garlic in the fall; garlic needs the cold winter temps to grow in the spring. Onions just tolerate the low temps.
Janie likes to help out in the garden. Unfortunately, her help usually consists of digging holes where I don't want them.
The other fun thing about weeding is you end up with a big bucket of greens for the goats and chickens, along with a bunch of dirt that almost certainly contains a few worms.
And for that, the animals seem appreciative.
Now on to planting. Onward!
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