Preparing for Winter

bower · September 26, 2016

hi Linda,

I sometimes forget that more civilized places have amazing waste management services, like curbside composting! We'll never have that here. So I just have to deal with it myself, but like you I do at least have lots of room.
We are really soil poor here, so the thought of losing any soil building resource is stressful.

Other garlic growers have commented to me re: the mites this year, these creatures are just here and from time to time there's a bad year. It's like anything else, the natural management within the insect kindom is pretty awesome but it does have swings that can take time to iron out. Grin and bear it, the take home message. I will rotate for sure and learned some lessons about site selection. But the allium waste has to compost like everything else.

I've been thinking that growing tomatoes is like dentistry.

It's all about the risk of rot, right from the get go. How to prevent and treat the decay that will take em down by season's end of a certainty. How to keep the inevitable rot from affecting the fruit load. When to pull one to try and save a row.

I swear by the end of season I am more than happy to get rid of them all and finally let them rot as they've been keening to do since they started.

September 26, 2016	#28
bower Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: Newfoundland, Canada Posts: 6,794	hi Linda, I sometimes forget that more civilized places have amazing waste management services, like curbside composting! We'll never have that here. So I just have to deal with it myself, but like you I do at least have lots of room. We are really soil poor here, so the thought of losing any soil building resource is stressful. Other garlic growers have commented to me re: the mites this year, these creatures are just here and from time to time there's a bad year. It's like anything else, the natural management within the insect kindom is pretty awesome but it does have swings that can take time to iron out. Grin and bear it, the take home message. I will rotate for sure and learned some lessons about site selection. But the allium waste has to compost like everything else. I've been thinking that growing tomatoes is like dentistry. It's all about the risk of rot, right from the get go. How to prevent and treat the decay that will take em down by season's end of a certainty. How to keep the inevitable rot from affecting the fruit load. When to pull one to try and save a row. I swear by the end of season I am more than happy to get rid of them all and finally let them rot as they've been keening to do since they started.