End of Season and Finally Posting

The best I can say for this year's gardening is that I'm glad it is finished. This is the last of very few dahlias and they are now dug up and stored for spring in the hope of a better season.
Ditto on the vegetable garden: Cleaned off and ready for spring, this is the best the beds have looked all year. It was a hot, dry summer in SE Michigan and my garden was not very productive. I got some tomatoes, but not a lot, some zucchini and a few green beans. That's about it. After a bumper crop of everything my first year, it was disappointing. Such is the life of a gardener. I forgot about that part.

This is my first year planting winter garlic. I bought Polish Softneck which is supposed to be able to withstand the cold even though it's a softneck. It was advertised as being hot. It is! My husband thinks it's wonderful. I think I planted it too early. It's up about 4 inches above the mulch already. Anybody think I need to add more mulch once it's colder to protect the shoots a bit? I'm new to this.

I guess my compost is ready to plant! Too bad it's so late in the year. These tomatoes have a good start. I'd just leave them there and add water.

From my big compost piles I sifted 12 wheelbarrow loads of nice dark compost and put it on the raised beds. They settled a lot in 2 seasons and were less than half full. I think I will cover them with black plastic for the winter and hope for a bit of solarization. There are a LOT of tomato seeds sprouting in the fresh compost already. The beds are all ready for spring planting now. It's a nice feeling.

This winter I'm going to spend some time making a garden plan for the year in the hopes of getting more out of the garden and planting to take better advantage of the seasons.

And NO volunteer plants allowed in the garden next year. I had a more than a few and it was a waste of space except for one nice red cherry tomato.

This one is a repeat, but for some reason I can't delete it so here it still is.