Late Autumn Garden Update

I'm in Northern BC Canada, where winter comes on hard and fast. Today I saw snow for the first time since Spring, and woke up to frost yesterday! Winter is fast approaching, so it's time for my late Autumn garden update!

The last of the tomatoes are in, the beans are long gone, the second lettuce crop was polished off the other day. About 20 carrots remain in the ground to be seed next year (carrots are biannual). But other than that, and a few sunflowers, the garden is finished for 2023.

When I saw the frost Saturday morning, I went out to the farmers market and brought home an apple tree! I knew it was time to get it rooted, before the ground freezes.

A few fading sunflowers came out to make way for the apple tree. I put it where it will have plenty of room, even if I decide to add a second one next to it. Gave the ground a good working, and added in some dead leaves for mulch.

We're lucky the soil here is pretty good. This whole area used to be a farm, I'm told.

There she is! The pink ribbon says Regent B118. I think that means it's a Regent variety, and was grafted using a B118 rootstock. Let's hope that's suitable for my needs! The price was right.

There it is, firmly planted in the ground. I'll put some more topsoil and then some leaves on top, to keep the roots warm as they anchor in.

This year, I turned a barren back yard into a small homestead! I added a firepit, 2 blueberry bushes, an apple tree, 2 big vegetable gardens, a compost, and a sunflower patch.

Progress photos

Hints of yellow appearing in the trees:

Lettuce getting used up and leaves beginning to fall:

No more tomato plants... or lettuce...

Morning frost! We're on our way to Winter!

Put in the apple tree:

Cleaned up the wood pile back by the firepit:

Putting in a garden for garlic, daffodils, and other bulbs along the left fence...

After taking that photo, I realized the newly-exposed ground isn't going to enjoy the freezing weather coming our way, so I gave it a thick layer of fallen leaves:

Today, I finished digging the bulb garden and covering it with leaves:

Next, I'll plant the bulbs in the soil under those leaves, so they're up first thing in the Spring. I think mid Autumn would have been ideal, but now is still a good time to get them in. I'm always amazed that bulbs (essentially little plant nuggets) can survive at 30 degrees below freezing, for months on end. My grandparents were always big on bulbs (food and flowers), and I'm starting to see the appeal. It should look (and taste, in the case of the garlic) very nice next year!

Six and a half months of work, shown in daily progress photos, edited into this clip:

A lot of memories! It has been an interesting first year here. I've never grown food this far North before! I was happy to get all 6 of my tomato varieties grown, harvested, and their seeds stored away for future years. Next year should be pretty amazing, considering I won't have to dig up the garden from scratch when the ground thaws!

Autumn here was good for mushrooms! I posted a few days ago about finding and cooking shaggy manes.

We've also found a lot of medicinal/spiritual/recreational mushrooms... the fly agaric (amanita muscaria):

Those 2 popped up in the grass nearby the other day. I put them in the dehydrator to remove the water, preserving them for later and converting all the active ingredients into the best form.

Autumn is giving way to Winter, and it's sad to see the garden go, but the calendar will come back around again, and Spring isn't too far away. Next year is going to be great here in the garden.

Some detail is lost, but it's interesting to watch the whole thing in 5 seconds:

Thank you for coming along for this ride!
Keep on growing!
DRutter