Garden Clean-up

It's time to clean up the veg garden beds and set the cold frame.   

I've been doing a lot of reading about garden pests this year since we've had so blasted many pests this year and it seems that a lot of these guys overwinter in garden debris.    Usually we either leave things until Spring or toss them all to the chickens.   Either way, the bugs are staying. 

We have to burn them.    All that straw that I used to mulch with [and it was great mulch!] doesn't get to stay and be turned over.   It has to be pulled up and burned.   Maybe this will give us an edge over the bugs next year.  

Fingers crossed! 

Here are the beds prepped for burning.   You can tell I filled the beds up with sand.   We need the sand to offset the clay.    We're the clay capital of the world.   Really.   When clay gets old enough, it's called limestone.

Anyway.  We burned the piles and it was a pain because the stuff underneath was just damp enough not to burn all the way.   I let it dry for another 2 days and then burned again.  Same problem.    

The good news is that we didn't have to worry about the fire spreading much.  

The bad news was that I kept seeing those blasted cucumber beetles flying up and out of the pile.  

At the end of the second burn, we combined all the leftovers from the three squash beds into one pile.   I let it dry a few more days, then one last burn.   I've got to get rid of those bugs!