The Great Thanksgiving Clean Up

Our first hard frosts at the the end of October killed the morning glory and lima bean vines on their supports at the back of the fenced kitchen garden.  I was intimidated by the task of cutting back and removing the vines, but the sad mess made me feel guilty every  time I looked at it.

Finally, on a warm Thanksgiving morning I tackled the job.  Among the dried and withered 'King Of The Garden' lima vines I found a  trove of seeds nicely dried-- here they are, next year's bounty in small white packages.

Next I tackled my blueberry patch, which was overgrown and unruly.  I cut out four wheelbarrows full of grayed old stems and whip-like unbranched waterspouts.

I have had no berries for two years because the wintermoth worms were eating the buds, and the shrubs were too tall to spray with BT.  I will fertilize in the spring, spray early, and see what happens. If there is a crop, the bushes will now be low enough to cover with netting to keep birds away too.

The 'Tom Thumb' bib lettuce has been growing well under a makeshift milkcrate  and remay shelter.

And the parsley patch loves the cool fall weather:










I harvested some greens from each patch for my Thanksgiving salad.

Finally, I dug and transplanted Jerusalem Artichokes. They are neither from Jerusalem,  nor artichokes, but the enlarged root of a native sunflower, and were very likely part of the first Thanksgiving feast. The name is thought to be a corruption of  Native American.
I have read that Jerusalem Artichokes can be invasive, so I originally planted them along the back fence behind my bed of large grasses in a unused waste space.  But in that spot they have been repeatedly eaten to the ground by rabbits slipping through the fence, and the production of tubers has been disappointing.
So on Thanksgiving morning I dug all the tubers I could find, kept the biggest to eat (only a half-dozen) and planted the remaining twenty or so smaller roots back into rich soil in one of my raised beds. Maybe this year I'll see the promised six foot sunflowers in September and a decent haul of roots  for next Thanksgiving.
Here are the biggest of the  tubers I took inside to cook.  They were delicious fried in butter until crunchy outside and soft inside, and I felt they made our Thanksgiving an authentic one.