Fall gardening

 Its fall time and there's plenty of things to do to get ready for next years garden.  Never gardened before?  Follow me and do what I do.  I will post the activities I do as close to the time I do them so you can garden with me.  My gardening system is based off of ruth stout's ideas.  It requires very little weeding and no watering. 
Before we go on let's look at the picture above.  All those pumpkins that you like have viable seed.  Just pull the seed out, dry it, then put it in an envelope.  The seeds are also really tasty from all varietys of squash.  I make a batch of salt water to taste, put it in a pot, and boil the seeds in it for about a minute.  Then I streign the seeds out add oil and maybe some more salt, and bake in oven 350 till light brown.  I suggest stirring them once or so too. 

Do you want a garden like this?  I don't even think I weeded this one yet in this picture.

 The best place to put a garden is where you're gonna see it.  Also an untilled semi-weed free lawn is excellent for this method.  Tilling the soild stirs up dormant weed seeds.  The lawn insures none of those tall plants coming up, because they can't survive the mower all those years. 
So what did I do?  I put 6-8 inches of straw on top of my grass lawn in the fall.  It composted with the grass and left clean black dirt below.  Just put enough straw down so you cant see the grass.  Above I did have some chicken litter so that's the darker half.  But the lighter half is just straw and that works too.  You can use autumn leaves too, however oak does not decompose fast enough.  I also suggest adding bone meal to a leaf mixture and perhaps some lime while your at it to adjust the ph of your soil (at least round these parts in illinois it's good for it). 

Want some more fruit and nut trees?  No not apples or pears!  You gotta graft those.  Walnut, carpathian walnut, chestnut, persimmon, peach, apricot, paw paw, heartnut, butternut, and oak.  Harvest their seeds now then put them in a tube/old starbucks coffee cup with damp soil in a bucket in your garage till spring, or better yet.  Build an earthtainer and put them in there.

I just filled this earthtainer on the below with seed. On the right is some of the persimmons coming up through in first week of june or so.  Here's where to get plans to build one.  They have the right moisture for seed and you just dig the trees out around your herbs. 
I think that tomatoes are way better in the ground, but for herbs and peppers these things rock!  Not to mention all the free trees you can get : )

Save your favorite tomato seed.  See previous post on here for that!

If you got herbs get the seed out and put it in an envelope.

A sifter helps get the debris out.  After that just blow the chaff off the seeds and you're good. 

So that's all I've got for now.  But you should definitly do some of this stuff so your garden will be awsome!