Burning, sheet mulch, more preserving

The daughter and I went up last week to burn a barrel's worth of old pallet wood and artichoke stalks;  however it turned out to be so windy that afternoon that I burned the wood only--flames and sparks were flying and it was a bit scary.  The daughter (age 5) thought it was great;  I ran for the hose, just in case.  Luckily it's been raining fairly regularly and the ground was thoroughly wet.  And because it was windy, the fire burned fast and clean:  hardly any smoke and the full barrel was down to the last few embers in less than two hours.  I'm not sure if I'll try to burn the stalks another time (still some more old wood too) or if I'll bring them home bit by bit to burn in our wood stove.

Sheet mulching has commenced at the allotment, using some large pieces of cardboard I'd collected over the summer;  now there's space in my garage again!  I will start collecting smaller pieces and keep going over winter:  the couch grass grows over summer, I sheet mulch it over winter in order to plant in spring, then the grass grows, etc.  I can't eradicate the grass.  I also can't grow in the grass.  But I can knock it back long enough to get a harvest before it grows again.

I picked the last few cauliflowers this weekend, though I have about half a dozen plants without heads which may overwinter and produce in spring.  Actually I was expecting them all to do that but I guess I started a little too early.  I also made another batch of mixed vegetable sauerkraut, after tasting last week's mixed veg salsa (also fermented and so good!);  with the new batch I cut everything into matchsticks:  turnip, beet, fennel, chard stems, plus some of my earlier fermented spicy garlic stems.  

Speaking of fermenting, I'm down to my last jar of kimchi, made in July.  I eat it pretty much every day, usually with my eggs and bacon at breakfast.  I was a little concerned about running out!  However, I recently made a batch of kohlrabi water kimchi, something I did last summer too, and to fill out the 1.8 L container I also sliced up some (you guessed it) fennel.  I had so much fennel to use up and now it's gone till next year.  There are a couple small rows of both pak choi and Chinese cabbage, intended for kimchi soon.  In fact I was going to cut the pak choi this weekend but the kohlrabi will act as a stopgap:  I've got a reprieve for at least two more weeks.