FALL CLEANUP NOTES…AND BEYOND
Frost a couple weeks ago finished off the tomato plants, and
final fall cleanup is well underway. We've
covered our remaining root crops in preparation for the hard freezes and snow
that may come soon. The carrots, parsnips, and beets should winter over well, and
the turnips should provide delicious early greens next spring. The Red Russian
kale is so sweet now that it’s almost candy-like; we’ll let a bit of it survive
as long as it can. There are still a few
Kennebec potatoes to be dug. Onions and garlic
are “cured” and stored in a cool corner of the basement. Perennial herbs are ready to divide and move,
and seed from annuals such as savory is drying in a box with silica gel along
with other seeds from earlier. Some will
do better if it’s “stratified” first, i.e., given a cold storage period.
We got off to too late a start this year to do much in the
way of cover crops. We left legume roots
in place to conserve the nitrogen they've stored, and our few remaining
deep-rooted daikons will reduce winter soil compaction and be mostly broken
down by spring. We've decided to leave
the soil in most of the beds bare except for very thin layers of straw. Mulching can greatly reduce erosion, but we
don’t have a problem with that. It can
reduce compaction caused by rain and the accumulated weight of snow and ice, but
we broadfork our soil carefully each spring, loosening without turning it, so
it doesn’t stay compacted for long.
Also, we would want to remove any mulch as soon as possible in the
spring so the dark soil could catch the heat from those first few warm, sunny
days. Then the one- and two-year-old straw
mulch will go back around the plants as soon as they’re large enough.
The compost pile will get one more loosening before it
freezes. One of our neighbors was
generous enough to donate several bags of nicely shredded maple leaves raked
from an organically maintained lawn, enough to bring the leaf contents up to about
10-15 percent by volume. (We don’t want
to exceed 20% in any case.)
Projects we hope to tackle this winter include a bulletin
board frame, a picnic table, and cut-to-size components for a couple cold
frames and three different types of plant supports: cages made of concrete
reinforcing wire, bamboo trellises to be assembled with zip ties, and wooden
overhead supports used with twine and clips for tomatoes or hanging material of
a couple kinds to try for pole beans.
There are seed starting containers to clean, new fluorescent lights to
install over indoor growing areas,
We’re thinking about seed orders for next year now, hoping
to share a few seeds and plants with friends, especially those working in
gardens for youth program support. First
we’ll select as many of our favorites from Seed Savers Exchange, then start
perusing a few commercial seed catalogs as they arrive. We’ll try to maximize use of seeds grown
close to home, or at least at a latitude close to ours, and we’ll think twice
before ordering from any company whose ethics we question. Can’t wait to get our fingers in the soil
again!
 |
| Compost covered with straw, ready for the snows! |
