DON'T QUIT NOW
By Virgil Adams
There are a number of things that separate a real gardener from one who just plays around. Question: Do you enjoy putting a garden to bed for the winter as much as you do waking one up for spring? If your answer is yes, you are on the right track. You are not far from being a real garderner. Gardening is not just a spring fling. It is a love affair that lasts all year, and there are as many things- exciting things - to do out there in the back yard in the fall and winter as there are in the spring and summer.
Yeah, I know. The temptation to do nothing this time of year is a tough one. It has been a long, hot, and dry summer. You’ve canned enough beans and tomatoes, frozen enough corn and peas, and put up enough pickles. You’re tired. Why not quit?Please, don’t do it now. I can think of several reasons to “stay the course” (where did I hear that?) a little longer. Leave the “Back Forty” like it is now, and several bad things could happen. - Old vegetable plants, which look dead at the tops, are alive at the roots and will go on sapping fertility and moisture for weeks to come- fertility and moisture that next year’s veggies could use. -The old plants will be a haven for insects above ground and nematodes below ground. -Disease organisms will thrive on both the tops and the bottoms.
-Winter weeds will multiply faster than an onion. Then they will go to seed and compound your weed problems for next year. -Left to its own devices, a garden can wash away on the winter rains- down to the creek, on to the river, and out to sea. -Come spring, what’s left will be a mess, which you will have to clean up before you start gardening again. You can avoid all these gosh-awful happenings by properly putting your garden to bed for the winter. Furthermore, you’ll have a prettier, healthier, and better garden when you wake it up next spring. And you can start right in: you won’t have to wait three or four weeks for the garden to dry out. You know, don’t you, that putting the garden to bed for the winter is sort of like putting the baby to bed for the night? You clean it up, put something on it, and cover it with something. The clean up involves burying or removing stinking old vegetable plants and weeds that contaminate the land. If you have the equipment to handle the job, chop and till the refuse right into the soil. If you don’t, pull the remnants of the garden and put it on the compost pile or off to one side.
Now, you have a decision to make: What kind of blanket will you put over the garden? Basically, there are two kinds, and the materials are readily available. Old newspapers, fallen leaves, grass clippings, pine straw, and similar material make good organic mulches. (Editor’s note: Newspapers have been using soy-based inks for a long time.) Then there are what are called “winter crops,” rye, ryegrass, and Austrian winter peas, also termed green manure crops. If you use ryegrass, be sure it’s annual ryegrass. Plant the perennial ryegrass and you may never get rid of it. The organic mulch will protect the soil from erosion, hold valuable moisture, feed the earthworms, partially decompose, and be ready to till into the soil next spring. A cover crop, if planted early enough, will make 4 or 5 inches of growth in the fall, will just sit there through December and January, will make 4 or 5 more inches of growth in February and March, and will be ready to chop and till into the soil in April. One more thing you might consider doing this winter (if the weather cooperates) is laying out your rows or raised beds for next year’s garden. Just make a series of peaks and valleys across the plot. Fill the valleys with leaves, then cover with a thin layer of pine straw to keep the leaves from blowing away.
Next spring, the peaks will dry out three weeks to a month earlier than level ground. You can just level the tops with your rake and get a head start on such early season crops as English peas, Irish potatoes, lettuce, turnip greens, collards, and their kin. Oh joy! You didn’t quit. You hung in there all winter long. You are a real gardener. Congratulations!
Copyright 2006 The Southern Ledger. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
