They Garden Best Who Garden Least

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Mort Mather cuts through the false folklore of late-season garden chores and makes a compelling case for doing... nothing?

September and October are the most beautiful months in Maine. The air is clear and crisp. The garden is overflowing with its bounty. Corn on the cob roasted on the grill in the husk is a favorite. We strip back the husk and use it as a handle, buttering the corn by rubbing it across a stick of butter. We frequently eat it as an hors d'oeuvre outside before the rest of the meal. When we finish an ear we throw it in a high arc toward the compost bin, cheering if it hits the target.

Salads are the best ever with vineripened tomatoes, cucumbers, fresh lettuce, maybe green peppers and onions or scallions. Or maybe we will have a platter of thickly sliced blood-red tomatoes with fresh basil chopped and sprinkled over them or cucumbers and onions swimming in vinegar and water and flavored with a little fresh dill.

The main course might be kabobs with summer squash, onions, pepper, green or pink cherry tomatoes, and some red meat. Then again we might grill some fish or chicken along with zucchini, whole onions, and potatoes.

Sometimes I feel like a bear trying to eat enough to get through the winter. It is clear these evenings that winter is the next season. The first frost is the most unmistakable indication. The first frost leaves a large portion of the garden covered with a network of dead vines. The tomato patch is a tangle of dead plants and squishy tomatoes.

With the first frost to be followed in a couple of months by frozen ground, we basically have three options: We can clear away all the crop residue and/or till the soil. We can cover the garden with something to protect it from the elements. Or we can do nothing, leaving the garden as it is at the end of the growing season.

Good Bug Advice Gone Bad

Clearing away the plant residue and tilling the soil is the most often recommended end-of-season treatment of a garden. You've heard such advice from near and far. The reason for this is that some insects that can damage crops might be disturbed and perhaps destroyed in the process. The moths that give birth to cutworms lay eggs on grass stems in the fall, and the grubs winter over in the soil. No grass stems in the garden, no cutworms.

Corn borers winter over in the stalks of corn and in some weed stems. Get rid of the winter harbor of the corn borer and you get rid of the corn borer. Colorado potato beetles winter over in the soil. Till the soil and you expose the beetles, where they may get eaten.

That is all well and good but what about the grass stems growing around the garden? What about the corn stalks in someone else's garden or field? What about the weeds along the roadside that can be an alternative wintering spot for corn borers? What about the Colorado potato beetles that wintered over under the deadly nightshade or in a garden several miles away? All of these insects fly at some stage in their life cycle. The Colorado potato beetle was tracked at about 20 miles a year as it moved across the country from Colorado.

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