They Garden Best Who Garden Least

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The plants you plant here next year will also love you. Whenever I mention that I mulch with hay, someone inevitably asks, "How do you get hay without bringing in weed seeds?" Good question. I don't. When I bring in hay I bring in thousands of weed seeds. I spread the weed seeds all over my garden every year. The garden loves the weeds, the seeds, the hay, and anything else organic that I bring into it. I am no more concerned with weed seeds in my garden than I am with insects. My garden is a happy place where all are welcome. "Welcome" may not be quite accurate. I just don't think it is realistic to believe that any of us can keep weed seeds or insects out of our gardens.

I have learned how to live with them. Insect pests are not attracted to healthy plants, so they do not arrive in worrisome numbers. The weeds are easily kept in check by cultivation and mulch so that they usually end up being fertilizer.

Well ...I Do Almost Nothing

If anyone has wondered if I am a lazy gardener, this should erase any doubts. My preferred method of preparing the garden for winter is to do nothing. But there are a few jobs that even a lazy gardener should do. First, I have to clear out any unnatural things that I used during the growing season. The pea fence and poles should have been removed in July when the peas stopped producing. The poles for the pole beans should also have been put away.

I guess that I am admitting that these chores don't always get done until fall. If the tomatoes were grown on poles or stakes or in wire baskets, these need to be put away. The best way to get a plastic mulch out of the garden is to cut off the plants that were growing in it. Don't pull them as it messes up the plastic which may be tender from the summer sun. With the plants gone it is much easier to get all of the plastic out of the garden. Another advantage of cutting the plants off is that the roots remain in the ground where they provide habitat for soil organisms and help hold the soil together over winter. They also provide channels for surface water to penetrate a tight soil. The soil under the plastic mulch is vulnerable to erosion so I like to cover it up.

It only takes a few minutes to spread some manure or compost over it and cover it with mulch. As I look at the fall garden, much is already covered with mulch. Usually the corn, tomato, cucumber, and squash patches are in good shape. I usually mulch the potatoes too, but when I harvest them I disrupt the mulch and the soil. The easiest way to fix that is to put the mulch that was there right back.

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