What to Do in Winter
(Page 2 of 3)
October/November 2007
By Barbara Pleasant
Fall-planted garlic, shallots and perennial onions are priority crops for a 4-inch winter mulch of hay, straw, chopped leaves or another locally abundant material. Mulch kale, too, but wait until after the first week of steady sub-freezing weather to protect the latent flower buds of strawberries with a 4-inch mulch of hay, pine needles or shredded leaves. Shroud the bases of marginally hardy herbs such as rosemary with a 12-inch-deep pyramid of mulch to protect the dormant buds closest to the ground. If you’re really pushing your luck by growing figs or other plants that cannot tolerate frozen roots, surround them with a tomato cage and stuff it full of straw or chopped leaves. Use this technique to safeguard the graft union and basal buds of modern roses, too.
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Once you’ve done what you can to maximize the productivity of hardy plants, either gather up dead plants and surrounding mulch and compost them or turn the residue into the soil. This will reduce pests such as squash bugs and harlequin bugs, which overwinter as adults in plant debris, as do Mexican bean beetles and some other pests. Old mulches can harbor cabbageworm pupae, but these and other pests seldom survive winter in the wild world of a compost heap or when mixed into biologically active soil. To be on the safe side, you can create a special compost heap for plants that often harbor pests or diseases and seed-bearing weeds.
In spring, after the heap has shrunk to a manageable size, mix in a high-nitrogen material such as manure, grass clippings, alfalfa meal or cheap dry dog food (mostly corn and soybean meal) to heat the heap to 130 degrees — the temperature needed to neutralize potential troublemakers.
With this housekeeping detail behind you, think about what next year’s garden will demand of the soil. Sketch out a plan for where you will plant your favorite crops in spring and summer, and tailor your winter soil care practices to suit the needs of each plot’s future residents.
In areas to be planted with peas, potatoes, salad greens and other early spring crops, cultivate the soil, dig in some compost, and allow birds to peck through the soil to collect cutworms, tomato hornworm pupae and other insects for a week or two. Then rake the bed or row into shape and mulch it with a material that will be easy to rake off in early spring: year-old leaves or weathered hay, for example. Spring planting delays due to soggy soil will be a thing of the past.
In the space you will use in early summer for sweet corn, tomatoes and other demanding warm-weather crops, you may still have time to sow a winter cover crop such as hairy vetch, Austrian winter peas or crimson clover (see 8 Strategies for Better Garden Soil, June/July 2007). Cover crops make use of winter solar energy, energize the soil food web as their roots release carbohydrates down below and amass large amounts of organic matter. The deep roots of hardy grain cover crops such as cereal rye will spend the winter hammering their way into compacted subsoil, and nitrogen-fixing cover crops can jump-start soil improvement in new garden beds and save time in spring.
