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Fertilizers, Pest Control and Soil Management
Organic Gardening

Putting the Garden to Work for the Winter

A little work in your garden this fall will reward you with a fabulous garden next spring.

Put your garden to work for the winter in a variety of ways that nourish your soil while you put your feet up. Consider planting cool-weather-loving vegetables and herbs like garlic, onions and leeks. Kale, Swiss chard and mustard greens tolerate—even relish—the cold, damp fall weather. The little green garlic and onion shoots will reward you with rapid growth the following spring and be ready earlier than spring-planted alliums.

With a little frost protection you can continue to harvest fresh food throughout the winter, or just let the plants do their thing until the warmth of spring has them growing out of bounds. Any uneaten greens that remain in spring can be treated as a green-manure and tilled under before spring planting begins.

Green Manure Using Cover Crops

Sowing a cover crop well before frost (and tilled in three to four weeks before spring planting) provides nutrients and improves soil quality. The chopped and buried vegetation needs a few weeks to begin breaking down and releasing the natural nutrients into your soil. You may notice the benefits from cover crops right away in the spring as your improved soil dries out faster and is easier to work.

Faba beans and Austrian peas return large quantities of readily available nitrogen to the garden and their tilled-in stems break down quickly. Peas and beans can be sown as late as November and are very easy to incorporate into the soil.

Slower-growing legumes appreciate a quicker covering “nurse-crop” of grains like cereal rye or winter wheat. Cereal rye can be sown September through November. This cover crop yields superb root mass to improve poor drainage and lighten the soil, as well as a thick stand of lush greenery by springtime. (Please do not confuse with the turf rye grass!)

Crimson clover is easy to till under in spring and has lovely flowers (that the bees love, too). The appearance of the bright crimson flowers in early May mean that it is time to mow down and bury the plants before the flowers go to seed.

Mulch & Compost

Fall is the ideal time to add organic matter to your vegetable garden with Cedar Grove Compost and/or Chicken and Chips, Sky’s own non-hot chicken manure blend. Either will help protect your soil from compaction and erosion over the winter and help make nutrients more available for your plants in the spring.

Established perennial beds containing shrubs and trees will thank you for putting down Soil Building Compost or Sky’s Fertile Mulch. These natural blends give a slow release of much needed nutrition into your soil. If you have done any late summer or fall planting, the layer of insulating mulch will help protect your investment.

Natural (non-dyed) bark mulches are a good choice for paths and seasonally soggy areas. Bark mulch provides weed control around mature trees and well-established shrubs and gives your landscape a clean and presentable look.

chicken and chips		medium and extra fine bark
fertile mulch		Cedar Grove compost

By Emily Wilkins
Skylights Fall & Winter 2011, Vol 26, No. 3

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