Avis Licht is a landscape gardener, educator, and author of the wonderful book, The Spring Garden Made Easy. Her passion is to create beautiful gardens that incorporate edibles that can be harvested year round. With fall approaching, I asked Avis to share some of her pearls of wisdom for the fall garden.
Avis: As fall approaches we get conflicting messages from the weather. One says, “It’s still summer and hot and the garden is growing like mad.” The other is, “Nights are cool, the days keep getting shorter, and winter must be getting close.” We’re pulled in both directions: ACTION! and Hybernation zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Which one is right? Well, both are true and it’s time to get your garden ready for colder weather and put it to sleep. Both the garden and the gardener are restored by the rest imposed on us by winter.
What does it mean to put your garden to rest? For your perennial flowers and vegetables, it means to cut them to the ground, remove any diseased foliage, and mulch them. Their roots will continue to grow and store energy for the next season. For your fruit trees, it means picking up fallen fruit so that unwanted critters won’t establish themselves in the trees. Rake and clean up underneath the trees and mulch with compost.
For your vegetable garden, it means when a crop is finished you will either replant the area with cool weather crops or plant it with a cover crop that protects the soil surface and improves the soil fertility. Cover crops include nitrogen fixers like fava beans, bell beans, and vetch. These plants actually take nitrogen out of the air and put it into the soil. With the right plants, we can restore vitality and fertility into the soil.
Those of us in temperate climates have the opportunity to grow cool weather crops that will grow over winter. These include broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, chard, kale, spinach, lettuce, beets, carrots, peas, and garlic. These plants not only can withstand some frost, they even taste better with the cold weather!
To learn more about your specific climate and growing zone, talk to neighbors who garden, go to your local nursery to see what plants they have. The internet has lots of information. Sifting out what you need to know can seem daunting, but it’s worth the effort. In my blog, Edible Landscaping Made Easy, I write about all aspects of landscaping, and you can find lots of information on plants, soil, growing zones, and more.
During the long winter evenings you can start daydreaming about your ideal garden, and come spring, be ready to dig in!
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