How To Prep Your Vegetable And Ornamental Garden Beds For Winter
#Gardening #WinterPrep #Veg
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| Vegetable Garden 2015 |
Usually before I write anything I have an exact length of how long
I'd like it to be. Same goes for time spent doing something like
chores, etc. I say that to say that I have no idea how long this post
will be just as I underestimated how long it would take for me to
complete my winter garden cleanup.
What were we looking at here? That picture above was at the very beginning of the season. In the back to the far left you can see the container in which I grow corn. To the left of the main garden those colorful green and red leaves are baby lettuce and kale. To the far right against the wall are where I put the broccoli and beans. The white hoops are where the tomatoes grew for support. To give you a rundown of the things I
grew and what I'm cleaning up, I will say that it was a
lot. And though the success rate varied on each plant, I consider the
overall season a success as roughly 65% of the things I planted grew
well. So, the list:
Zone 6 (some websites do say 5 but Burpees says 6), Northern Ohio.
Vegetable/Fruit Grown Success Rate
Tomatoes: Two beefsteak varieties Medium High
Tomatoes: Two Cherry varieties Medium High
Tomatoes: Grape variety High
Peppers: Hot High
Peppers: Sweet Medium High
Pumpkins: Pie and Canning variety High
Watermelons: Oblong shaped Low (1)
Watermelons: Globe-shaped or small None
Beans: String Low
Beans: Canning and Shelling Medium
Corn: Sweet Low (side note: eaten by birds)
Cantaloupe None
Honeydew Low (1)
Potatoes: White None
Potatoes: Sweet, Orange Low (4 small edible ones)
Cabbage: None (side note: didn't intend on growing)
Strawberries: Medium High
Onions: Green (shallots) Medium High (side note: grown in house
container)
Onions: Sweet Bulbs None
Onions: Red None
Kale: Normal Green High
Kale: Red Medium Low
Collard Greens: Medium Low
Salad Greens: Mesclun Mix Medium Low
Salad Greens: Red Medium Low
Salad Greens: Heirloom Mix Medium Low
Broccoli: Normal Low (side note: No heads harvested)
Broccoli: Raabi Low (side note: No heads harvested)
Cauliflower Low (side note: One head left to harvest)
Eggplant Low
Foo! That was a lot. I think that's all I tried to grow--actually, as
I was writing this sentence I remembered the eggplant. I really don't
have a lot of space I grow everything in so it is always an
achievement for me to have grown nearly any food. Sorry I didn't list
the proper names of everything I grew. That would have just made the
list even longer as I grew three varieties of corn, two varieties of
grape tomatoes, three varieties of hot peppers, both bell and banana
sweet peppers, two varieties of broccoli and cauliflower, two
varieties of potatoes a slew of different melons and the list goes
on. Next spring I hope to be more scientific with everything and
properly journal it all for you guys so you know what exactly I'm
growing up here.
Also, I should expound upon the side notes. I've been veggie
gardening (#gardening) for a few years now. I grow everything from
seed with the exception of potatoes. I usually buy those from the
store and wait until they start sprouting stems and leaves, then
pluck them off and plant. I also start most of my stuff inside my
house during the winter months. I start a little late, usually March
but this year started even later in late April because I was so busy
with finishing my epic serial novel Unrequited. I'll do another post
in the spring on why you should grow from seed if you grow at all,
but suffice it to say right now that you have more control and it's
cheaper.
With that said, having grown from seed plenty before I can tell you
that the salad greens are usually the easiest to grow along with the
collard greens which absolutely take off each year. I also usually
get broccoli pretty early or pretty late in the season but didn't get
any this year. It's on the list as a low success rate because I
harvested some of the leaves, which are edible and mixed them with
the collard greens when we had them boiled for Thanksgiving. They
have much of the same taste/nutrient value (they're from a similar
genus) and most people can't tell the difference. They're also cold
hardy as our the collards and kale so I may get another harvest yet.
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| That's My Pest/Friend Bunny |
The greens, broccoli and cauliflower all suffered I think because I
overmulched last winter with leaves. More on leaves later, but
suffice it to say that the ground was not happy about the woody
covering. As they decompose, woody things suck out the nitrogen
needed to make everything green and leaf abundant. I also usually
grow my broccoli in a row that the previous year was used for beans.
The beans next to them in the same bed also didn't do well as the
strings sat low. They, I'm suspecting were eaten by our recent
infestation of rabbits across the town. They're literally everywhere
and I had one living amongst the bigger vegetation in my garden. I
named him Bunny. I don't have to always be creative in life.
I also had a huge problem with birds for the first time this year as
they mercilessly tore into my cornstalks. I grow my corn in a
container (yes, it's possible for you novices). They only got about
four feet tall when the birds came over and ripped the stalks from
the container and tore the container's side. Vicious arm-less
creatures. They also tore through my salad greens and collards.
Everything else was good. Very little insect damage to any of my
plants despite the huge mosquito colony that lived within my
over-flooded area. Also, while I grew a heck of a lot of
strawberries, my neighbor's dog kept eating them, then when I would
pick them I would forget I had them and they would sit and rot in the
back of the fridge. Luckily, I stayed diligent with the tomatoes and
peppers and still have two full plastic bottles of tomato puree to do
with what I wish. FYI, those 16.9oz water bottles you get with your
favorite brand make great containers for freezing sauces in so long
as you don't drink directly from them before hand. Or do it if its
only you who is going to use the sauce inside. I don't care.
The white potatoes got flooded and I accidentally cut the top off in
the heat which immediately killed them. The sweet potatoes also
flooded but I was able to save them by scooping out the water.
Finally, to the actual garden prep. Two things I wanted to save to
overwinter for next year were my pepper plants and tomato plants. Due
to an early frost way back at the end of September (seriously, 30
degree nighttime dip; in contrast, Thanksgiving was 65 degrees) the
tomatoes died off before I could transplant. I did, however get to my
pepper plants in time.
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| Hot Peppers Left to right: Bird pepper, Jalapeno Pepper |
Note first that this first step is done after transplanting. To
overwinter you cut all the flowers, potential buds and fruit from the
plant. Then trim any leaves that point inward or look like they will
cross with another branch opposite of it. Finally, you want to top
off the plant by picking a leveling spot and cutting off the top most
growing branch of all branches at that level. Remove about 80% of the
leaves, keeping only the top most leaves, then move it inside. Again,
this is after you've already dug it from the ground and re-potted it.
To re-pot it, dig it out of the ground, have a warm bucket of clean,
clear water nearby, shake the dirt from the root ball, then dip the
entire root ball into the water. Wiggle it around. This cleans the
root ball of most unwanted house pests that may live within the soil.
Make sure you do it hard enough to create as bare of a root as
possible--no soil from outside.
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| Two Sweet Pepper Plants: Left to right, banana and sweet bell |
Next, get a clean, sanitized flower pot. If you have an old one that
had something in it before or you just bought a new one, you might
want to wash it of any possible bacteria that could have gotten on
it. Remember, this will be the plant's home for the next six months
or so. It has to be healthy where it is. Finally, fill the pot with a
good clean potting mix, bring the pot inside and set it in a very
sunny place. If the temperature in-house is drastically hotter or
cooler than the outside temps, you may want to acclimate it to the
inside over the course of two weeks by bringing it in each day for
two more hours than the previous day starting with two hours in the
windowsill. Note that as it gets later into winter, you'll need to
supplement the sunlight with a good fluorescent or halogen grow
light. I usually use the ones in my basement or laundry room and they
do just fine. This is the first time I'm doing this with an adult
plant, so I don't know if I'll succeed throughout the winter but
fingers crossed.
The same steps can be followed for tomatoes. In both cases you'll
want to water at least once a week but not nearly as much as you did
when they were outside. Think 1/3 to 1/4 of what you gave it then.
You'll also need to feed it a nitrogen-heavy food once or twice a
month to keep up leaf growth. I'm using a compost tea. When it gets
time to plant it outside again, you'll switch to a more potassium and
phosphorous-heavy feed to stimulate root and flower growth to prepare
it for the season. Finally, you'll want to top it off every few weeks
so it doesn't completely cease growing and tries to bush out more.
Practically every other vegetable is a one-time seasonal thing that
cannot be saved overwinter. So what do you do with that thick
broccoli stalk or the corn stalks that you couldn't eat or the dried
pumpkin vines after harvesting the pumpkins? One beautiful word:
Compost.
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| A Mixture of finished compost, coffee grounds and dead leaves |
Composting is incredibly difficult and easy. If you're here reading
this, I'm sure you've read/asked about compost and know of the
varying ratios of browns to greens and reds and blues and all that!
Look, there are two things you need in abundance for good compost:
dead leaves and coffee grounds/kitchen scraps. The best way to get
coffee grounds is to call your local Starbucks or other coffeehouse
about an hour before they close and ask them if they have any used
ones from the day for your garden. Most (not all) will gladly give
them to you because it's their waste and they'd rather you put it to
good use than just throw it out.
Collect leaves either from the leaf litter of your own property in
the fall or that of your surrounding neighbors. Note that you will
need ten times more leaves than you will coffee grounds. Since I was
thinking about putting in a small orchard next year, I needed leaves
not just for my compost but also for mulch for all of my garden beds.
So, instead of collecting leaves week after week which I did last
year and it took two and a half weeks to collect all the leaves I
needed, I called my local service department and asked for them to
dump some leaves on my property during their free leaf pick-up
rounds.
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| Seriously It Took Up A Third Of The Lawn. LEAVES! |
It took some massaging and getting on people to properly do their
job, but I ended up with a lot of leaves; in fact, probably too much.
You see, the deal originally was for me to get one of the smaller
truckloads about half the size of the pile you see. That pile by the
way may look small perspective-wise, however, it stood no less than
six feet tall and was as wide as a pick-up truck and longer than two
mid-sized cars parked back to back. It was literally tons of leaves.
So, stuck with the task of moving them, I had to take three full days
off last week from writing just to get them around the property to
where they needed to go, eating up all my free time.
A few before and after pictures, this is what the berm of small trees
covering the back edge of my property used to look like.
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| You can't even see the trees from the weeds and it doesn't look tall either. |
And this is it with the leaf mulch. It should be noted that it stands roughly two and a half feet high.
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| The picture is from farther away, however you can clearly see the difference in definition and height. |
These are the two front gardens filled with leaves as their mulch.
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| Makes a great looking mulch! |
I should note two things here. First is that the leaves will
eventually breakdown all on their own. Many people get chopped-up
trees to mulch their gardens. While that works, it means that a tree
has been cut down or has naturally died and was shredded to get what
you see. Leaves, however, are not only almost as nutrient dense as
the tree bark, but readily fall each year. The nutrients the tree's
roots pull from the ground go directly to the leaves. It is only
right that it should go back into the ground. Also, I am of the
opinion that the bigger the tree, the deeper or wider the roots,
thusly the more nutrients they've pulled. So get as many leaves from
tall healthy trees as possible.
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| That bush in the lower left may be infected from the leaves or has lost too much nitrogen too fast. |
That leads to the second note which is the cautious danger I am
taking with the leaf delivery. With the entire truck filled with
different leaves from many different trees throughout the surrounding
neighborhood, I have no idea from where over half of these leaves
came. Sure, I walk the neighborhood everyday, however, some of the
trees could have been diseased or dying and have yet to show signs of
such distress, but contain their sickness within the leaves. So,
while this is also a problem inherent but not often thought of when
it concerns wood chips or regular bark mulch, it is an even bigger
problem with leaves as they get everywhere and break down much faster
into the soil.
Because of this potential problem, what I did was make a one-layer
compost bed for the established ornamental gardens. The leaves do not
lay directly on the soil preventing them from not only causing
soil-borne pathogens from spreading but also from them robbing the
soil of more nitrogen than they put out. However, beneath them is a
mixed layer of dead grass and coffee grounds. Experienced gardeners
know that those pull nitrogen from the soil too during their
breakdown and come spring I do expect for my plants not to be as
green; however, they are also rich sources of nitrogen and organic
food matter for the worms and other beneficial soil organisms. With
it remaining warm for the next few days and wet, many of those
organisms will get to work on breaking that food down before the
ground freezes. The wet leaves will act as an insulating barrier to
keep them closer to the surface soil. I expect the leaves to be here
for the next two seasons to create a golden to brown mulch and keep
weeds down. I tried this last year on a side bed with nothing but a
bush growing in it and it worked.
Also, some things can survive the winter but may need mulching. Kale
and collard greens and many beets can survive through the winter so
long as you cut off all their leaves. They do not need to be mulched
and I found that if you mulch them with leaves, it can suck out more
nitrogen than it has time to break down. Leave them bare and they'll
do fine. Strawberries, however, should be mulched over with a small
layer of chopped up leaves. The leaves will allow them to get some
carbon dioxide during the winter while protecting them from the
harshness of the wind and frost. Do Not Bring Them Inside!
Not only do you need leaves but chopped-up micro leaves are the best
which is where the truck came in nicely. See, the smaller the leaf,
the better it looks as a mulch, the more water it allows through a
layer, and the quicker it breaks down. This is very important for
compost as you want your compost pile to break down as quickly as
possible before the spring planting season. The vacuum on the leaf
collector trucks suck the leaves so fast that many of the crispier
ones break into a fine grain perfect for compost. If you collect the
leaves yourself you can mulch them smaller by mowing over a row of
them a few times with your lawn mower, or dumping them into a
cleaned-out garbage pale and whacking them with your weed whacker.
I've been told this works well. Here I used the lawn mower.
Make a pile about two widths of the lawn mower and go around twice
the same direction with your side blower attachment. It should be
noted that you have to use a mulching mower or you'll have a tougher
time getting across the leaves. The third time go down the opposite
side, blowing all the mulched leaves back into the original row. This
not only chops the leaves but mixes them well with some grass. Next,
put the collection bag attachment on and go through as many times as
needed to collect all of the leaves. Whatever's left embedded in the
soil you can let sit and it will break down within nine months
without help.
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| Branches at the bottom allow better air circulation, needed for bacteria. |
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| Putting the Coffee Grounds into the Shovel make them easier to spread evenly. |
You are trying for no less than three feet by three feet by three
feet (wide, length and height) and it is best to build directly on
the dirt you plan to plant on the next year. Between each layer you
want to wet the medium with water or leftover alcohol and pop (soda)
work well too. The bacteria set to do the work live within water so
they need it to start the breakdown. However, too much will make the
pile soppy and not enough will not help the process.
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| It might not look it but that is about 3.5 feet tall. |
Once big and wide enough make sure that you spray it down once more
to seal it with a liquid, poke air pockets in it with a sharp stick
or whatever you can get to poke holes through it. The bacteria also
need to breathe. Then you can cover it and do one of two things.
Either wait until next spring to deal with it again and it'll slowly
breakdown but it won't be completely ready the day you want to plant.
Or, you can tend to it for the next three weeks, turning and churning
it to put the outside stuff not yet composting into the inside over
and over. This will help the pile heat quicker and leave you with
less work in the spring. Come spring time you'll just need to rake it
out and put it in the places it needs to go. I choose to cover mine
and will look at it again in December when I get some time and a
vacation. By that time it will be colder which can tell me if it's
heated up or not. When you dig into the center of your pile you want
it to be hot and near black as that is a sure sign the microbes are
working. If it is cold enough outside, the pile may smoke. If it is
smoking, congrats, you have a hot compost pile. Sit back and let it
cook or turn it to keep it from burning.
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| Covering it will keep it from becoming too wet during the winter, halting the composting process. |
Well, that's about all I have to share on my winter garden clean-up
for now. I literally moved four tons of leaves and have everything
set for a kick-butt spring. We'll see if everything is still alive or
composted come April.
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| A clean, clear lawn. No more leaf pile. |
What do you think? Was this article helpful to you and your winter
garden clean-up? Do you garden at all? If so, do you ever compost or
use any mulch in any of your gardens? If you veggie garden, which veg
is your favorite to grow and why? Let me know in the comments below
(hint: click the no comments button if you see no comments).
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Until next time, "it's all
home-on-the-range and stuff around here. This is nature."
P.S. That was a quote said by a friend of mine. I am now occasionally
known as farmer and the amount of food I can grow in the small bit of
land I utilize for my veg garden is becoming famous... sort of. I'll
think of something better next time.
P.P.S. Now that I remember it, I also grew zucchini with no success.
It was a late season add so I really didn't expect it to succeed
after planting it in 80 degree weather.
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