Q-If I'm not growing anything in my garden over winter, what should I do with it?
Tidy Up
Winter is a great time to tidy up and get a jump start on having a great spring season. We want to first think about covering up bare soil and ask the question, “What are my goals for spring?”. Depending on your goals will determine how you care for the garden over winter.
Chances are you have hoses, pots, hoes, and other tools here and there in the garden. Now is a great time to make sure to bring everything inside to prevent rot, rust, or frost damage. If you have any small greenhouse structures that won’t hold heavy snow, then now is a good time to remove any plastic covers and store them away from next season.
Focus on Soil Health
What can we do to improve our soil health over winter?
- Plan our crop rotations
- Plant cover crops
- Add compost
- Mulch or tarp the garden
- Take a soil test
- Fix calcium deficit with lime over winter
- Avoid compaction
- machinery, tillage, excessive foot traffic
To hibernate the garden like a farming pro requires lots of planning. We should be implementing crop rotations even in small gardens and avoid planting the same thing in the same spot, year after year. One way to help rest ground so that we are not always extracting is to plant cover crops.
Cover Crops
The idea behind a cover crop is that instead of harvesting vegetables we are going to grow a mix of crops that will provide lots of biomass and let them die in their place. This is also called a winter-killed cover crop. Another type of cover crop is a late-sown cover crop of ryegrass, clover, hairy vetch and these will cover the ground for winter but then take off in growth in spring. A late-sown winter cover will make a great amount of biomass for mid-summer or fall planting.
Cover crops help
- Add organic matter
- Reduce compaction
- Give a root host to beneficial bacteria and fungi overwinter
- Rest ground from continual extraction
- Reduce winter erosion
- Suppress weeds
- Increase biodiversity
I would recommend you try to learn where to incorporate cover crops into your gardens. They are easy to grow with little maintenance and offer great rewards for soil health and better produce. At my farm, we always try to follow cash crops with cover crops. Using a mixture of winter-killed cover crops and later sown cover crops for different goals. For example, September or October sown cover crops will produce lots of resources for our honey bees when we add something like crimson clover to the mix. Although be sure to cut down that cover crop right after pollination or you will end up with loads of seeds!
Soil Test
Winter is a great time to think about taking a soil test. Usually, if you want to have a more in-depth understanding of your soil, taking a soil test before you have started adding amendments, especially lime would be very helpful. Lime or gypsum tastes time for the soil to digest. If you recently added lime or gypsum then you should wait another year before taking a soil test. Or take an acid fizz test to see if you have free lime in your soil. If so this will throw off your results and it would be better to save your money and wait until there is no more free lime.
If you know your soil does have a deficit of Calcium, winter is a great time to lime the garden.
Why does my garden need calcium or lime?
There are lots of factors that may influence why soil has a calcium deficit in acidic soil. One reason that is often overlooked is the proper ratio of magnesium to calcium. While you may benefit from adding compost if you are dealing with heavily eroded soil. Often gardens could benefit more from understanding how and when to amend your soils. For example, having better Magnesium to Calcium ratios results in better tilth, and aeration allowing soils to utilize the free nitrogen present in the air!
Other reasons my garden could benefit from an in-depth soil test.
- Gardens may even present an excess of magnesium due to constant irrigation and the solution is either cut down on irrigation or add gypsum.
- Excessive potassium from fertilizers is another culprit of an underperforming garden.
- Lack or excess of micronutrients including zinc, manganese, copper, and boron.
There are so many complexities to soil balancing that unless you have hours and hours to study the topic finding an expert to talk to may be worth the time.
Compost
High-quality compost is always a great addition to a garden. Compost is a mix of organic matter or biomass dead and living massed together. Through time and aeration natural or manual compost becomes a microbe-rich powerhouse that will act almost like a mulch in the same way wood chips or mulch works with landscaping.
The Honest Truth
Compost may have its benefits in the garden but you normally cannot rely solely on compost for growth. You would need a minimum of 3% Nitrogen to rely solely on compost and normally your homemade compost and even bought compost do not have sufficient Nitrogen levels. There are some compost nerds out that make compost so that you can grow high-quality vegetables without any extra inputs. Make sure you do your research when buying compost and ask them what percent of Nitrogen can they guarantee at delivery or in the bag.
At the end of the day, we are extracting a lot of nutrients from our soils by producing vegetables and this requires that we add back organic materials to make up for that deficiency.
Mulch/Tarp
Mulching or tarping gardens may help a garden in many aspects.
- Reduce erosion
- If our garden is bare going into winter soil will begin to erode without any intact organic materials to stop or slow down heavy rains. Reduce compaction from heavy rains.
- Allow for quicker bed preparation in spring
- Improve tilth
- Having the ground covered, especially with a dark material will heat up on those sunny days of winter. This will encourage the decomposition of organic matter and form a great environment for bacteria and fungi to keep feeding.
- Avoid over-saturated soils. This means quick bed prep on a sunny day in spring
Keep Growing with frost blankets
Just because we have frost in the forecast doesn’t mean the end of gardening. We can garden year-round using frost covers depending on how cold of a winter you get.
Plan for next year
Winter is an ideal time to plan out your garden for next year. Ask yourself, “Where did I fail this year and what can I do better next year?”. Gardening and farming are lifelong learning processes. You get another shot at it every year. Some list items to consider include:
- Order seeds
- Organize systems so that your garden can continue without your care. If you want to go on vacation is my garden maintenance easy enough that I can dictate my tasks to a farm sitter?
- Plan out crop rotations
- Microsoft Excel is a great tool to keep track of crop rotations.
- Order tools or equipment
- Sharpen hoes and knives
- Create a planting calendar so you don’t forget to start your tomatoes etc.
- Research new information and learn more about your favorite aspects of gardening.
- Create structure and clean up those eye sores because we know you won’t have time when it all starts again in spring!
