Edible Gardening in December
If you have been keeping up with garden tasks, your beds are cleaned up, maybe you have cover crops growing or have the beds mulched, and you have your winter hardy vegetables protected with row covers or a cold frame. Now you can relax and start thinking about next year.
Form a Soil Building Plan
I’ve been doing some reading this year on developments in non-chemical farming techniques. It seems clear that conventional farming, with its dependence on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, is steadily depleting soils, damaging bio-diversity, and possibly even damaging human health. Clearly, it needs to evolve. The organic farming movement sets a high bar for a healthier approach but is hard to scale up to the size of our large mechanized farms.
The Regenerative Farming movement may provide an answer. Regenerative farming focuses on natural soil building and minimal chemical use. It has proven successful, even on farms of thousands of acres, where farmers have had the motivation and courage to make the change. The key principles regenerative agriculture espouses are:
- Limit soil disturbance, minimize tillage
- Protect the soil surface
- Build diversity through crop rotation and mixed cover crops
- Keep living roots in the soil as much as possible
- Integrate animals into the system or add organic matter regularly.
These practices are adaptable for home gardeners. They focus on building healthy soil as the basis for growing healthy crops, rather than feeding plants and killing pests with chemicals.
Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown
A book I recently read that is both engaging and convincing is “Dirt to Soil” by Gabe Brown. There are many other good books available that offer good advice for both home gardens and big agriculture to address issues that threaten our food supply and environment. Learning how to execute these techniques and developing a plan for your gardens is definitely a worthwhile winter pursuit. Other helpful information, including video material, is available on the Soil and Cover Crops page of the VA Cooperative Extension website.
Other December Tasks
- As long as your soil isn’t frozen, it is still okay to plant garlic and shallots in December. Mulch them well to manage temperature and moisture.
Open row cover. Photo: Ralph Morini
- Placing row covers over winter hardy vegetables adds several degrees to the temperature under the cover and protects plants in the event of extreme cold while encouraging continued growth into the winter. For tips on constructing simple hoop style row covers, consult The Garden Shed article Row Covers: A Season Extender with Benefits.
Leaf storage: Photo: Ralph Morini
- Put your leaves to good use. Chopping or shredding them is a good idea to help speed decomposition, but they can be used in any form as a winter mulch for garden beds, then removed in the spring for composting. Or they can be used to set up new compost batches now, with winter-generated kitchen plant scraps added as they become available. When spring temperatures rise enough to start serious microbial decomposition, the batch’s carbon-to-nitrogen ratio can be fine-tuned. With good moisture and aeration management, you should have compost for use prior to planting summer vegetables. Leaves also provide excellent cover for over-wintering beneficial insects that will help build a natural pest management system in your gardens next year.
- Be sure to drain your hoses. Disconnect them from faucets and lay them out on the ground, both ends open, to let them drain. Then roll them up for winter storage.
- If you have rain barrels, drain them as dry as possible and redirect your downspouts to ground, rather than refilling the barrels during the cold months.
- December brings the first new catalogs and communication from seed suppliers for next season’s supplies. It is fun to browse them, looking for new items to grow and assessing different varieties that may help avoid disease problems that affected last year’s selections. Pay attention to “time to harvest” and “disease resistance” data. For help interpreting seed catalog and seed pack information, check out the article Using Seed Pack Information to Help Your Garden Grow from the February 2018 issue of The Garden Shed.
- Make a first pass at laying out your crop arrangement for next year. Remember to rotate specific plants to different parts of the garden, preferably on a 3-4 year cycle. The benefits are both disease and pest reduction and soil enrichment through plant diversity.
- Take care of your tools. Winter is the time to clean, disinfect, sharpen, and generally prepare them for the work ahead. Also a good time to clean pots and flats if you have a warm enough place to do the wet work. Come spring, you’ll be happy you did it, promise.
“Indoor Herb Garden” by ReeseCLloyd is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
- An enjoyable way to keep your hands in the soil during winter is to grow herbs indoors. You need a sunny window, preferably with a southern exposure. Use a premium potting soil and add nutrient as recommended. It’s best to use clean plastic or glazed containers to reduce watering requirements. Be sure the container has drainage holes and use a non-porous dish to catch excess water. Be especially careful to keep the soil surface moist between planting and germination. Herbs do best with temperatures above 65 degrees, the warmer the better. Basil likes temperatures above 70 degrees, so doesn’t want to be too close to the window during cold weather. Check out “Be Inspired With Indoor Herb Gardening” in this month’s Garden Shed for great information on how to enjoy and be successful at growing herbs indoors this winter.
In any case, enjoy your gardening, happy holidays, and I hope to see you next month at The Garden Shed.