Preparing for Winter

I know it’s not winter yet, but as the weather is finally cooling off, it might be time to think about it.  We all know that in a few weeks it will be time to get out the sheers and do our annual pruning.  It will also be time to transplant new trees, dig up any bulbs we want to separate and get the flower beds in order - but what about the vegetable garden.  Do you need to do anything special to prepare it for winter?  The answer is yes.  As many of you know, here in NE Texas you can have some things growing just about year round in the garden.  Some vegetables that we just can’t grow all summer thrive in the cool weather.  Our winters are generally mild enough to allow for spinach, cabbage, onions, beets and a few others to thrive right through the New Year.  I am looking forward to seeing how long I can keep these plants going this year.  Even my pickiest eater will eat raw spinach!  That being said, it must be noted that these crops often don’t take up the whole garden.  There is a lot of space left untended.  Should you just leave it over the winter, or is there some better way to take care of it the unused garden?  These are the questions I asked myself last week.  A little bit of research yielded a predictable answer.  Prepare for winter!

If for no other reason than to make your life a little easier in the busy spring months, you should consider getting ready now.  Aside from saving time in the spring, proper preparation now can enrich the soil come spring, help prevent winter weeds, and keep the topsoil from blowing away with the winter winds.  Sounds great, so what to do…

The best thing to do is to plant a cover crop.  Yikes, more planting?  Yes  more planting, and you don’t even get to harvest it!  Planting a crop like winter wheat, crimson clover, or rye will keep the soil from blowing away in the winter, shade the soil to keep the seeds from germinating into nasty weeds, and add organic matter back into the soil when springtime finally rolls around and you turn it under.  That’s right, you just plow or till it right back into the soil in the spring.

Ok, that’s the best thing to do, but if you have raised beds, or just don’t feel up to the extra effort, at least you can till and mulch.  Turning the soil now will leave it soft for the spring and ready to plow.  Make sure to mulch it so that the loose soil doesn’t blow away!  Weed the raised beds to get any old plants and weeds out and then mulch, mulch, mulch.  Your spring garden will thank you by yielding a bigger harvest!

Don’t forget to put a layer of mulch over your perennial vegetables and flowers too.  This will help protect them from the temperature changes we experience here and keep them from freezing if the temperatures do dip too low.

A little extra work now can save a lot of time next spring.

Greenhouse Seminar

Hi everyone.  I just wanted to let you know of a free seminar that's coming up.  Sweetwater Farm Greenhouse is putting on a Greenhouse Building seminar.  Here are the details:

"Greenhouses Made Simple"
presented by Master Gardener Gerald Frimann
Where: Sweetwater Farm Greenhouse, 4400 W Crawford St., Denison, Texas
When: Wednesday Oct 26th
Time: 2pm - 3pm

If you have any interest in building your own greenhouse, this might be just the talk for you.  Here is a link to their web page for more information:   http://www.sweetwaterfarmplants.com/

 Hope to see you there!

Tim Gamble: How To Make a Forest Garden, part two

Tim Gamble: How To Make a Forest Garden, part two: This is the second part of a three part essay on how to get started in forest gardening (read part one by clicking here ). For those unfami...

Tim Gamble: How To Make a Forest Garden, part one

Tim Gamble: How To Make a Forest Garden, part one: Forest gardening is a type of permaculture in which trees and other plants are grown for food, fuel, fiber, medicine and other resources in...

Tim Gamble: Introduction To Forest Gardening

I just stumbled onto Tim's blog, which covers many topics, including gardening, homesteading, and prepping. He wrote a three part series on forest gardening that I just love. It does a fantastic job of describing how to build a food forest. Rather than retread ground that he has already covered, I'll post his series here, and blog myself about building a food forest specifically in Texoma at a future date. Dig around Tim's blog if you have time. There's lots more to read!

Tim Gamble: Introduction To Forest Gardening: Since the beginning of mankind, various groups of people have purposely maintained forests and woodland areas, benefiting from the food, fue...

Video - Seed Saving Tips

Marjory Wildcraft of Backyard Food Productions brings us a short video of tips on saving and storing seeds.

Goldenrod

“One gardener’s lifelong enemy is another’s lifesaving herb, and another’s treasured border plant”.    This quote came from Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs and was told in association with Goldenrod.  Goldenrod grows wild on our property and I think it’s great!  It is lovely to look at and attracts bees and wasps to the garden.  This is one of the reasons that it makes a good companion plant.  Another reason is that it repels some pests.  Whether you like it or not, you likely will have to decide what to do about it because it is native to Texas and according to some, does best in poor soil.  No wonder it thrives here!  

It is a beautiful flower and dries well, so it is a nice addition to dried flower arrangements.  It can be used to make varying shades of yellow dye and makes a tasty tea.  As a matter of fact, some people claim that after the Boston Tea Party, tea for drinking became scarce.  Liberty Tea, made from the ever abundant goldenrod was a common replacement and became so popular that is was exported to China. 

To the medicinal herbalist, the goldenrod has a long history or uses in North America, Europe and China.  It has been used as astringents, diuretics and diaphoretics, as well as for sore throats, bladder and kidney infections, headaches, flu and even flatulence.   Whether or not any of these things truly works or not, I don’t know but it does seem that no serious illnesses have been associated with the plant. 

If you want another piece of fun trivia about goldenrod, according to the Wikipedia article on the subject, Henry Ford gave Thomas Edison a Model T whose tires were made of rubber from the goldenrod plant.  How about that!

Enough of the history lesson - whether you think it’s a weed or a welcome addition to your flower bed, goldenrod is here to stay in NE Texas.   It has a long history associated with it, and maybe I’ve given you something to think about the next time you see a field of goldenrod waving in the breeze.   If you don’t have any growing wild around your place and would like to add some, you can either hit up one of your friends with an ample supply or find it at a local nursery.  

Until next time, happy gardening!