A Beautiful Fall Garden

I’m not talking about brilliant oranges and russet reds. Maggie (my able garden helper) and I can’t help admiring the test the garden minus its summer tomatoes and squash. “Doesn’t it look beautiful?” we say to each other on these chilly fall mornings. It’s a neat grid of shades of green—and in our heads we’re seeing the future. A network of roots is on it’s way down, drawing everything next year’s garden will need from the soil. Fungi and microscopic creatures are being fed, and root nodules are collecting nitrogen. Cold-season weeds can’t find a single empty space to grow in. And all that green will wind up as part of the soil.

Cover crops are the constants in our garden. Space fillers in summer, cozy blankets in winter. Deep down beautiful.

Here are a few of our favorites:

Oats. We buy a 10-pound bag of it in spring and use it all season as crops finish. These oat beds, planted in late summer, are green now, but in a few weeks the annual grass will lay down and protect the ground with a soft mat of beige. The soil will be a cinch to fork; the straw will prevent spring weeds. Probably we’ll plant spring greens here.

Sudangrass dies back at the very first frost. We use it when a bed needs major help—like when it’s compacted, or full of thistle. This planting followed spring cabbage. We kept the grass trimmed to about 3 feet tall all summer and the result is a huge amount of organic material above and below the soil. Next summer we’ll just dig holes and plant tomatoes without even disturbing the worms by forking the soil. Maggie likes that—she worries about skewering worms.

Crimson clover is easy to sprinkle under corn or between flowers in summer, so it fixes nitrogen here there and everywhere in our garden. Red flowers keep the bees happy in spring, and give us a little breathing space by looking so pretty we can take our time in getting the flower border planted. When they lose their color we snip the seedheads and toss them under tomatoes, or anywhere they can germinate with a little protection from the hot sun. Presto, a living groundcover.

This is a double-powered mix of grasses and legumes from Peaceful Valley Farm Supply; it furnishes nitrogen and lots of mass to turn into the soil in spring. We planted it in our squash beds as they were dying back. The vetch will stay green much of the winter, and is a champion nitrogen fixer.

Rye can be planted late in the season. We limit the number of winter rye beds in our garden, mostly because we’re lazy. It greens up and grows tall in spring and takes some serious muscle to turn over. After it’s turned we let it break down before planting—this takes about three weeks. If it’s not decomposed it may have a bad effect on young seedlings (weeds too, a good thing), setting them back or even killing them. So advance planning is important with rye. The results are truly worth it. Next year we’ll plant flowers, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants—anything that needs warm soil—in these bed.

Comments

[Joanne roehl]

I wanted to plant hairy vetch and crimson clover in my garden areas that will be barren in the winter like sunflower and pumpkin beds. But I was hoping to plant things that will not die to the ground in winter leaving the soil bare. I was just wondering if any of these cover crops survive above ground during winter.