We Just Put Our Garden To Bed For The Winter, Tucking It In With A Warm Leafy Blanket

 

The next best thing to actually planting and caring for a
garden is planning and fantasizing about next year's crop.

Not wanting to have our first Park Village garden plot lie naked over winter, I agreed to help some non-VMRC neighbors next door rake their maple leaves recently for a share of their fall leaf harvest to cover our soil. Leaves are wonderful for the fertilizer and humus they provide for plants, earthworms and other living things gardens thrive on.

Now that I've tucked our garden in for the winter I'm already looking forward to waking it back up sometime in mid-March. My plan is to first remove the old tomato and pole bean vines, then gently pull back some of the maple leaves along each side of the pole bean fence and plant two rows of sugar snap peas, hardy plants that are resistant to frost. As recommended by one of my gardening mentors, David Alleman, I will make my furrows with a hoe rather than using a tiller to dig up the soil, which Alleman insists is harmful to our earthworm friends.  

After all danger of frost is passed and the peas have begun their rapid climb up the wire fence, I hope to plant a row of pole green beans just inches away from each of the pea rows. The resulting bean plants will then be making their way up the fence as the peas are being harvested, after which the bean plants will completely dominate the dormant pea vines. 

Meanwhile, I'll be digging individual holes for tomato, squash, cantelope and other plants throughout the rest of the garden, leaving the leaves in place to hold moisture, inhibit weed growth and provide plant food for the garden as they naturally decompose over the summer. 

If all this goes as planned, no fossil fuels will be expended, no chemical fertilizer will be used and no back breaking work will be invested in this life-enhancing project.

Now if I can just keep the rabbits at bay long enough to give all of our plants a head start.