October 14th, 2015

Top: Cover Crop of rye, vetch, and fava bean Bottom: Chop and Drop

What to do with this bit of land that was your pretty garden in the spring, but now is full of half dead plants and others that are thriving that you didn’t plant (weeds)?  The good news is you have several options that can bring you into spring with little effort and also improve the quality of your soil.  First the basics.

1. Remove as little as possible/add as much organic matter as you can.  Except for grasses that have mature seeds (fully developed, nearly dry). Don’t remove the rubbish.  If all you do is remove things from your garden…well just think about it like a bank account...  Also your bank doesn’t take monopoly money, so don’t just add a bunch of artificial stuff to try to make up for what was removed.  The more organic material you can add to your garden the better, at a very minimum keep what’s in it now.  (Don’t be the person with bags of yard “waste” neatly placed in plastic bags on the curb, or I might come pick them up! Throw them in the garden, or compost them!)
2. Keep the soil covered.  Bare soil, will soon be degraded and/or eroded. Winters are typically wet, water can sap the good stuff from your soil and wash it away. Bare soil should be avoided at all costs (this applies any time of year, but especially when not much can grow to hold it in place.

                                     So depending on your situation you have several options.

1. Tarp it.  So this doesn’t sound very natural, but it is effective and easy.  Measure your garden, buy a tarp that size, put it over the garden, and walk away until March.  This provides a moist dark place for the living organisms in your soil and will help maintain a beautiful soil structure.  If you have organic matter to add, do that first. In the spring time, I think you will be surprised when you pull the tarp off, and see the rich dark goodness underneath.  This isn’t the option for you if you want to have crops in the ground over the winter such as garlic onions, or some greens that can survive the frosty nights to come (Mmm Arugula!)
2. Chop and drop it. The second easiest method is to simply cut off whatever is growing in your garden near ground level (don’t pull them out), and then just drop them where they were.  These will feed soil organisms over the winter and on warmer days, and the byproducts of this micro activity are good for your soil structure and nutrient levels.  Of course feel free to add more organic matter of almost any type on top of this.  Best might be some compost covered by woodchip mulch, but bags of leaves from your neighbors, grass clippings (that haven’t been sprayed with anything)…whatever you can find. 
3. Cover Crop it.  So it’s getting late for this option this year, but if your growing in an area that is bigger than you have organic matter to cover, and don’t want to buy lots of tarps, you can plant things that are good at adding things that your soil can use (if it’s healthy, its alive, it has needs). One easy example is clover, some people would see this as planting weeds in your garden, but clover actually adds nitrogen to your soil, the number one nutrient needed for plants to grow, and they get it free, from the air (actually bacteria that have a relationship with their roots do that work, but they can’t do it without the plant).  In the spring you can either plant right into the clover that will drop free seeds and beneficial bugs, or chop and drop it.  Other options could be rye grass, types of vetch, fava beans or other cold hardy legumes, even snow peas (but if you harvest from them, you lose a lot of the things that would have been added to the soil).  This method also works well in the summer when you’re starting to get major gaps in your garden from plants dying out. Just use warm weather crops such as cow pea (black eyed peas), and buckwheat are great for growing fast, covering your soil and eventually adding lots of organic matter(chop and drop before seeds mature). 

So I hope this helps lots of people deal with that big question of, “now what do I do with this mess?”!  The main point is to add more than you remove to your garden if it is to be sustainable, and keep the ground covered, either with beneficial plants, a heavy mulch of any type, or at least a tarp.

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