Fall Vegetable Garden Maintenance
Oct 21st, 2009 by tommy
With winter just around the corner, it’s time to start thinking about your vegetable garden. I know that sentence sounds like an oxymoron, but working on your vegetable garden this time of year will really pay off in the spring.
If you’ve already had a frost in your area, as I have, then your warm season vegetables are looking pretty sad. It’s time to clear those old plants out. You can pull all the dead plants out and chop them up for the compost pile. Of course, if you have some cool season vegetables in your garden you’ll want to leave those.
Fall is a good time to also apply amendments to your soil. Products such as compost, when added now, will have time to break down further and become an active part of your vegetable garden soil.
You might also consider a fall cover crop. Plants such as winter wheat, vetch, and clovers can be planted now in most regions. These crops will germinate and grow this fall and even during the winter. When spring arrives they can be incorporated into your soil as green manure. Nitrogen fixing types (clover, vetch, and peas) make a great addition to the fertility of your soil for the next growing season.
With just a little work now you can save yourself vegetable garden preparation time in the spring. Your crops will thank you!
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Thanks and Happy Gardening!
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- How To Start A Vegetable Garden From Bare (or not so bare!) Ground – Garden size considerations
Enjoyed your post. You are absolutely correct about preparing for spring.
Clover is an exelent ammendment for restoring nitrogen in the soil. However, I am personally careful not to use that method where I plan to plant tomatoes. My poor tomatoes have suffered blossom drop as a result of too much nitrogen in the soil.
Marvin,
You make a good point. Too much nitrogen will cause most plants to remain in a vegetative state and not go into reproduction, which is what we want for fruit set.
As experiences are varied, I have personally never found a problem with following my nitrogen fixing green manure with tomatoes.
Thanks again for your comment. Nitrogen levels are definately something to keep in mind and perhaps a soil test is the only way to know what the levels are in everyone’s garden.
Tommy
Speaking of tomatoes…do you guys swap locations for your tomato plants each spring? I’ve been told that when you plant them in the same plot year after year, you can deplete the soil because they require so much N, but I’ve never tested that. Three years in the same raised bed (mostly because it’s the one that gets the most sun), and every year they seem to grow vigorously. Maybe I’ve just been lucky so far, because I don’t treat the soil with much except a small bit of compost when I plant.
Thanks for your comment. Actually, rotation of crops is not as much a requirement because of soil nutrients. The main reason for crop rotation is to avoid the buildup of soil borne diseases. Rotating crops of different families will lower the levels of soil diseases that affect specific groups of crops.
In your example, I would suggest you consider rotating your tomatoes out of that same location at least once every three years. A yearly rotation, with a return to the same location in the fourth year is optimal. I realize that is hard to do when you have limited space.
Peppers, eggplant, and tomatillos are all examples of vegetables in the same family as tomatoes. Generally, soil borne problems will affect an entire crop family. So, it is best to follow them each year with another crop such as cucumbers, beans, etc.
Good luck with your garden and thanks again for visiting.
Tommy
I’m helping a friend start growing her vegetable garden and I’m sure this post will be useful for her. Thanks!