F_fall_winter

Hosted by Cristina Del Alma

What can be planted now?

There are still many crops you can plant now. Most will over winter and be harvested in the spring. You might find fall starts for fall harvest at your local nursery. Be sure to get good starts that aren’t root bound. Many of the brassica family starts will stunt if root bound.

What garden maintenance should be done now? Scattering seeds for cover crop

This is the time of year for soil improvement and protection so those areas in your vegetable garden that won’t be planted with fall and winter crops should be planted with a cover crop or sheet mulched to improve soil and keep our fall rains from leaching nutrients from the soil.

Cover crops improve the soil by providing nutrients, loosening tight soils with their strong root systems and keeping our fall rains from leaching our soils.

Sheet mulching is covering the soil with compost materials like spent crops, fall leaves and trimmings from your yard. Layer up the browns and greens as is done for composting, water and cover to prevent your mulch from being blown off by fall and winter winds. The mulch will encourage compost critters to decompose the organic material adding nutrients and humus to the soil and improving soil structure.

This is a good time to do a soil test and lime your soil to remedy an acid soil. Most soils are acidic in the Pacific Northwest but a soil test will tell you for sure and provide information on what other nutrients maybe needed.

Use dolomite lime if liming. Dolomite lime not only contains calcium but magnesium as well. These are two great nutrients that are needed in our acid soils.

Add compost or composted manures now if not sheet mulching. Or make these a part of the sheet mulch. Compost will improve the texture of your soil in addition to addition some nutrients.

Any organic fertilizers that you add to your soils in cold fall soils will sit until next year when the soil warms and bacterial activity returns. The bacteria help to breakdown the fertilizers and make the nutrients available to the plants.