From “The Gardener Says”: “Don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It’s quiet, but the roots are down there, riotous.” –Rumi (1207–73)
The Winter Farmers Market at Agricultural Hall on Saturday was a heartwarming scene of bustling and entertaining activity. Many components of a successful Thanksgiving meal are to be found there. The local winter produce and value-added items create an impressive assortment, and the attractive setting gives the displays further allure. Winter Farmers Markets continue through Dec. 14, from 10 am to 1 pm.
The Arctic blast
The weather’s cold turn was a shock to the system. (I am betting many an outdoor shower just narrowly avoided freeze-up!) The Arctic blast cheated me of the usual fiery and glorious end-of-season display provided by the Japanese maples and kousa dogwood that flank our house. It left the late-growing, still-green leaves crinkled and dry.
While cold is now driving sap down into crowns and roots, the ongoing autumn mildness left many trees and shrubs in active growth quite late. These are now weirdly clad in freeze-dried green foliage. The normal growth pattern would be: Active growth slows as light levels decrease and temperatures drop, evidenced by changing pigments in foliage color, and for those leaves to fall, or, as it is phrased in botanical tree-speak, to abscise.
A phenomenon called marcescence occurs among some tree species, when the normal cell division, which promotes abscission, halts, and the dead leaves are retained. Oaks, beeches, and hornbeams are examples of trees that exhibit marcescence. However, this freeze-dried foliage is not marcescence. The leaves’ continued attachment might be a problem if there is snow or ice, since the dried leaves would hold it, with more breakage possible.
The living soil
Do not think, just because we are on the cusp of winter, nothing’s happening — Rumi’s “riotous roots” are indeed down there, huffing and puffing and expanding their growth! Root growth and development are promoted by infrared energy, whose longer wavelength now arrives and penetrates, in earth’s turn away from the sun. It is in this context that attending to the soil in this season is good culture.
By attending to the health of soil, a healthy partnership and basis for growth is supplied, which over time and the long run supports soil structure, continued productivity, and the carbon cycle.
It is hard to argue with chemical-based gardening and agriculture. Chemically produced fertilizers are capable of making plants grow, but it is more like a forced marriage. Now that soil scientists, supported by vastly improved means of observing and studying it, are interested in what exactly “soil life” consists of, and what its functions are, an apparently endless throng of bacteria, fungi, and other life forms and mycorrhizal connections are daily discoveries. One of the more disturbing ones is how this soil life is suppressed, negatively impacted, or depleted by the use of chemical fertilizers and other products.
To learn more about healing soils, conserving soils, and related issues, read “The Soil Will Save Us,” Kristin Ohlson’s 2014 book, published by Rodale Press.
The most practical result of having healthy soils is their ability to resist erosion and hold moisture. The image of a sponge is often used. Depleted soils are easily eroded by wind and water (eventually ending up in ocean “dead zones,” where biology is virtually absent), while humus- and organism-rich soils are stable and hold moisture.
Top dressing with low-number, organic soil food (fertilizer) and then applying leaf mold, compost, mulch, or cover crop — in other words, organic matter — feeds soil organisms and gives them something to munch on over winter. Although the activity of these myriad unseen organisms slows down, or retreats more deeply, as soils cool, it is never fully absent, and the living soil is actually responsible for the connections vital to making things grow.
Life on Earth as we know it depends on the thin layer of living soil. Treat it well.
In the garden
Among vegetable garden cleanup jobs, fruiting canes of raspberries and wineberries may be cut down to ground level. Look for bird-sown seedlings of these as well; all too quickly they become thorny nuisances outside their allotted areas.
Asparagus top growth can go; mine never yellowed before the hard freeze, another instance of the peculiar delays many plants exhibited in 2019. Cut into smaller pieces or sections, most garden debris can go on the compost pile.
Leave parsley, dill, and cilantro. They are cold-hardy garden standbys. A row of parsley, whether curly or flat-leaf, will be useful and provide leaves over the winter until late spring the following year. In my garden, cilantro and dill continue to germinate over winter months; just avoid cultivating their area.
Deer have been browsing fruit trees already. Young or recently planted fruit trees will never make it and survive unless trunks are given rabbit-wire protection and the trees netted against deer.
Make good and safe use of fireplace ashes. A small, lidded, galvanized ashcan makes a safe place to dump them, where any coals present may burn down. Then spread them thinly on garden soil, or on leaf or compost piles, or save to grit icy walks and steps. Personally, I like to add ashes to henhouse litter, where hens use them to dust-bathe.
A flock of turkeys has discovered the birdfeeders at our neighbors’ place. Reportedly, they just flap and fly upward to get at the birdseed successfully. I am not sure what a turkey-proof feeder consists of, but the moral of the story here: Don’t want turkeys? Then don’t have birdfeeders.
Happy Thanksgiving, and as the late Paul Rogers liked to say, “Grow a garden that helps you grow.”
