Putting Gardens To bed & Irrigation at Weaver Creek Park turned off, Oct. 28

Putting a Garden To bed..

is a practice which will help regenerate soil and prime gardens for a healthy and productive growing season in the spring.

The process begins with a thorough harvesting of all vegetables and fruit in a garden.

Don’t spread your powdery mildew or woolly cabbage aphids to your garden in 2026! It is very important to discard any heavily diseased or insect infested plant materials such as leaves, stems. Plants with numerous dark blotchy leaves or stems with sunken brown patches and large decaying sections should not be added to home compost piles but can be dumped in municipal compost bins. A temperature of 150-180°F is needed to kill most plant pathogens and home compost piles often do not reach this temperature. 

We put any fibrous parts of plants (like tomatoes, corn stalks, and broccoli and cabbage stems) into industrial compost bins. Other plant material can be composted or chopped up with a shovel and mixed into your garden with any amendments this fall. This plant matter will break down over the winter and contribute to a healthy soil.

Tree leaves can also make a wonderful fall soil amendment and are a great source of organic matter for our gardens. Organic matter can contribute to the water-holding capacity and improve healthy microbial activity in our soil.

Disconnect and Turn off your irrigation!
Keep an eye on the forecast, and make sure to disconnect any soaker hoses, sprayers, drip irrigation or other watering implements before our first freeze. You’ll want to drain irrigation materials and store them in a protected area over the winter so that they can be used again in the spring. Some complex irrigation systems and underground systems will need to be drained and “blown out” with compressed air.

Use Tree Leaves! 
Leaves can make for a wonderful mulching material. Ideally, after being chopped up or shredded (for example by a lawn mower with the blade at the highest setting), they can be added to vegetable and flower beds. Mulches conserve moisture, help to prevent erosion, and as leaves break down in the soil they contribute organic matter and nutrients. A layer of leaves about 4-6 inches thick when used as a mulch and mixed into the soil can improve aeration and even benefit overwintering pollinators! Leaves can even be used as a winter mulch to help insulate the crowns of landscape plants and act as a temperature buffer to help maintain a uniform soil temperature and slow down the freezing-thawing cycles of winter.

Cover Crops

Cover Crops can be planted to improve a soil over the winter, they include plants such as Winter Rye, Crimson and Red Clover, Austrian Winter Peas, Hairy Vetch, and even Daikon Radish. These plants are allowed to grow over the traditionally dormant season and then they are worked into the soil about a month before planting begins again in the spring. Over the winter, cover crops can minimize erosion and increase the activity of microbes in the soil, some cover crops will contribute much needed nutrients (such as Nitrogen) and then they will contribute organic matter to the soil when they are later worked in. If planting Winter Rye, you can broadcast about 1lb of seed for a 500sq ft area, then lightly cover the seed with soil and add a little bit of water; providing water 2-3 times this fall should be enough for the rye to establish. Make sure to cut back the cover crop before it goes to seed!

For further reading on these topics, I highly recommend the following links.

• Cover Crops
• Using Leaves this fall