Some of you may remember that I mentioned in September that I am a warm-weather person, and I know a lot of Durango people love to wear their shorts until November (or later, like my crazy husband). I salute you hot-blooded humans and often wish I were one of you, but I put my Chaco’s back in the closet last Tuesday and broke out my socks and dusty shoes just in time for the rain and snow to start falling.
I imagine that a lot of you are well prepared for the rapid shift from summer to winter and have started digging out your gloves and skis, just in case Purgatory can open a little earlier this year. But what about your gardens, flower beds and trees? I love all the calls and emails I get from our community about how to care for plants and trees during the summer, but does everyone know how to care for them once it is cold outside?
Some of my favorite late fall activities around my house and farm involve broadcasting wildflower and cover crop seeds and putting my fields ‘to bed’ so to speak. It’s a wonderful habit to get in sync with the seasons and begin the process of readying everything now for a healthy and productive spring and summer. Walking around and picking flower seed heads and spreading them around the farm fence area creates a beautiful border for my neighbors and pollinators to enjoy and in full disclosure, if I am walking around town, or out in the forest and come across a beautiful flower that has gone to seed, I glean that too and spread them around as well. I also love to gather my seeds and share them with my neighbors or anyone that wants to add them to their own gardens.
Another great way to prepare your yard is mulching. That can come in a lot of different forms; you can use straw, leaves or composted kitchen or garden material, well-degraded compost, even cardboard and wood chips can serve as your mulch. The general idea is to cover any bare ground (hence my love of cardboard) to feed the worms and other soil macro and microorganisms and smother weeds in the spring. Another place mulch can be used is right on top of your plants if you cut them back each year.
For example, I grow a LOT of rhubarb. I have well over fifty gigantic plants growing and each fall, after the first hard freeze, I take the dead leaves and stalks and put them in the compost pile and add a few inches of mulch over the crowns, right along with my strawberries. And yes, to answer your question, I do have an exceptionally large strawberry patch growing right next to my rhubarb. I wanted them to get the idea that they were made for each other.
Lastly, because I don’t till my fields, I have a lot of cover crop grass between each of my annual plant rows, so last weekend I set my tractor mower deck at about 4 or 5 inches and cut everything down. It looks messy and a little longer than I might mow during the summer, but I know that there are plenty of insects and other critters that use the longer ground cover as a haven to either overwinter or lay their eggs. That is also true for your front or back lawn. A lot of us were trained to cut the lawn back low and rake up the leaves (the life of a mid-westerner), but you lose out on a lot of valuable ground cover and nutrients that will breakdown over the winter under a blanket of snow and help create a healthier lawn in the spring.
So, before you get out the wax for your skis, consider what you can do to help your yard rest well and be ready for a wonderful spring. After all, nothing is more consistent than change!
Heather Houk is the Horticulture and Agriculture specialist for the La Plata County Extension Office.
