We are cold... and so is the garden soil! To protect it well from the cold season and enjoy this time of rest, discover 3 simple and natural techniques.
The time when the vegetable garden was abandoned during the cold season is over! Subsidence, erosion, freeze, rains washing away the soils and shaping compact crusts on the surface...: in winter, unoccupied plots need to be protected. Bonus is the entire ground’s ecosystem benefits: earthworm, small insects and other microorganisms can continue – preserved in their cocoons – to improve the soil for spring.
1. Straw-mulching
In nature, grounds are never exposed except in desert locations. Mulching consists in reproducing this protection by covering the soil with a natural cover from autumn.
The latter is traditionally composed of straw, hence the straw part of the expression. Nowadays, we use all sorts of “breathing” vegetable matter slowly degrading by bringing organic matter such as dead leaves in thick layers. Nothing prevents spreading a bit of compost beforehand on the plots overworked by summer cultivating.
2. Corrugated cardboard
No straws or leaves on hand? Recycle cardboards! They must be brown, without prints, and free from any non-biodegradable materials (scotch tape, staples).
You only need to wet them to soften them, spread them on the ground and ballast them with bricks or large stones. Better add a thick layer of plants on top of them for an aesthetical result and a more efficient straw-mulching. Worms love it!
3. Green fertilizer
Finally, the cultivation of green fertilizers - especially legumes - are on a roll. You need to sow rapidly growing plants at the end of summer or the beginning of autumn to improve the soil’s structure and its fertility: vetch, sainfoin, lupinus albus, mustard, phacelia, oat, alfalfa... When they grow, their roots make the ground less compact and draw nutritious elements from in-depth. Before the formation of the first grains, plants are cut and left on the floor where they shape an efficient mulch. The plants to choose and associate depending on the soil’s natural and the vegetables planted on the plot: think about it already for next year!