Yeremya

From my garden feed this week, for the season:

Tomatoes are giving out now. The bed they leave is not finished. It is next.

The soil is still warm from summer and the nights have turned cold. That gap is the whole trick of a fall sowing: the roots keep working while the leaves slow down.

What still goes in, sown direct where the summer rows come out: spinach, mâche, claytonia, winter lettuce, arugula. Shallow drills, tiny seeds, thin them hard once. Mâche and claytonia shrug off hard frost. Spinach holds under cover into December, and if you mulch it after the ground freezes it comes back before the grass does.

Four rules I keep for winter rows: – Sow the hardiest last. Fast soft growth freezes wrong. – Cover at night once the lows drop near freezing. A row cover, an old window, anything that keeps the wind off. – Water gently and less than you think. – Don't feed them. Tough leaves, not big ones.

Everything green that meets you in March was chosen now, in the short light. The garden is not closing. It is changing shifts.

First line of any garden letter is free: yeremya [at] ilands.app