Gardening Tasks for Late Fall

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Photo courtesy Tin House Books (c) 2010

Excerpted from A Householder's Guide to the Universe: A Calendar of Basics for the Home and Beyond, by Harriet Fasenfest, with permissions from Tin House Books (c) 2010. The following excerpt can be found on Pages 319 to 323. 

In the last chapter I spoke of cover crops, particularly crimson clover. Its growth creates a tight mound of green foliage with a fine yet densely matted root system. I like to throw these seeds amid my winter crop of collards and kale and see where they sprout. If, for some reason, my winter vegetables bite the dust, at least there is something to keep the soil in place. But clover is for September, while fava beans and field peas are great to plant as cover crops in October.

Getting a Soil Fix

Fava beans and Austrian field peas will fix nitrogen in your soil. What exactly does that mean? Through a biological process the foliage of the plant pulls gaseous nitrogen from the air, and beneficial bacteria “fix it” in nodules on the plant’s roots. When it comes time to turn the cover crop into the garden bed the following spring, you are “adding” the nitrogen from the plant into the soil. For many gardeners, growing cover crops is one of the most important things you can do to increase soil fertility, particularly in an organic garden. So the way I see it, what could it hurt? I make a point of sowing crimson clover, fava beans, and Austrian field peas and wait to see what sprouts. What I have discovered over the years is that both crimson clover and field peas will stand up to a hard frost, whereas the luscious, near-succulent fava bean will not. I still try planting favas every year, though it is a little heartbreaking to watch the sprightly spring green shade of fava turn limp and olive-drab. That’s what a hard frost will do.

Besides cover crops, October (and even September) is the time to sow your garlic and shallots for next year. Now that is cause for celebration. I am endlessly amazed at how easy it is to grow these alliums, and how abundantly they yield. You plant one little clove out of the bulb you harvested earlier in the summer (or from one you buy in October at the nursery), and you get a whole head of garlic the following year. In the case of shallots, one clove will yield a cluster of bulbs—sometimes as many as eight or nine. I cannot fathom why shallots are so darn expensive at the market. Growing them is child’s play. The same with garlic, so do not miss the opportunity. You will be proud as punch when you harvest, cure, and, in the case of garlic, braid them in strands to hang in your pantry. Really, it is very easy, and aside from my storage onions and tomatoes I doubt I make more consistent use of anything I grow. What, really, does not benefit from the addition of garlic? It can make a meal from the most meager of ingredients pasta, olive oil or butter (or both if you are so inclined), and garlic (roasted, sautéed, or fried). Yum. So rejoice when the time comes to plant garlic, because, quite frankly, it is one of the few things in the garden you will be rejoicing about at this time of year.