Homegrown: End-of-year lists for the garden

Now that Thanksgiving is just around the corner and holiday to-do lists of all kinds are taking shape, here’s a reminder to keep a list of end-of-year chores for the garden.

Unless you’re reaping cool-season crops planted weeks ago and tending greens, cabbages, beets and more for harvest in the months to come, it’s resting time for the soil.

There’s some truth to that old cliché of putting your garden to bed for the winter. Tucking it in really means prepping for the spring-summer growing season.

The most important step is to cover the soil with a layer of organic material. As it cushions rainfall in the coming months, it slowly breaks down, creating compost and humus that will bolster the spring garden.

There’s a laundry list of materials gardeners can apply, from bagged or bulk ready-to-use compost to fallen leaves raked up or donated by friends and neighbors, to piles of spent annuals, trimmed perennials, and dried-up stems and leaves from the last of the vegetables.

If any seeds are part of the mixture, you can expect some seedlings to sprout up, but they’ll be easy to pluck out and toss back on top.

Some gardeners treat this winter bedding as a complete layered compost pile by slipping kitchen wastes underneath.

These scraps not only add nutrients but encourage more rapid decomposition.

Others prefer to use only baled straw or manure purchased in bags or collected from stall sweepings.

While these are considered time-tested and classic ways to nurture garden soil, they can bring in weed seeds.

Layering organics over planting beds could be called a lazy way to compost, but in most gardens there’s still enough debris left over that could be put in a pile and left to the march of time.

Add to the list

Before cold weather sets in, set up a structure over tender plants so you can simply pop a protective cover over the top at the last minute.

I’ve found that a large tomato cage fashioned out of concrete reinforcing wire works well over small plants.

It can stand in place for weeks or months without looking too intrusive.

Gray or brown supports rather than white are less conspicuous in the landscape.

Creative gardeners contrive all sorts of supports for larger plants such as re-bar teepees, PVC pipes, a circle of poles - materials strong enough to hold plastic or cloth or sheets of spun garden fabric.

Most citrus trees and many succulents need this kind of shelter unless they’re situated in a protected spot or in a microclimate where freezing air never collects.

Look for lavender buds

Lavender plants can develop awkward shapes a few years after planting, but pruning them in fall and again in early spring prevents legginess and woody stems exposed beneath the foliage.

This two-step approach maintains a low, rounded profile on most lavenders.

The key is to find a middle ground when pruning - not too lightly, not too drastically.

Now, and again in very early spring before flower buds form, cut top growth as low to the ground as you can but always above green branchlets or pale green buds.

Plants are unlikely to survive a pruning into woody stems where no buds are showing.

This one treatment may be all your lavenders need, but if you want them shorter, look for new buds in another few months and prune again.

Time for dormant spray

For many years, I’ve been guided by the reminder to apply the first in a series of sprays before sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner or at least by the first of December.

New Year’s and Valentine’s Day signal later applications, especially if trees have had a bad case of peach leaf curl, mites, scale, or aphids.

Spraying in winter while trees are dormant allows oils to reach into recesses in the bark on leafless trees and smother various pests and their eggs.

If pests or eggs are not present, however, there’s no reason to spray.

To control peach leaf curl, a disease that affects peaches and nectarines, use either a fixed copper and oil spray or a Bordeaux mixture, a blend of copper sulfate and lime that combats both fungal and bacterial diseases.

Both sprays are also effective against leaf spots, apple scab, and shot hole fungus.

Note also that apricots should be sprayed only with fixed copper sprays or oils, never with sulfur, which will compromise fruiting.

Rosemary McCreary, a Sonoma County gardener, gardening teacher and author, writes the weekly Homegrown column for The Press Democrat. Write to her at P.O. Box 910, Santa Rosa, 95402.