When Good Weather Is Bad

Little by little, the last of the gardening chores are being completed.

First up was the asparagus.  I had been waiting a very long time for the ferns to turn brown and the time finally arrived this past weekend:

Browned Asparagus Foliage

I cut all of the ferns at ground level and then topped the bed with a good quantity of compost.

Asparagus stems cut down at ground level

Lastly, I mulched the beds with a few inches of straw.  I normally use my plastic trellising to hold mulching straw in place, but didn’t have enough to cover both these beds and the garlic/strawberry beds.  So I came up with a rather ingenious idea that turned out to be so much easier than the netting – chicken wire.

I had a couple of rolls left over from the fencing and one of them was 30” wide, the exact width of the narrow asparagus beds.  I anchored the chicken wire with pegs at one end of the bed and then unrolled it until it reached the end of the 3rd bed & anchored it with more pegs.  Easy peasy and only a few minutes of effort.

Chicken wire keeps mulching straw
from being blown off the bed

Sure beats having to deal with the tangle of plastic trellising.  If the remaining chicken wire was not inconveniently located at the back of my overflowing shed, I would use this method for all of the mulched beds.  But now I know for next year.

The gardening season this year reminds me of the Energizer bunny.  It keeps going, and going, and going – no small thanks to the above seasonal temps we have been having since September.  I’m very grateful for the extra harvests and not having to don a winter jacket as I do my garden cleanup.  The down side, however, is that I'm getting a bit worried that these unseasonal temps may wreak havoc with some of my crops.  Case in point – the garlic.  Some of it has started to poke out of the ground:

This is something I normally don't see until the early spring

In our area, garlic should be planted early enough so that the roots start to develop, but late enough that the shoots do not break the surface.  Yikes.  This has never happened to me before, so I have no idea what the impact will be.  I’ve read that the garlic may be damaged but whether this means I’ll actually lose some of it over the winter remains to be seen.  Thankfully, there was no evidence of sprouting shallots, so those should still be ok.

The other issue I've noticed is that since the ground is not frozen yet, the squirrels are much more active and destructive this year & they have been digging around in every single bed:

Dang squirrels

Not a big deal in unplanted beds, but a bit worrisome on those that were planted up.  A couple of unearthed garlic cloves had to be replanted and some of the holes were precariously close to the asparagus.

In the past, I usually waited until temperatures were consistently around the freezing mark and then did all my mulching at once – garlic, shallots & strawberries.  This normally worked out to be mid to end of November.  Here we are, almost a month later, and we still haven’t reached that point.

Regardless, I decided to do my mulching now and hope for the best.  At the very least, this should keep the beds a bit cooler and slow growth when our temps go up (we are supposed to hit 12C/54F on Tuesday).

Mulched garlic bed topped with the plastic trellis

For the strawberry bed, you are supposed to wait until the plants go dormant (mostly red leaves and green leaves get a grayish cast).  The inner leaves still look quite green to me, although perhaps not as vibrant as normal:

Strawberry bed before mulching

Good enough – the mulch is now on.

And lastly, I mulched the perennial bunching onions & overwintering spinach that I planted right behind them:

Perennial bunching onions

I wasn't sure if I should cut off the top growth on the perennial bunching onions before I mulched them.  Last year I grew He-Shi-Ko & left the tops on over the winter & they did fine.  The thing is, it's much easier to apply the mulch if all of those long leaves aren't in the way.

This year I grew 2 varieties of perennial bunching onions - Evergreen Hardy & Nebuka.  I'll be eliminating the Evergreen Hardy as I found the onions too large & slow to divide.  Instead of pulling them all up, however, I decided to do a bit of a test & cut off the top growth before I mulched.  Now we'll see if they make it through the winter ok.  The Nebuka, which I really liked and will be keeping, was left as is.

My worries also extend to the fruiting crops, especially the newly planted apple trees & berry bushes.  I planted 3 apple trees this spring and one of them still has a few green leaves left on it:



The leaves on the Granny Smith are a bit hard to see
against the still green grass

I finally got around to doing a nice, deep mulch on all of the blackberry and raspberry canes, which will definitely increase the odds of them making it through their first winter, so at least that’s one bit of re-assurance.

Mulched blackberry canes

I would love to get some fruit next year, of course, but my main concern with these new plantings is one of survival.  Normally, I don’t start feeling the stress of “what damage did the winter do” until the early spring when we get a bit of roller coaster weather.  Seems that this year my worries are starting early.

Till next time...