FALL - CLEANUP & RENEW .GARDEN & GREENHOUSE

FALL - CLEANUP AND RENEWING (GARDEN & GREENHOUSES (Hoophouse, Tunnels, Glass Enclosed Greenhouses)

Fall in the US comes at different times, here in Europe it is much earlier than in the States, September is usually the time to start putting beds in the garden in order and harvesting the last of the outdoor crops.  Normally by the end of September we are needing to wear coats and rain jackets (although here in the Netherlands rain jackets are an everyday necessity as we have an exorbitant amount of rain. 

My first step is to start cutting back canes from blackberry and raspberry bushes and to clean up the debris from those.  By doing those early you eliminate the need to deal with all the leaves that fall and here in the Netherlands the snail are so prolific you need to keep areas clean to avoid them overwintering under the debris.  I have done that this week, and it was quite the chore to cut the canes and then cut into smaller pieces for compost and to get rid of the bulk that didn't fit in my compost.  Canes from raspberries and blackberries dry very hard quickly so if you are composting them, the smaller the pieces the better and you have to keep the compost moist to avoid them not breaking down quickly.  I am going to wait until October to cut back my prune and apple trees because they really need to be cut when the temps are colder than now.  I am going to attempt to overwinter my purple basil and my swiss chard and a few other items in my smaller greenhouse.  My hoophouse is too large for me to efficiently insulate it, and I will instead put horse manure in the hoophouse on top of the soil and water it in for next year.  This year in an attempt to have less weeds in my gardens I planted my beans very close together, leaving no space in between the plants and it worked well.  The beans did as well as if they were spaced as per the package, and because we had a really wet summer with floods and rain for weeks, I think it actually was more productive than had I done the normal spacing.  The canopy did not allow in so much water, but enough to sustain them.  In a hot summer with no rain I would have had to water the plants and that would have been quite the task watering by hand and carrying water.  I do have a rain barrel but it is for the greenhouse, and I haven't made an area that can be used for collection anywhere else.    

I have added Kaulk (aka lime) to the beds I have cleared and made ready, and later I will add compost on top to absorb into the top layers.  Usually you would mix it in with the soil when making the beds ready, but because of the large amount of rain here I choose to put it on top so the nutrients sink into the top layers of the soil.  I have totally covered two beds that I had issues with weeds this year and I had an outcrop of raspberry canes that grew from my neighbors garden under the ground and kept sprouting in my beds, so having dug down and removed the roots from the existing shoots, I am attempting to kill off any that have managed to evade my digging.  I have raspberries in my fruit garden and this garden is only for growing vegetables.  I am in the process of making the fruit garden only dwarf fruit trees, raspberries, black and blue berries and different varieties of currants and strawberries.  I have apple, pear, peach, prune trees in that garden area and herbs.  This year I added comfrey plants that were given to me by a neighboring gardener and I want to establish more of them for medical use and for soil enrichment.  In that garden I have alot of parden bloem or horse tail plants.  I did not use lime in that garden last year and I noticed that they were in several places that I thought I had eradicated, so I am hoping that a good layering of lime and then later compost on top of the ground will alleviate those,.  It is very difficult to get rid of that plant when it has become established and the entire garden was plagued with it when I took it over.  The entire garden was just covered in grasses, weeds and the horse tail, and it has been very difficult to eradicate all of the weeds because they were allowed to seed many times over the few years before I took it.  An older man in his 80s had the garden before, and I understand he maintained it well for years until health issues caused him to be unable to care for it properly, thus I inherited a nice spot, but with alot of issues to overcome.  He grew mostly potatoes the last few years and a few other root vegetables, but most was a weed paradise.  Johnson grass had taken hold in alot of spots and without using a harsh chemical it is not easy to get rid off, even with digging out the trailers the seeds from previous years are still in the soil and viable for I am told up to 50 years.  Probably my biggest issue is the nuts from the trees from the owner in the back of this property, there are 80-100 foot trees that have a hundred million acorns that here where the weather is wet most of the year they sprout and quickly become 3 inches tall in a couple of weeks or less if the weather is hot.. I ended up with a layer that was 6" deep this past spring from the excess that fell after the fall cleanup and it was difficult to dig out all the saplings that had already sprouted and started growing.  This year I need to stay on top of that and get them away as quickly as possible to avoid that issue.  

 In the greenhouse I like to use hydrogen peroxide to clean my soil, a small bottle into a 5 liter watering can and sprinkle on the top of the soil until the ground is saturated down to about six to eight inches because I grow tomatoes in the greenhouse.  Tomatoes are susceptible to potato blight and other diseases and the soil can become contaminated and affect the plants the following years.  I add compost that is two years old to the soil after I do that and typically plant sweet peas to give a boost of nitrogen.  Some people disagree with my method, but it works for me, so others can choose to dig out all the soil and replace it, but in my case it is too expensive to do in a hoop house and I see no reason to do so if I can alleviate any issues with a natural product such as hydrogen peroxide.  

Whatever your fall clean up starting methods are, just remember that you shouldn't compost items that are diseased, and please do yourself a favor and do not compost potato, tomato leaves and plants.  You are just asking to have diseased plants from the start when you do that, dispose of those at your landfill or burn them if possible.  Don't contaminate your soil just because of being too lazy to get rid of them in a proper fashion.  You will have regrets for having done so.  I am on a few composting groups and I really want to scream at people that say I do it all the time, but these are the same people that are showing their wilted plants that are turning yellow and getting unrecognizable spots on their plants in the app.  So just don't do it, you might get lucky one time and the next not.  One diseased tomato plant or potato plant in the compost ruins the entire batch, so why take the chance?  

If anyone has any ideas on how to make a green house heat up without electricity, or a fire, or bubble wrap and cardboard, I'd love to hear from you.  I don't have electricity to my gardens, I pay for the garden space but no electricity, fires are not allowed, and I can not afford solar panels, so any ideas are welcome.  I do plan on placing horse manure in containers to provide a heat source but with temps going into the minus here that isn't going to help very much.  

Now I have had my coffee, I'm off to the garden to do some cleaning and soil renewal.  
Email me with your ideas or comment on this post.