WEST LIBERTY, WV – Fall is a time of change. Students go back to school, the weather begins to decline, and plants begin preparing for their process of hibernation for the winter months. For many farmers across the country, fall marks the end of the season, in a literal and figurative sense. But what do farmers do in the off-season? In this month’s edition of “Ask A Farmer,” we got the opportunity to talk to Professor of Biology Dr. Roger Seeber. He was able to give us some insight as to how gardeners and farmers utilize the winter months to their advantage.
Q: For starters, how do you know when your garden has hit the end of its season?
“Well, the plants will tell you. Basically, each plant has a way to sense the season. There are different ways they can tell what the season is. Spring is usually wetter and warmer. The days are longer. Fall is a lot of times wetter, with shorter days. Some plants can tell what time of year it is by the length of the day. Right now, we’re losing two to three minutes a day. So as plants notice this, they’ll begin to shut down. That’s why leaves change color. At the end of the year, as the days get shorter, chlorophyll stops being made, and chlorophyll is an overwhelming color. All the reds, yellows, and the oranges have always been there, but they’ve been overwhelmed by the green. So when chlorophyll stops being made, you don’t change color, you reveal your subcolors. So, plants can tell the time of year, and they react to it. If you’re an annual plant, you’re getting ready for next year. Perennials just die through frost. Now, October 15th is the normal first frost date. The last frost date is usually May 15th, but it’s not always true; it’s about that time of year. So, at this point, plants have already started either shutting down or have already shut down. So, depending on what you plant, flowers or vegetables, you gotta remember that a lot of these plants were from other places in the world. Like chili peppers are more tropical. You can grow them all year down south here they become an annual because it gets too cold. So a lot of these things are displaced because we decided we want to move them up to us.”
Q: So, what are some of the good ways to prepare your garden for the winter months?
“Well, really, you’re preparing for the Spring months. If you have a normal garden, you typically till twice a year or three times. The best way to till is still early in the spring, let it go for a few weeks, the seeds will germinate, and then till it again to kill the weeds that have popped up. Then, at the end of the year in the fall, you should go through, take out all the plants, compost them, or burn them, depending on whether you’ve had plant diseases. If you’ve got tomato blight, you shouldn’t put those in your compost stuff. Just burn them or get rid of them somewhere else. So once you get the plants out, just do the whole thing again to get it ready for the next year. Now, what some people do is they put in a cover crop. Cover crops are sometimes called green manure. You get some seeds, you plant them like winter rye, and farmers do this all the time because they are going to use those plants to hold the soil. They start to grow, you get a nice covering, and it just kind of holds your garden. Then you turn that into next year’s soil. It helps to add green bulk to your spring soil. So the added vegetable material helps you put nutrients into the soil. And so cover crops, especially for bigger gardens, are something that’s kind of common. Now, if you have a high tunnel or a low tunnel, that’s a different situation. You’re extending your seasons so you can go much longer. There are root crops that can stay in all winter. So, people with root crops wouldn’t turn their garden over. They would just pick stuff as they want it. Because it can withstand those temperatures, like winter squash. Winter squash are called winter squash because they’re good all winter. You put them in the basement, and they just sit there for three months. Other things, like summer squash, would rot.”
Q: What are some good ways that you could utilize your garden in the off-season?
“Depends on where you live. The country is divided into zones. Everybody around here waits for Marietta corn and Marietta tomatoes because they’re the first ones of the season. After all, they’re in a warmer place and it’s only two hours away. It does make a difference. So it depends on your zone, and that’s on every seed magazine or anything else that gives you your growth zones. Down south, you can be gardening most of the year. Okay. Up here, basically everything is shut down now, except for stuff that’s in the ground. Personally, I have not picked my second potatoes. I do two sets of potatoes a year. The tops are dead, but I just haven’t dug them yet. But for really extending your season, it’s hot houses. Low tunnels, high tunnels, and anything that can protect and lengthen your season. Like, they have these things that are small greenhouse glass or plastic things that you build. These use a little block that allows the passthrough of air, and you can set it at different levels depending on how much air you want to circulate. So you have to go out all the time on days when it’s hotter or sunnier. It’s a lot of hand manipulation, which means all you have to do is screw up once, and your stuff’s all gone. So you can extend your crop by some type of cover. But basically, greenhouses and things like this allow you to go longer and usually three seasons late in the fall, early in the spring, and the dead of winter.”
Q: Was there anything else you wanted to add?
“You gotta start thinking about next year. In about a month, seed catalogs will start arriving in your mailbox. Gardeners know that winter is the time when you start thinking about next year. You assess what worked, what didn’t work, what you’re going to change in the layout of your garden, and how you’re going to do that to get the best light. So you’ve got to think about what worked and what didn’t work. And then that’s kind of the fun of it. If you’re not adapting and changing, then you’re gardening situation is never going to change. Gardeners love that kind of stuff. Every catalog will have the first three or four pages filled with new items. I want to grow every single thing in the catalog, and sometimes I do. I don’t even need half of it, but I still want to grow it. But you just have to control yourself. People have a lot of trouble with crowded gardens because they are out of control. They want to grow everything all at once. So you’ve got to think about what you’re doing.”
