Lessons From the Fall Garden
Practical steps for any school garden as summer comes to a close.
Summer is coming to a close in our edible school gardens. The annual weeds are going to seed in the garden’s drier patches. We pull them out with fits of passion and they revel in yet another year’s victory as their seeds fall safely to the ground. They will germinate as soon as the soil warms up next spring, as long as the winter rains come this year. For now, however, we will call a truce with the annual weeds.
Taking note from the timing of the weeds’ life cycles, we recall that it is time to save the seeds that we want to keep for future plantings. We do this by ensuring that our most cherished varieties of annual herbs, flowers and vegetables are allowed to go to seed. (For simple seed saving techniques, See Suzanne Ashworth’s Seed to Seed.)
We label these plants so that they aren’t pulled out until they are fully desiccated, having lost their youthful facades of strength and vigor. Once they are dried, we process (thresh and winnow) the seeds and store them in air-tight containers with accurate labels which include variety, seed source, and year saved.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, and other mild climates, dried up seedpods in the late Summer indicate that planting time for our “cool weather” fall and winter crops is here. Just in time for the school year to begin again!
Students return to the overgrown summer garden in August and September. They observe all the colors and diversity that the warm season brings.
The students collect seeds from the dried up pea and bean pods, sunflowers, dill and cilantro, etc. They build huge compost piles with the rest of the dead and dying annual plant material, layering the piles with plenty of manure, and watering them as regularly as we water our garden beds.
It’s a commonly held notion that the “growing season” is not compatible with the school year. I could not disagree more. Here is the why: Saving seeds and building compost with last season’s plants sets the stage for new life in the seasons to come. As my garden mentor Wendy Johnson entitles her prophetic chapter on composting in Gardening at the Dragons Gate, it’s “Life Into Death Into Life.”
The compost pile is not the end or the beginning of the cycle of matter on planet Earth, but it is most certainly where the school year and an introduction to edible education must begin.
The heat from these large piles (a minimum 3’x3’x3’ in size) will kill many of the weed seeds. Although invasive weeds should be disposed of through municipal compost programs, if possible. The rich soil generated in the compost piles will fertilize our fall and winter crops before year’s end if turned actively (at least once every two weeks.)
Once the summer crops’ seeds have been saved and the compost piles are cooking away, we sow our “cool weather” seeds. Among others, we sow lettuce, kale, broccoli, hardy herb and flower seeds into flats and containers and carrots, beets and radishes directly into the soil. As the soil is still relatively warm in the early fall, seeds sprout quickly and transplants send down their roots with ease. By November, getting seeds to sprout and seedlings to take root will be much more difficult.
Once our Fall planting is done, we cover bare soil in the garden with mulch (straw, woodchips, leaves, grass-clippings, etc.) to ensure water retention, prevent erosion and encourage the diverse soil food web underfoot to thrive!
Happy fall gardening everyone!
Visit The Edible Schoolyard Project for more “Voices of the Movement”
Written by Benjamin Eichorn of “Grow Your Lunch” — @GrowYourLunch
Posted from Barnraiser.us
