Through October, vegetable gardening runs on a dual track-first finishing the fall harvesting and then preparing beds and pots for winter.
But this fall, grey skies and showers with outbursts of heavy rains suggests some crops may need to be taken before they start to rot. Normally, squash can stay outside until just before Halloween, but this year these and zucchinis need careful watching.
Tomatoes aren't a blight or rotting issue if they're under cover, but the fruit ripens so slowly under cool temperatures and reduced light that it might as well be completed in warmer temperatures inside.
Some people still like to wrap tomatoes in newspaper and store them in a box or tray, but after jabbing my fingers into an occasional ball of tomato mush, I prefer ripening them on windowsills where their status is quite visible.
Looking ahead to winter, covering garden beds deters weeds and prevents the soil compaction that makes beds so hard to work in spring. Whether you choose cover crops or mulch, it really helps to weed the bed first.
If your beds grow moss over the winter, it's useful to spread some slow-release dolomite lime, though you don't need to do that on the future potato bed. Potatoes like mildly acidic soil. Recycling crushed eggshells into the vegetable garden makes good use of a valuable resource. Eggshells are extremely high in calcium.
The most popular and easy-to-get cover crop is fall rye, which should be planted in mid-fall. It germinates at lower temperatures than other crops.
Fall rye produces a widespread, very delicate mass of roots and is a great soil conditioner especially useful for clay-soil gardeners. It's important to cut it down in spring before it gets too tall and goes to seed.
If you want a light and airy mulch that protects while making it easy to access the crops underneath, leaves work fairly well. They do tend to blow around when newly spread, but once fall rains wet them down they stick together and stay in place.
So do the leaves and stems of corn plants. These are manageable if you shear the corn stalk into pieces while it's still standing. If the corn roots are allowed to remain until spring, they're quite easy to pull up.
Grass clipping mulch is heavy, moist, nitrogen-rich and enormously popular with earthworms that breed underneath by the hundreds. Unfortunately, birds love scratching into it for that very reason. Also, by spring, any seeds in the mulch will try to germinate. But it's still useful.
Parsnips and leeks can be left out in the vegetable garden. Neither need protection from cold, but mulch does keep the soil soft so that they're easier to dig in frosty weather. If there are no hungry mice or voles in the vegetable garden, beets and carrots can be left outside under a deep mulch-otherwise they're best stored in a cool, frost-free place.
Pots of spinach, arugula or winter lettuce or herbs may give you a crop if you plant in pots against a sheltered south or west wall. lt all depends on the weather. A greenhouse would be an even safer bet-even an unheated greenhouse is always a few degrees warmer than the outside.
