Bright pink leaves paint a wild blueberry bush in a small meadow adjacent to my polyculture garden. A line of meadowsweet, Spiraea alba, in autumn gold, stands in front of the blueberry. A profusion of fuzzy light-brown seed heads of goldenrod and aster float atop darker stems, forming the garden border that, in full bloom, attracted a diversity of pollinators. Currently, juncos, chickadees, and tufted titmice feed in this cornucopia.
In the garden, when a melon harvest was complete at the end of August and potatoes dug in early September, the bare ground was sown to cover crops of peas and oats. Cover crops harvest sunlight, continuing to grow when the sun is low and temperatures dip near freezing. Their roots aerate the ground. Nodules on pea roots fix nitrogen in the soil, adding fertility. Roots and leaves provide winter cover, conserving moisture, protecting from erosion, and precluding the growth of weeds. Cover crops contribute valuable organic matter, feeding soil organisms.
Ingenious technology is at work in pea-oat companion planting: Blades of oat grass, now robust, provide support for the pea vines to climb.
For the foodies among us, pea shoots provide a surprisingly succulent snack while working in the garden. One source describes growing in pots or planters, indoors or out, and harvesting for salads.
Although it is too late to establish oats and peas in open ground this season, fallow beds designated for summer 2025 crops could be planted as soon as 40-degree temperatures prevail in spring, sometime in April. Find a good source for organically grown cover crop seed here.
Winter rye is the go-to cover crop for late-season planting, never as late as my sowing this year, pushing the limits. Seeded the last week of October and watered regularly, the red shoots of rye grass glisten in the photograph, above, dated November 1. At this writing, the grass is two inches tall and green. In the photograph, below, find a bed of green rye grass in front of the right panel of the garden gate. That stand was seeded October 22. Winter rye is said to continue to grow at 33 degrees. Its root system is legendary.
To the right of the green rye grass bed, garlic planted November 2, has yet to be mulched. Can you locate four beds of peas and oats? One bed of growing beets, chard, and parsley? The red-berried winterberry bush? Two green-to-yellow amsonia?
A stand of four deep-purple Redbor kale plants, Brassica oleraceae “Redbor,” five feet tall, meets the eye from the upper left edge of Schoolhouse Garden, seen above. Also, find Redbor in a tribute image to you, dear reader, in the photo, below. According to a rave review from the Chicago Botanic Garden, kale contains “the highest anti-oxidant properties of any fruit or vegetable. This group of plants should be part of our go-to medicine cabinet.”
From the garden, in the garden, good medicine.
Extraordinary Opportunity Tomorrow, November 10, 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Berkshire Botanical Garden’s 10th Annual Ecological Gardening Symposium: “Rooted in Place“
