Author: Henry Homeyer

Eating from your garden is possible even in December

I personally think that the Canadians have the right idea: They have their Thanksgiving feast the second Monday in October, right after the harvest. By the time our Thanksgiving rolls around, many gardeners have eaten all their home-grown veggies. It need not be so, of course, if they are properly stored.

Not all of you have the time, the space and the desire to grow veggies. I think everyone appreciates that having local farmers is important, and many of you have signed up with a farm CSA to get a box of vegetables each week during the summer. Even now many CSAs have fall or winter programs to supply you with root crops and spinach or brassicas like Brussels sprouts or kale. If you can’t get into a CSA program, think about buying local vegetables at your local food coop.

Why are local vegetables important? I have read that the average vegetable in a big grocery store travels over 2,000 miles at some times of the year. That’s right, we in New England get veggies from California, Florida, Texas and other warmer places. I am interested in reducing my carbon footprint by reducing the use of fossil fuels. Those big 18-wheelers crossing the country use a lot of diesel fuel. And fruits from Mexico and South America? I avoid them. I can (mostly) live without fruit that travels long distances.

I am not claiming I have given up citrus fruit to save the atmosphere. But instead of getting a case of oranges, I can buy a few and get my citrus fix from orange juice, which is much more concentrated than fresh fruit, and easier to transport. Local apples are available pretty much year-round, store well and are tasty and nutritious.

So what will I have on my table for holiday feasts, both now and in December? Potatoes, for sure. They are easy to grow, very productive and store well. In a bed 50 feet long and 3 feet wide in full sun I can grow 50 pounds of potatoes.

I keep a large spare refrigerator in the basement dedicated to storing potatoes and other garden vegetables. Potatoes, carrots, celeriac and rutabagas store well at 33 to 50 degrees, and do best with high humidity. A modern fridge takes a lot of the humidity out, though the drawers are better at keeping in humidity. On the shelves of the fridge I store potatoes in heavy paper bags to reduce moisture loss — in plastic bags they might rot, as they need to breathe.

Brussels sprouts are very cold-resistant and will be fine outdoors until late December — if the deer don’t find them. That’s right: Deer love Brussels sprouts, kale and broccoli and will munch them unless protected. I had no problem with deer this summer because of our dog, Rowan, who leaves scents around the property and advertises himself as a wolf. But deer are hungry now — very few nuts this year — so they have moved in to my late fall plantings and are even eating the tops of my rutabagas.

If you want to eat directly from the garden in November and December, some fencing is probably a good idea. I recently spread an old bedspread over my kale plants to keep deer away until I had time to pick and freeze them. But if you just have a few plants and like to pick fresh veggies from the garden now and in the weeks to come, think about some chicken wire fencing.

Although fencing an entire garden requires an 8-foot fence to keep deer from getting in, a small space with six kale or Brussels sprouts plants can easily be surrounded with 3- or 4- foot wire. Tie it onto stakes with string or zip ties. They can’t get in, and I doubt they will lean over and grab food.

I freeze a lot of vegetables each year as it is easier than canning them. Tomatoes are the easiest. I freeze them whole, skins and all. In past years I have put them in zipper bags, but we are now trying to lead a plastic-free life.

Plastic can potentially leach chemicals onto food, particularly if the food is hot. Even “food-grade” plastic may not be 100 percent safe. So this year we started storing frozen foods in wide-mouth jars. Next summer I will cut large tomatoes into chunks to fit into jars for freezing. I use frozen tomatoes for stews and soups.

I remember that many years ago there was a recall of fresh cranberries at Thanksgiving time due to some chemical that had been sprayed on them. Afterward we all went back to eating cranberries and forgot about the scare. Now I try to get organic fruits and vegetables whenever possible, and grow my own organically — without the use of any chemicals.

I got some cranberry plants from a friend this summer and hope to be able to supply our needs within a few years. They do not require a swamp to grow, although they are found in wet places in the wild. They do require acidic soils, but that is easily provided with elemental sulfur or soil acidifier. They do best in full sun, though my friend who grows them has them in part sun/part shade and they do well for her. She uses pine needles to mulch them. Some plant nurseries sell potted cranberry plants, so I might try some next year.

Featured photo: An inch or more of gravel should be at the bottom of the terrarium. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

How to make a wildlife terrarium from your backyard

When I was in the third or fourth grade, way back in the 1950s, I decided I wanted to grow something indoors in the winter months. My mom grew African violets, but I had little interest in them. I wanted to bring inside some wild plants that I could tend and watch grow. So, with help from my mom, I built a terrarium. It was a huge success.

My terrarium was simple: I used a wide-mouth one-gallon jar lying on its side to contain mosses and other small plants I found in our woods. I delighted in seeing moisture build up on the top of the jar, which was shut with a lid, and “rain” on my plants.

I decided recently to see if I could re-create my terrarium and perhaps even improve on it. I found an old gallon jar for the purpose, but also found something easier to work with, given that my hands are so much larger now. Gardener’s Supply (gardeners.com) sells something they call a “Deep Root Seed Starting System.” It consists of a heavy-duty base tray roughly 15 by 9 inches wide and 1.5 inches deep. It comes with an 8-inch-tall heavy-duty clear plastic cover. An old aquarium fitted with an improvised cover could be even better — bigger and deeper.

I went out to my nearby woods to gather the plants. But first I went to a little stream with a large tin can and scooped up small pebbles and rough sand. I got enough to put an inch or so of it in the bottom of my terrarium. This is to catch water and keep the soil well-drained.

I put the gravel in the base tray, and then covered it with a piece of screen I cut from an old window screen. The screen helps to keep soil from washing down into the gravel and wicking water up to the root zone of my plants. Most plants do not want soggy soil.

On top of the gravel I put down good soil I collected in the forest where I found my plants. Forest soil is full of fine roots, so digging up some soil requires a good tool. I used my CobraHead Weeder, which has a single tine that digs through roots easily, loosening the soil to allow me to harvest soil and plants. I put about 2 inches of rich, dark soil on top of the gravel, mounding it so it is deepest in the middle and slopes toward the sides.

I brought a long, low basket to bring home plants collected in the woods. First I got some mosses as they are great in a terrarium. They require little and transplant easily. You can literally just pick them up off the ground. I collected sphagnum moss, which seems to grow everywhere in the woods, often on dead logs. Another moss, one that grows in a tidy, tight pincushion shape, was also easy to collect, though I haven’t learned its name yet.

I noticed foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia) growing here and there in the woods, and collected a small plant and installed it in my terrarium. It has maple leaf-shaped leaves and lovely flowers that come in spring on pointed spikes. It will be fun to see if mine will bloom “in captivity” or not. It is commonly propagated and sold in plant nurseries.

Ferns are lovely but most are too large to go in a terrarium. But I did find one small fern to include, as yet unnamed. Most ferns have yellowed and died back by now but this one had not, so I assume it will stay green all winter.

Although not common in most woodlands I walk through, I saw plenty of wintergreen (Gaultheria spp.) and brought plants home for the terrarium. It is a low groundcover that has red berries that persist all fall and winter, as apparently birds are not fond of them. Its roots run, so it can spread quickly in moist, rich, acidic locations.

Lastly, I collected ground pine — which is not a pine at all but is common in the woods. It is a club moss with the scientific name Lycopodium dendroideum. Like ferns, club mosses reproduce by spores, not seeds. Its roots run long distances and can be a nice addition to a woodland garden. It is evergreen and has even been used in wreaths in the past.

When collecting plants for a terrarium it is important to harvest responsibly. Never harvest all the plants in a clump, and do not collect plants unless you see them commonly. If you are not on your own land, ask permission from the landowner before collecting anything.

Try to get as much root with a plant or small clump of plants as possible. I went around each plant with my CobraHead Weeder, loosening the soil enough so that I could get my fingers under it. Then I tried to determine what kind of roots a plant had, and follow each one out, loosening it before lifting the plant.

If you have city water with fluoride or any other added chemicals, do not water your plants with it. Instead, catch rain water or melt snow. Because a terrarium is a closed environment, you will not need to add water often.

My plants should look good all winter. They do not need bright sunlight as they do fine in shade in the wild, but a little morning or late afternoon sun will be good. It will be fun to see what they do as the winter progresses.

Featured photo: An inch or more of gravel should be at the bottom of the terrarium. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

After you’ve weeded your garden, raked your leaves and cut back some of your perennials (and left some for the insects and birds), you may think you are done. You are not. This is a great time to work on improving your soil.

Soil amendments do not act instantaneously. Changing the pH level, a measure of acidity or alkalinity, takes time. Kits are sold inexpensively (under $10) at garden centers that will tell you what your soil pH is. It’s important to know soil pH along with the needs of specific plants.

Blueberries are a prime example. According to Paul Franklin of Riverview Farms in Plainfield, N.H., soil pH is the determining factor for getting berries. Sunlight? Adequate moisture? Soil texture? Sure, those are all important. But, he told me, if you don’t have the right pH you will get handsome bushes but few berries.

Soil pH numbers are not on a linear scale, but a logarithmic scale. That means that for each number you drop down from neutral (7.0), the acidity is multiplied by 10. And 10 times again for the next number down. So a pH of 5 is about 100 times more acidic than a number near 7. Blueberries, unlike most plants, do best with a pH of 4.5 to 5.5. Except in rare instances, soils in New England are not that acidic, so you need to work on it if you plan to grow blueberries.

In the fall of 2021 I prepared the soil for six blueberry plants in a sunny, open field. First, the sod was removed in 4-foot-diameter circles 8 feet apart for the bushes. Then some compost was added to the holes. Finally I added agricultural sulfur — bright yellow sulfur purchased at my local feed and grain store. I could have added a sulfur-containing fertilizer such as Holly-Tone or Pro-Holly. Those both also add some organic material for improving the minerals in the soil.

When adding a soil acidifier, follow the directions on the bag. What I used said that each 100 square feet needs 12 pounds of it to drop the pH one point. But if you want to drop it two points, don’t try to do it all in one year; take two years. A pound of the soil acidifier is 2 cups. A 4-foot circle is roughly 12 square feet and needs about 3 cups to drop the pH one point.

We planted blueberries in the spring of 2022, and they produced well and grew well. I will check the pH in the bed again this fall, and will add more sulfur if needed. I will test the soil at the edge of the circle, not right near the root ball. The root ball probably arrived with plenty of sulfur already in it.

Most perennials and vegetables do best with a pH of 6.2 to 6.8. If your soil is more acidic than that (with a lower number on the pH scale), you can improve it by adding lime to the soil. Lime is ground up limestone and approved for organic gardeners (as is sulfur). For soils with a pH less than 6.0, you can add 5 pounds of lime per 100 square feet. For mildly acidic soils, 2 pounds per 100 is fine. Never add more than 5 pounds per hundred square feet in a single season. Clay soils require more lime than loamy soils.

It is good to have your soil tested every three years or so. You can Google “soil testing” along with your state. Most states have their own labs for testing through the Extension service, and they provide a standard gardening test for a moderate price that will test for calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, soil pH, organic matter content, and a lead screening analysis. Both conventional and organic fertilizer recommendations are given. In New Hampshire, that is $20. Nitrogen does not show up in soil tests as it changes daily.

The labs offer testing for other things, and I recommend paying extra ($4 in New Hampshire) to learn the percentage of organic matter in the soil. That is important to know. Aim for 8 percent organic matter. If you have less than 4 percent, you need to add compost and work it into your soil. If you have a good level of organic matter, you probably also have good nitrogen levels.

Although in New Hampshire the lab will test to determine the percentage of sand, silt and clay particles in the soil for $30, I do my own test. My way is simple. I take some soil and wet it. Then I rub it between my thumb and forefinger. If it is a clay-dominated soil, it will be sticky. If it is a sandy soil, you will feel the particles of sand. If it is a good loam, it will feel good, with just a few bits of sand and a tiny bit of stickiness. Not scientific, but good enough for me.

Drainage is important, too. You can test soil drainage by digging a hole 24 inches wide and 8 inches deep. Fill it with water, and see how quickly it drains. If your garden is flat and over shallow bedrock, or if you have clay soil, it might take more than a day. If so, plant things that like moist soil. If you have sandy soil, it might drain in an hour or so. If so, plant things that do well in dry soil. Do your test after a week of dry weather.

You can always improve your soil by adding compost and working it in. If starting a new bed, you can work compost in everywhere. In established beds, add compost every time you plant a new perennial. Do not add sand to a clay-based soil; it will turn to concrete when the soil dries out. Add compost.

I’ve been working on my soil for 40 years, and it is dang near perfect. But I still add some compost and organic fertilizer in the hole when I plant a new flower. The results are happy plants.

Featured photo: A simple pH test kit costs under $10 and does fine. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Forcing bulbs for early spring blossoms indoors

I love tulips. Fortunately, our dog Rowan keeps the deer away, so I can grow them in our garden. But if you have a deer problem and can’t grow tulips (deer think you’ve planted treats for them), I have a solution. Plant some in pots now so they will bloom for you indoors in March or April.

Almost any spring-blooming bulb can be “forced” to bloom indoors, but tulips take the longest: four months. If you pot them up in early November, they won’t be ready to start growing leaves and buds until March. But let’s back up a bit and see what they need to thrive and bloom.

First, they need a cool or cold place to rest for four months of dormancy. I am lucky: I have a cold basement that I keep just above freezing, which is ideal. Anything over 50 degrees will encourage them to send up green shoots too early. If they do that, they probably won’t bloom.

A garage attached to the house might be suitable for forcing bulbs. Or maybe you can put them in an unheated mud room or spare fridge. If the growing medium freezes it won’t kill the bulbs, but they won’t progress toward the hoped-for bloom time. They need to be growing roots and getting ready to bloom.

You need a suitable container for forcing bulbs. I use an Italian-made red clay container that is 16 inches long, 5 inches wide and 5 inches deep. It is handsome and will look good on my windowsill when I bring it up from the cold basement to blossom. You can, of course, use a plastic pot or a handsome ceramic pot. I have even used my window box for a bigger splash of color. But anything you use should have a drainage hole and something to catch the water that may leak out of it.

Next, you need a good growing medium. You can buy potting soil, or you can reuse potting soil from last summer’s annuals that were in pots on the deck or steps. A robust annual grows lots of roots, which you need to separate from the soil by shaking or banging the soil loose. The soil can then be used, but you should mix it with fresh potting soil, too.

Fill the container you plan to use about halfway with the growing medium. If the soil mix is dry, moisten it well before placing the bulbs in the pot. Then push the bulbs into the soil mix, cover the bulbs with more mix and pat it down firmly. You can place them closer together in the pot than you would if planting them outside in the soil. In fact, I plant some bulbs shoulder to shoulder.

You will need to check on the pots once a month to be sure the potting mix has not dried out. If it has, water lightly, but never get the growing medium soggy. But if it is too dry, nothing will happen, either.

Rodents are a problem outdoors — they love to eat tulip bulbs. But if you live in an old house you may also have mice or squirrels in your basement that will eat the bulbs. So I cover each pot with hardware cloth (a wire mesh) or a small piece of board. They won’t eat daffodil bulbs, but I have had rodents dig them up and throw them on the floor in disgust!

When selecting bulbs for forcing, always choose early or mid-season bloomers. I want early blossoms while snow is still on the ground. This is true whether selecting tulip varieties or daffodils. Daffodils generally only need three months of dormancy. Crocus and other small bulbs only need two months of cold storage.

My favorite daffodil for forcing is the Tete-a-Tete. These little gems are short and early, and produce lots of flowers, two or three flowers per stem. This year I potted up a dozen 4-inch pots with three bulbs each. These should be ready to come up into the warmth of the house in about 10 weeks, and ready to gift to friends a couple of weeks later while in bud. There is nothing like a blooming daffodil to pick up a person’s spirits in late winter.

Another blooming treat is the paperwhite. This is a type of daffodil that comes ready to grow. Most people like to set them in a bowl filled part way with stones and add water until it just “kisses” their bottoms. Put on a sunny windowsill, these bulbs will blossom in four to six weeks. Just keep on adding water as it evaporates or is sucked up by the paperwhites.

Paperwhites in bowls of pebbles sometimes get too tall and tip over. Some people add just a soupcon of gin to the water when they start to grow, stunting their growth. Me? I just try to rearrange the stones to prevent tipping. Another way to do it is to grow them in potting soil. But you should not bury the paperwhite bulbs if you do that. Leave half the bulb above the soil line.

A nice project for your garden club would be to pot up some Tete-a-Tete or other bulbs now for later use as gifts to the ill or elderly, or anyone who needs them. I know one club that is planning on doing so this year.

Featured photo: Five to seven tulip bulbs fit nicely in this pot. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Put a few here and there, or make a big splash of color

As a boy I was surrounded by hundreds of spring daffodils every year. We lived in rural Connecticut, and the people we bought our house from had planted daffodils by the hundreds in our woods. The woods consisted of sugar maples, huge ones, with a sprinkling of ash trees, providing dappled sunshine. We had wide raked paths and all along the paths were daffodils in April and May. We would pick 50 or more at a time and bring them into the house and put them in vases everywhere.

So when I bought my house here in Cornish Flat in 1970, I started planting bulbs, too. Except for my years in Africa with the Peace Corps, I have probably planted some every year for over 50 years. It is now getting tough to find places to plant more, but somehow I manage. One trick I use is to put those little white plant tags pushed almost all the way into the ground (so I see less of them) each time I plant a new batch. That way I don’t inadvertently dig up some while trying to find a blank palette.

The first step is to buy bulbs. My local feed-and-grain store has them, as do garden centers and most grocery stores. You can order bulbs online if you want things beyond the common ones. But I like to try first to buy locally.

Next, find an appropriate place to plant them. If you are planting small, early-spring bulbs like snowdrops or glory of the snow, you can plant them in the lawn. Just poke holes in the sod for them. Their foliage dies back early. But if you plant daffodils or tulips in the lawn, you won’t be able to mow the lawn until their foliage has replenished the energy in the bulbs, which for daffodils is July 4 or thereabouts.

I like to plant a big splash of color in one place. Rather than dig small holes with a trowel or auger, I like to plant a minimum of 25 daffodils or tulips in a wide single hole. To do this, I lay out the bulbs on the ground where I want them, spacing them 3 inches or so apart. I like a planting of bulbs to be an oval or teardrop shape as opposed to a rectangle. That seems more natural, but do whatever pleases you.

Then I take a hand tool and draw a line around the space designated for the bulbs. I remove the bulbs, and dig out the soil. I don’t dump it on the lawn — I put it in a wheelbarrow or on a tarp so I don’t make a mess on the lawn. I discard any stones as I dig.

For depth, follow the directions on the package. Big bulbs like daffodils and tulips generally should be planted at least 6 inches deep. Little things like crocus only need to be 3 inches deep. If I dig down 6 inches, I then add some bulb booster or organic fertilizer in the hole and then loosen the soil for another 2 inches with my CobraHead weeder (or a three-pronged scratcher). If the soil is heavy clay or very sandy, I add a couple of inches of compost and stir that in.

Next I place the bulbs in the hole in a somewhat random pattern, not straight lines. I wiggle the bulbs around so that the base of each bulb is near the bottom of the loosened and enriched soil. Finally, I shovel the soil from the wheelbarrow back into the soil, being careful not to dislodge my bulbs. If the soil is really crummy, I throw some away and mix in compost to replace it. Bulbs need good drainage.

What about hungry animals that want to eat your flowers before you can enjoy them? Squirrels and chipmunks love tulip bulbs and have been known to watch from a distance as gardeners plant them — and dig them up almost right away. Some sources claim that adding sharp crushed oyster shells on top of the soil, or near the top, will deter them. I doubt that. Oyster shells won’t deter a tulip-hungry gray squirrel.

Wire mesh buried in the soil above the bulbs will deter squirrels, however. The problem is that when you cut it to size, the edges are razor-sharp. When I interviewed the White House gardener at the end of the Clinton years, he reported that they kept squirrels away from their bulbs by feeding them all the corn they could eat. A well-fed squirrel won’t bother to dig for tulips, he said. That’s not a good plan, in my view, it will attract more squirrels. I say, if you want tulips, plant them and hope for the best. Having a dog helps, too.

Deer are another problem. Deer love tulip buds and flowers, and will often eat them just before they open. Although there are deer repellent sprays, I think the best solution there is to temporarily surround beds of tulips with wire fencing. Chicken wire comes in 3-foot-wide rolls that can easily be supported with thin stakes and will keep deer away from your tulips.

Lastly, if you want tulips on your table, you might consider buying them. Local greenhouses near me grow them by the thousand and sell them through my local food coop at a fair price in season. Then you can focus your bulb efforts on things that deer and squirrels won’t eat.

The best bulb in deer country is the daffodil. They are mildly poisonous, so squirrels won’t eat the bulbs and deer won’t eat the flowers. There are over a dozen different named categories of daffodils, and a wide range of colors beyond yellow: white, orange, and even some with a green eye, or center. They will bloom early, mid-season or late in the spring. So buy plenty and enjoy a pest-free spring.

Featured photo: Plant with the pointy end up. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Back in the 1980s the Dartmouth Film Department showed a film by Les Blank called Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers. It was shown in “Smell-o-Rama.” Cooking garlic smells were mysteriously introduced to the air system, filling the 900-seat auditorium with the delicious odor of roasted garlic. I attended, and loved it all. Just for the record, my one mother was better than garlic — but I love garlic, too, and plant plenty of it.
One of my favorite fall appetizers is to take whole heads of garlic and roast them in oven-safe ramekins or small dishes at 375 degrees for 45 minutes or so. I peel off the outer layers of the head of garlic, cut off the tips of the head and drizzle it with olive oil. When done the cloves of garlic are soft and easily squeezed out of their skins after cooling. I like to serve this on crackers or a baguette spread with goat cheese.
In order to have enough garlic for treats like the one described above I plant a lot of garlic each October. Usually I plant about 50 cloves, but I have planted up to 100 — always enough to eat daily and some to share. It really is a virtually work-free, pest-free crop. All you need is “seed” garlic sold for planting, or failing that, some organic garlic purchased at your local farmers market or food coop. Grocery store garlic is often treated with chemicals so it won’t sprout.
In addition to seed garlic you need a sunny place with decent soil, or even crummy soil you can improve with compost. To plant 50 cloves of garlic the space you need is minimal: a spot perhaps 4 feet long and about 3 feet wide. You could even find the space in a flower bed for a few, or on the front lawn around the light pole.
I plant garlic in a wide raised bed. I loosen the soil with a garden fork or my CobraHead weeder down to a depth of 6 inches. Then I add some good-quality compost, either homemade or purchased, and stir it in. I make furrows 8 inches apart and add some organic fertilizer like Pro-Gro into the furrow. I work it in with my single-tined CobraHead weeder. Or you can sneak cloves into a flower bed individually using a hand trowel.
Each clove needs to be planted the way it grew — the fat part down, the pointy end up. I plant cloves about 3 inches deep and a hand’s width apart in the row. After pushing the clove into the loose soil I pat it down and when all are planted I cover the bed with about a foot of loose hay or straw. This will keep the garlic warm longer in the fall, allowing it to establish a good root system before the ground freezes.
Next spring the shoots will push right through the hay, but most weeds will not. If we have a warm fall, you might even see green shoots pushing through the hay now. Don’t worry. That won’t be a problem, come spring.
There are two kinds of garlic; hard-neck and soft-neck. Here in New England we do best growing hard-neck garlic. It has a stiff stem in the middle of each head where the scape grew last summer, while soft neck garlic does not.
Just as there are sweet onions and pungent onions that make you cry when you chop them, not all garlic tastes the same. If you are ordering garlic from a seed company, read the descriptions carefully. Be sure you are ordering hard-neck garlic. They should tell you about the flavor of each, and I recommend getting three different kinds for your first trial. Since seed garlic is relatively expensive, you will want to save some garlic each year for planting the next year.
If you use a lot of garlic in your recipes, pay attention to how many cloves are in each head. It is less work to peel one big clove than three small ones. I grow mainly large heads, and I often have to cut one clove into two or three pieces to fit it into my garlic press. The product description should tell you not only the size of the bulb but also the number of cloves per head.
You can store garlic best in a cool, dry place. Ideally 50 degrees with moderate humidity. You can freeze it in a zipper bag or jar for a year or more. Don’t store garlic at room temperature in oil, as it can produce deadly botulism.
Garlic plants are handsome, especially in July, when they send up tall flower scapes that twist and turn in great shapes. Think creatively and you can find a space to plant some. I often cut the scapes and use them in flower arrangements, and they are also good sliced and sautéed in a stir-fry.
In a recent article about putting the garden to bed, I failed to mention that it is a good plan to leave some flowers standing. Why? Because some beneficial insects lay eggs in or on the stalks to overwinter. Birds will also eat the seeds of things like black-eyed susans and coneflowers. So you have an excuse now not to clean up the gardens completely. You can finish in the spring.

A garlic bed ready for planting. Photo by Henry Homeyer.