How to make next year’s vegetable garden even better

Do you know how you mend a broken tomato? With tomato paste, of course.

It was a pretty good year for tomatoes, although much of the region had less than optimal rainfall and temperatures were hot. I wouldn’t rate this as the best gardening season I’ve ever seen, but we had more than enough to eat, with potatoes, squash and onions to store for the winter, and Mary’s canned tomatoes look picture-perfect on the pantry shelves.

I, like many gardeners, am already looking forward to next year’s vegetable garden. And with the eternal optimism of gardening, I know that next year’s will be even better.

Wishful thinking alone won’t accomplish a better garden. There are definite steps we can take to make next year’s vegetables the best yet.

• Next year’s weed control starts right now. Carefully pull or cut weeds that contain seed heads. Since seed heads will easily shatter and scatter seeds when disturbed, first enclose the seedhead in a plastic bag if necessary, when removing taller weeds. If allowed to go to seed, weeds can populate the soil with a bank of seeds that can hound a gardener for decades. For perennial weeds that resurrect from a winter-hardy root system, like quackgrass or thistle, spot treat with a non-specific herbicide or try smothering.
• Improve soil texture and health by adding organic material like peatmoss, compost or leaves. Incorporate a two-to-three-inch layer, improving the water-holding ability of sandy soils while helping heavy clay soils become mellow and less compact.
• Practice good sanitation this fall by removing plant types that are prone to diseases and blights of stems and leaves, like tomato, potato, cucumber, squash, pea and pumpkin. Many disease organisms survive winter safely nestled on old plant parts. Many other vegetable types can be worked into garden soil to add organic matter.
• Enlarge garden beds or raised gardens. You might have more time this fall than next spring.

  

  Forum file photo

• Resolve to use more mulches next year to cover the garden soil. Straw, herbicide-free grass clippings, leaves, or other material placed between rows or around plants conserves moisture, prevents soil from splashing onto plants, prevents sunbaked soil, and controls weeds.
• Prevent blossom end rot on tomatoes and peppers next year by keeping the soil more uniformly moist, which makes soil calcium available to the plant. Most regional soils contain sufficient calcium, which is the causal nutrient, but moisture is needed to allow roots to drink in the calcium.
• Soaker hoses might be on end-of-season clearance sales. Shop now for these hoses that conserve water, reduce disease risk by keeping foliage dry, and provide water to the rootzone where it’s most effective.

• Prevent powdery mildew on next year’s peas, cucumbers, squash and pumpkins by removing diseased vines before winter. Resolve to monitor plants closely next year and apply fungicide at the very earliest signs as a preventative.
• Plan to be pre-emptive about insect control next year. Bean leaf beetles, flea beetles, cabbage worms and Colorado potato beetles were prevalent and damaging this year. To keep crops from being irreparably ruined, early detection and control are key.
• Seed catalog season is right around the corner. Browse for new cultivars of vegetables, which are often developed for disease resistance, better flavor, or other quality improvements.
• Realize that some things in nature are beyond our control. We might be able to water during dry times, but there’s not much we can do about prolonged heat, and when temperatures rise above certain thresholds, even heat-loving crops suffer. And as all gardeners know, no amount of watering seems to accomplish what a good rain does.
• Celebrate our successes but learn from our failures. What did well, and what didn’t? Let’s make notes in a garden journal while it’s still fresh in our minds. Even though I’m sure I’ll remember what tomato cultivar was the star of the show, come next spring I usually don’t.