Early October: Winding Down and Prepping Ahead
This week, we look at how to get ready for next year's gardening by making preparations now and by letting nature do the heavy lifting for us. We’ll also highlight more native perennial shrubs that are no-fuss and highly productive. Finally, let’s bring back childhood memories with grape jam!
Preparing Gardens for Next Year
When we garden organically, we rely on natural, organic matter to provide fertility for our plants and feed all the beneficial micro- and macro-organisms in the soil. This relationship between soil and plants is complex and symbiotic. But it takes time for this organic matter to break down. Therefore, we need to be placing it on our garden beds now so that over the spring, summer, and fall next year, our plants can benefit from it and be productive.
Layering our gardens with organic matter now means that the material will be at least partially broken down when we go to plant in the spring. We like to use thin, alternating layers of carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich materials as soon as we take this year’s crop out of the garden.
Here’s what we use:
Carbon-rich materials
Cardboard (corrugated is best)
Straw
Leaves (mow them a bit to start the breakdown process)
Nitrogen-rich materials
Seaweed
Coffee grounds
Compost
Animal manures (find a nearby horse farm, as they’re often glad to have someone come take some away)
Use what you have most conveniently around you, but try to balance out the carbon- and nitrogen-rich materials. Adding just a few inches of each every year to your veggie beds will give you more productive soils. As a result, you will have less work next spring and throughout the growing season.
Take a look at these videos to see the benefits of sheet mulching and amending your garden soil:
“No-Till Gardening: An Easier Way to Grow,” from the UK-based company GrowVeg.com. Note that we disagree with one part of this video: it advises using hay, and we strongly prefer straw. Hay is loaded with seeds from grasses and meadow plants that may start sprouting all over your garden. Straw is a better alternative because it contains just the stems of grains and should have few seeds.
“Benefits of Cardboard in the Garden” from Discover Permaculture with Geoff Lawton
Planting Native Plants for Food, Health, and Beauty
We love native plants for all the benefits they bring to us and the entire ecosystem. This week we delve into elderberries and pawpaws.
Elderberries
Elderberries (Sambucus canadensis) are one of the few native fruits of North America. They have been used for centuries to make jams, jellies, and wines, and to solve a myriad of medical problems. You can make syrup from the berries for an excellent immune booster—just what we all need these days.
The shrub is tolerant of partial shade and damp soil, although it prefers full sun and a well-drained, loamy location. Before the summer berries form, large, flat clusters of sweetly scented white flowers appear in spring.
You can plant just one plant because elderberries are self-fruitful, but you will get a larger yield when two varieties are planted nearby. They have shallow roots, so you should mulch heavily to keep the soil moist.
The shrub will bear fruit in about 2 to 3 years and tend to sucker freely, so you will end up with a grove of elderberries. In late winter, prune back old stems (3+ years old) to the ground to maintain the plant’s vigor.
Elderberries are an excellent choice for wildlife habitats. Butterflies especially like elderberries, and birds will flock to the fruit. You can place netting over the plants to keep more of the fruit for your own use. Once established, the plants are deer-resistant.
Pawpaw
Pawpaws (Asimina triloba) are delicious fruits that can be grown in your backyard orchard. Although they look tropical, they are adapted to our Cape Cod climate.
Pawpaws like a moist shady area when they first start out, but to have good fruit production, they need full sun. So, plant in a sunny area and create some temporary shade for the first few years until they get established. You can do this by erecting a small trellis just to the south of the seedling and then planting an annual quick-growing vine like a pea or bean. Make sure to mulch well to keep the soil moist.
Pawpaws can be spaced about 5 feet apart. Plant at least three varieties for cross-pollination, because they need to be pollinated by a different variety to fruit successfully.
Pollination is a bit tricky with pawpaws. The flowers have a female organ and then it turns into a male, so they can’t pollinate themselves. It requires pollination from a tree with entirely different genetics to be successfully pollinated. Buy different pawpaw varieties to ensure the most successful pollination, two minimally. The flowers are a deep reddish-purple color to attract the flies that pollinate them. The easiest way to ensure fruit is to pollinate by hand, taking a male flower from one tree and using a small paintbrush to pollinate a female flower from a different tree. The process is easy if you’re watching your trees closely over the flowering period.
The pawpaw is relatively pest- and disease-free. Deer tend to avoid eating pawpaw leaves.
The fruit is eaten fresh and is extremely perishable but amazingly delicious when it is perfectly ripe. A pawpaw can be used much as you would use a banana. It works well when used for baking (like for a banana bread recipe) or for adding to a smoothie. For longer-term storage, you can freeze the fruit and make ice-cream out of it.
Grape Jam
We have so many grapes around our farm that the air is thick with a jammy scent in the fall. It's hard not to want to do something with them, so we have been making grape jam from them as a family project for years.
Grape Jam from Foraged Concord Grapes
8 cups Concord grapes
1/4 cup water
6 cups granulated sugar
1/2 lemon, juiced
1/2 teaspoon unsalted butter
Separate the grape skins from the pulp by squeezing the grapes between your fingers. Put the skins in one bowl for the food processor and put the pulp and seeds in a saucepan.
Pulse the skins with 2 cups of sugar until coarsely chopped.
Bring the pulp and seeds to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until the grapes lose their shape, mashing them every few minutes with a potato masher. This takes about 10 minutes.
Pour the grape pulp through a strainer into a large bowl. Force out as much pulp as you can and discard the seeds. Then add the strained pulp back into the saucepan and add the grape skin sugar, plus the remaining 4 cups of sugar, lemon juice, and butter.
Bring the pot to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes, skimming off foam as it forms.
Meanwhile, prepare the jars by boiling six clean canning jars in a large pot for 10 minutes, covered with water. Place the accompanying lids and rings in a separate pot, boil quickly, then turn the heat down to low to keep warm.
Once the jam has thickened and reached a gel-like state, fill the prepared jars until just below the rim with the hot jam mixture. Add the lids, screw the band fairly tight, and let stand until set. Jar lids should make a popping noise and have a concave indentation when properly sealed. If a jar is not properly sealed, keep it in the refrigerator and eat it within a week.
See you in two weeks for It's A Wrap!