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If the planting urge strikes this month, plant onions and garlic for next summer’s harvest. Choose a well-drained area, because these bulbs would rot rather than root if they get too wet. Clean up the garden residues from vegetable gardening. If the vegetable garden hasn’t been limed in the last three years, add 5 pounds of dolomite lime per 100 square feet and work it in well.
Cover the vegetable garden for winter with tarps, fallen leaves, or compost. Bare soil invites weeds, and it’s discouraging to come out for spring planting and find a thriving chickweed or wintercress patch. Mild temperatures after rain have all those winter annuals sprouting madly.
December’s a good month to plant, and transplant, trees and shrubs, orr wander a nursery and pick out some winter-blooming shrubs, such as Camellia sassanqua or Winter hazel. When the rest of the garden has slowed or stopped, this area has dozens of interesting winter-blooming plants.
One of the joys of gardening in the maritime Puget Sound region is that every month offers garden tasks and time. We don’t really experience a “shut down” phase such as that common to colder, snowier climates. We may get two weeks of cold temperatures, here or there, or a fit of snow, but in general winter presents many open, fairly mild days for being outside. So in December there are still garden tasks to enjoy.
Keep the lawn raked, and remember the winter lawn fertilization if it hasn’t been done yet. An application of a slow-release 3-1-2 ratio fertilizer, applying one pound of actual nitrogen per 1000 sq feet of lawn, must go on by about December 10. This winter fertilization is one of the most important of the year, because it helps support root strength while the lawn continues to grow slowly in winter months.
December’s clean ups make this a great month to start a compost pile if this valuable addition to garden management isn’t already present. Compost, put simply, is the broken-down residue of organic material, worked on by soil organisms, both the large ones like worms and the microscopic ones. Compost that’s fully broken down doesn’t resemble any of the original components. It’s a dandy dark brown garden amendment or mulch with a nearly neutral pH.
Or a “passive” pile of chipped garden trimmings, grass clippings, and leaves. It’s not necessary to turn or manipulate compost piles unless a very fast breakdown with lots of generated heat is the goal. “Passive” piles will break down to a useable texture in 6 months to a year.
Some materials must be excluded from compost piles. Don’t add any food wastes. Undesirable vermin of various sizes and types--raccoons, rats, possums -- are attracted to food waste. Don’t add vigorous weed seeds such as Canada thistle or perennial weeds like morning glory with roots that multiply in compost. Send those off to be commercially disposed of. Don’t add any diseased material, such as dogwood leaves with anthracnose on them.
If you or a friend like reading about compost, a small but thorough book on
the whole process is Let it Rot, by Stu Campbell, Storey Communications
1990. Campbell offers the useful observation that “No matter what you
do, no matter how many little mistakes you make, you are still probably going
to come up with reasonably good, usable compost.”
Hortsense: Managing plant problems with Integrated Pest Management
