At my house, when August hits and the summer has been long and hot, I start thinking about how I’m going to wrap things up for fall. There is something satisfying about cleaning up the garden as the season shifts.
The tomatoes are finally slowing down, the cucumbers have given up, and plants that once looked full and orderly in June are now sprawling, tangled, and a little out of control. The garden starts to feel messy and unorganized, like it’s ready for a reset. Out come the gloves, pruners, wheelbarrow and maybe even the tiller. We pull plants, rake the beds smooth and get everything cleaned up for winter.
But before you haul everything away, it might be worth asking:
What are you leaving behind for the soil?
We spend an entire growing season asking our soil to give. It supports our plants, holds water, supplies nutrients and provides a home for billions of organisms we never see.
Fall is our opportunity to give something back.
Why Call It Garden Gold?
Gold has been valued for centuries. We save it, protect it and invest in it because it holds value.
I think organic matter deserves a little of that same respect in the garden.
It may not glitter, but organic matter has tremendous value to our soil. It helps soil hold water and nutrients, improves soil structure, feeds soil organisms and creates a better environment for roots to grow.
And just like an investment, what we put back into our soil today can benefit us later.
That’s why I like to think of organic matter as garden gold.
Organic Matter Is More Than Compost
When we hear “organic matter,” most of us probably picture compost.
Compost is certainly one way to add organic matter, but it isn’t the only one. Roots, leaves, stems and other plant material all become part of the organic matter cycle as they break down.
And here’s the part I think we sometimes overlook:
We’ve been growing organic matter all summer.
While we were paying attention to whatever we chose to grow above ground, our plants were busy growing an entire root system underneath them.
We tend to judge a plant by what we can see. But there has been a lot happening beneath our feet all summer.
So when fall cleanup begins, do we really need to pull all of that out?
Not necessarily.
You Grew Something Valuable Underground
Take a tomato plant as an example.
When a healthy tomato plant has finished producing, rather than yanking the entire plant from the ground, you can cut it at soil level and leave the root system behind.
The tomato plant may be finished, but those roots still have work to do.
As they die and decompose, they contribute organic material below the soil surface. Soil organisms begin breaking them down, and the spaces those roots occupied can remain as pathways through the soil.
In other words, some of the garden’s gold is underground.
The large tomato vine above ground is a different story. Healthy plant material can be composted or otherwise managed and returned to the garden later. You don’t have to chop a giant green tomato vine into your soil simply because organic matter is valuable.
And if a plant has had disease problems, that’s another reason to be thoughtful about what plant material you leave in the garden.
The point isn’t that we should leave everything.
It’s that we should stop automatically assuming everything needs to go.
Keep Building Your Investment
Now we have an empty spot where that tomato plant used to be.
We could rake the soil smooth and leave it bare until spring.
Or we could ask another question:
What could we grow here next?
This is where cover crops start to make a lot of sense in a home garden.
Instead of asking the soil to sit empty after producing for us all summer, we can put living roots back into it.
Those old tomato roots can begin decomposing while a new crop starts growing above and below ground.
That’s one of the reasons we created Re-Fresh BASIC as a fall soil reset. The goal isn’t simply to have something green growing in your garden. Those plants are doing work.
They are growing roots, building above-ground biomass and covering the soil surface. While they’re growing, they’re protecting the soil, taking up nutrients and feeding the biology below ground through their roots. Later, when that plant material is terminated and begins to break down, it becomes another contribution to the organic matter we’re trying to build.
Instead of ending the growing cycle when the tomatoes come out, we’re continuing to invest in the soil.
And Then We Leave Something Behind Again
Eventually, the cover crop has to be terminated too.
And this is where the cycle starts to make sense.
Termination doesn’t mean we have to pull everything out and start with bare dirt again.
The roots can stay.
Depending on how you’re managing your garden, the top growth may be cut and left on the surface, composted, or incorporated into the soil.
Either way, what started as a handful of tiny seeds has now produced a much larger amount of plant material.
Some of it grew above ground.
A lot of the important work happened below it.
And eventually, much of that material can become part of the soil’s organic matter.
Maybe “Clean” Doesn’t Have to Mean Empty
I love a tidy garden as much as anyone. There is something about finishing fall cleanup and seeing everything put away that feels good.
But maybe we need to rethink what a garden ready for winter looks like.
Bare soil isn’t necessarily finished soil.
When the summer garden is done, we have an opportunity to leave roots behind, return healthy plant material when appropriate, and grow another crop whose job isn’t necessarily to feed us.
Its job may simply be to feed and protect the soil that will feed us later.
Healthy soil isn’t built in one weekend or with one bag of something we bring home from the garden center. It’s built over time, by paying attention to what we’re taking out and what we’re putting back.
So this fall, when you’re standing in the garden with your pruners in one hand and an old tomato plant in the other, don’t just ask:
“How do I clean this up?”
Ask:
“What can I leave behind?”
Because sometimes what looks like the end of this year’s garden is actually the beginning of next year’s.
The best investment you make in next year’s garden might be what you leave behind in the soil this fall.
That’s why I call organic matter garden gold.
Farm Wisdom
Some of the garden’s gold is underground.
When a healthy crop is finished, don’t be too quick to pull out the roots. Leave them behind to become part of the soil that grows next year’s garden.