This year ’s warm , dry fall has offered the opportunity to extend the outdoor growing season for interested nurseryman . Nevertheless , we expect wintertime to arrive one of these days , signaling the end of the outdoor gardening time of year .   Looking back , I hope you enjoyed both the gardening and the fruit of your labor this year . If you have cleaned up your beds , planted cover crop or mulch bed , and have protected nerveless weather vegetable that are still yielding , you have clear a interruption . In any case , now is the time to review this class ’s lessons and issue while beginning to call back about next year .

Reduce Chemicals , Build Soil , Add Diversity

The winter offers sentence to recall about how to improve horticulture techniques and be more ecologically creditworthy next year by :

reduce chemical economic consumption through Integrated Pest Management ( IPM ) . IPM is a unconscious process base on observing pest issues , understanding them , taking action only when the price is significant and using chemical as a last refuge . It require regular observance and a time commitment . But the environmental damage that is evident from preemptive chemical use makes it authoritative . For information about implementing IPM , check over out the Garden Shed articleIntegrated Pest Management .

Building your ground . Healthy soil can reduce the motivation for chemical pesticides and fertilizer while reducing lacrimation requirements and runoff . Insights about productive ways to improve filth naturally come from theRegenerative Agriculturemovement . It is a soil focused approach to growing crops that preach :

While twelvemonth - circle land direction practices are not yet universally postdate in commercial agriculture , their use is farm and providing guidance to home gardeners that is ecologically and horticulturally healthy . The Garden ShedarticleIt ’s All About the Soilexplores it more deeply . The YouTube videoHealing the Earth Through Regenerative Farmingwith Gabe Brown is also a convincing sum-up of the practice by a commercial Fannie Merritt Farmer .

make a various home landscape . produce a diverse home landscape painting , of aboriginal trees , shrubs , and flowering perennials is of the essence to reduce the decline in insects and birds in recent decades . It also builds their population to serve cope garden pest by nature . This has worked wonders at limiting cabbage moth and Japanese beetles in my own garden . Get counsel on how to originate with a pollinator friendly landscape from theGarden ShedarticlePlant A Pollinator Paradise . If you need more convincing , watch the videoNature ’s Best Hopewith Dr. Doug Tallamy , a drawing card in understanding and repairing native ecology .

Other helpful information , include video material , is available in the references at the final stage of this article and from theVA Cooperative Extension internet site .

As the interdependence of all aspects of our environment becomes increasingly clear , our pauperism to integrate key ecologic elements increases with it . amend our practice in these three areas is a in force start .

Other December task

Put Your parting to Good Use :

Small Fruits

Seasonal job

Winter horticulture

In any case , love your December horticulture and happy holidays . rent ’s blab out again next month atThe Garden Shed .

reference book :

Featured photo : Vegetable Garden in December , R. Morini

Cool Season Planting Chart for Companion , Interplanting and Square Foot Gardening , Washington State University : https://s3.wp.wsu.edu / uploads / sites/2056/2018/10 / Cool - Season - Planting - Chart - for - Companion.pdf

Virginia Native Plant Society website : Resources for Creating Native Plant Habitats : https://vnps.org/

December Gardening Tasks | N.C. concerted Extension

PMG Website Monthly Task List : https://piedmontmastergardeners.org/gardening-questions/monthly-gardening-tips/