When most gardeners think about controlling weeds organically, they think about the sweaty summer labor of hand-pulling weeds and cultivating rows. Thankfully, there are other ways you can help keep weeds in check without resorting to chemicals. While most garden work happens in the summer, fall is a good time to take a few steps to keep your garden weed free year round. Here are a few of our favorite organic weed control methods for fall.

Silage Tarps

Traditionally, spring meant tilling, but what if your garden beds were already ready to go come spring? Many organic market gardeners rely on silage tarps for organic weed control to keep beds weed-free and ready for spring planting.

Start by doing bed prep in the fall. Weed your garden and incorporate compost and any amendments that your soil needs, like lime. Then, tarp your garden beds for the winter so they’re ready to go early. This method also minimizes spring soil disturbance, which prevents you from bringing more weed seeds to the surface.

Mulching for Organic Weed Control

If you’ve kept up with your beds this summer, mulch is a great option for winter organic weed control. Mulch breaks down fast in the Southeast, so you want to use a thick layer of wood chips, straw, or leaf mold. Some gardeners like to place a layer of newspaper or cardboard first for extra weed protection; just make sure you remove any packing tape and glossy labels.

We love using wood chip mulch around perennials and winter-grown crops like garlic and bulb onions. Alliums, like garlic, perform poorly with high weed competition, so mulch is key to good production. The mulch breaks down through the winter, so it’s a good idea to add more in late winter or spring.

Solarizing for Organic Weed Control

This organic weed control method is best used in late summer or early fall, when you’re still getting a good bit of sun each day. Solarizing is similar to tarping, but rather than using a dark-colored tarp, you’ll need a clear sheet of plastic. The clear plastic will help create a greenhouse-like effect and “cook” weed seeds, pests, and pathogenic microorganisms in the top layer of soil. The downside is that beneficial insects and fungi may also be affected.

To solarize your soil, start by removing any large, tall, or woody weeds. Then water the soil well and cover it with clear plastic sheeting, pinning the edges with bricks, wood, or other weights. You want it to be as airtight as possible so that it can heat the air beneath the plastic and sterilize the soil.

Leave your plastic in place for about 4 to 6 weeks for optimum results. Then you can sow cover crops, plant fall and winter crops, or cover the soil with mulch.

Winter Cover Crops for Organic Weed Control

Winter cover crops are another great way to reduce weeds in the garden, and they come with many other benefits. Depending on the crop you choose, your winter cover crop may help add nitrogen to the soil, increase organic matter, help break up a hardpan, improve drainage, provide habitat for beneficial insects, or act as a mulch for spring crops.

Here are a few of our favorite winter cover crops for organic weed control:

• Austrian Winter Peas
• Clover (red, white, crimson)
• Hairy Vetch
• Winter Rye
• Winter Wheat
• Buckwheat
• Daikon Radishes
• Oats

Winter is a great time to build healthy soil with cover crops! Check out our full post, Soil Season: Winter Cover Crops, for help selecting a cover crop and planting advice.

Late Weeding

Whatever method you use, knocking back any fall weeds before they go to seed can help make your garden easier to manage next season. In addition to preventing seeds from falling in your garden, autumn weeding can also help set back perennial weeds and winter annuals.

That said, we still like to leave patches of flowers and native plants for wildlife and beneficial insects. Even after these plants die back, their stems and seeds provide valuable habitat.

 

When autumn arrives, we’re all ready to take a break from the garden, but a little extra work now can pay off in the long run. Using these methods of organic weed control can help reduce your weed pressure next spring and set you up for a better harvest.

When planning a garden, radishes often get overlooked as we think about garden classics like tomatoes, cucumbers, and sweet corn, but radishes have a lot to offer. They’re easy to grow for beginners, quick to mature, and surprisingly cold tolerant. They’re also an excellent crop for Southeastern gardeners looking to stretch their season into fall and winter or produce an early spring harvest. In this post, we’ll cover how to choose a variety and grow winter radishes.

Types of Radishes

We typically divide radishes into two categories: spring radishes and fall radishes. Despite the names, you can grow both of these types as winter radishes. However, they have some unique traits to consider that we’ll outline below.

Spring Radishes

These are the small, crisp radishes you may have eaten in salads. They’re quick growing and thrive in cool weather. Depending on the variety, you can have radishes ready to eat just 24 to 30 days after planting! They may be mild or a bit spicy. Below are the spring radishes we currently carry:

• Cherry Belle

• Easter Egg

• Red Head (Roodkopje) Radish

• Sparkler White Tip

• White Icicle (Lady Finger)

Don’t let the name fool you; spring radishes are also suitable for fall planting. What separates them from fall radishes is their storage ability. Spring radishes are best used fresh, and when left in the ground too long in warm weather, will become woody.

Fall Radishes

These radishes are larger, slower-growing, and more starchy, with a more robust flavor. They also have a much longer shelf-life and are a bit more cold tolerant. Below are the fall radishes we currently carry:

• Round Black Spanish

• Daikon

• Miyashige White Daikon

• Misato Rose

Unlike spring radishes, these radishes are day length-sensitive and should not be sown in spring. You can plant these radishes in late summer or fall for fall and winter harvests. These types keep well in the root cellar or soil in areas with mild winters. Often, it’s best to harvest these larger radishes with a fork or spade.

Shop all radishes.

Season Extension for Winter Radishes

Depending on where you live, you’ll likely need to provide your winter radishes with some additional protection if you want to have winter harvests or an early spring harvest.

Low tunnels, high tunnels, and cold frames are good options for winter radishes. If you have a freeze in the forecast, you can also cover radishes with an additional layer of row cover for extra protection. Remove the row cover when temperatures rise above freezing.

When to Plant Winter Radishes

Exactly when you need to plant winter radishes will vary with your climate, chosen variety, and desired harvest date. Whatever radish you choose, it’s important to consider your winter low temperatures and how seasonal variations will affect the radish’s days to maturity.

Spring radishes are best when temperatures stay about 30°F. At lower temperatures, the roots may become pithy and unpalatable. Fall radishes handle the cold better and may be fine down to 20° or 25°F.

While season extension techniques like high tunnels offer some protection, unless you have a heated greenhouse, those living in colder areas will want to plan their sowing date so that crops are ready to harvest before temperatures fall that low in the winter. For those sowing in late winter for an early harvest, wait until the worst of your cold weather has passed.

As you’re calculating those planting dates, it’s also important to consider that crops will grow slower in cooler temperatures when the day length is shorter. For crops sown in late summer or fall, we add about 15 days to the ‘days to harvest’ period. If you’re growing radishes in the dead of winter, it can be even slower; radishes sometimes taking double their normal time to reach maturity.

Winter Radish Care and Watering

Radishes are an easy crop to maintain, but they benefit from a bit of care. Thinning and irrigation are important considerations for good radish production.

Typically, we sow radishes fairly thickly to ensure good germination. However, as they mature, thinning is critical for radishes. When you fail to thin radishes, they may fail to produce bulbs and or produce elongated roots.

Watering is also important, especially for winter radishes in a high tunnel or cold frame that aren’t getting rainwater. In the first week after sowing, water regularly to keep the soil moist and ensure good taproot growth.

After a week, as the plants start to grow a bit more, you can slow down on watering a bit. Over-watering at this stage can cause the bulbs to crack. To avoid over-watering, only water when the soil dries out or the plants look stressed. You want to soil to be moist but not saturated when you water.

Radishes are among the easiest crops to grow and are a great option for extending your season. Whether you have a large high tunnel or a little cold frame, you can grow radishes this fall and winter to get a bit more from your garden.

While the gardening season is winding down and we head into fall and winter, it can be a good time to look at the more structural elements of your garden. When we talk about garden structures, people often think of obelisks, hedges, and pergolas in formal, ornamental gardens, but garden structures can be helpful in vegetable gardens too. Here are five DIY garden structures you can set up to make your garden more beautiful and efficient.

Cattle Panel Garden Structures

Cattle panel tunnels are one of our favorite DIY trellises. They’re sturdy, long-lasting, easy to harvest from, and just plain fun! There’s something magical about harvesting beans or cucumbers hidden in the shade of a leafy tunnel.

Plus they’re one of the easiest garden structures to set up. To make them, all you need is a cattle panel and two metal t-posts. If you want a longer tunnel, you can add additional panels with two t-posts per panel. We love them for pole beans, but you can also grow gourds, cucumbers, morning glories, melons, or other vining plants on the tunnel.

Check out our full guide to creating bean tunnels here.

Combined with greenhouse plastic and some lumber for framing, you can also use cattle panels to create a DIY high tunnel. Just make sure you secure them well so that the wind doesn’t destroy them. Here’s a handy example of someone creating a high tunnel with cattle panels.

Raised Beds

While not every garden needs raised beds, they have become increasingly popular, and it’s easy to understand why. Raised beds warm up faster in the spring and will dry out faster in wet areas for crops like garlic that don’t like water-logged beds. They can also make gardening easier. They can be easier to weed and more accessible for gardeners with mobility issues. You can also start gardening immediately in areas with poor soil.

That said, raised beds of course have both pros and cons. If you decide that they’re the right choice for you, you then need to select a site and decide what size bed you want to build, what materials you want to use, and what type of soil you’re going to fill them with. Check out our full guide to designing raised beds for tips to help you make these choices.

Cold Frames

We love cold frames for season extension and seed starting. They’re excellent for growing salad greens year-round (depending on your climate). They also help us get a jump on starting crops like bulb onions so they have plenty of time to grow.

Cold frames are easy to make at home; we’ve even seen budget examples made from hay bales and old windows, but most gardeners will want to build something a bit more permanent. You can use wooden, plexiglass, or even brick sides and fit it with some sort of glass or plexiglass lid on hinges for easy access.

The Farmer’s Almanac has a helpful guide to building a cold frame.

Wooden Trellis Garden Structures

Wooden trellises are another great garden structure to give your garden a style upgrade, and this winter is a great time to work on them. Trellises are also a great way to make the most of your garden space. You can use them to grow large, sprawling crops like winter squash and cucumbers vertically to save tons of garden space. They can also make it easier to harvest and help improve airflow, protecting crops from fungal diseases like blight and Downey mildew.

You can build foldable trellises for small crops like peas, wooden tomato cages, or large permanent trellises that can handle heavier crops like grapevines. Check out this video for multiple trellis options.

Produce Cleaning Station

While produce stations aren’t technically garden structures, they are a great addition for folks with large gardens. If you handle a lot of produce each year, building a dedicated produce cleaning station or a spray table and washing bin might be worth it.

A spray table is usually a table frame where the flat table surface is made from hardware cloth or a similar mesh material. It allows you to quickly spray off dirty vegetables with the hose. Some gardeners also set up a sink or wash bin. This can be used for washing or quickly cooling off tender vegetables like lettuce.

You can purchase produce cleaning stations, many people make them at home, often using repurposed materials like an old kitchen sink or plastic totes. The University of Minnesota Extension has a great example of how to construct one at home.

 

Garden structures aren’t just obelisks and hedges for formal gardens! Adding some DIY structures to your vegetable garden can enhance your space and make it more efficient and easier to use.