Close the season and plan the next one
Season extension, cleanup, cover crops and garlic, a season review from your records, next year's rotation map and an exported garden notebook.
- Start here: the essentials
- 1. Understand: extend the season at both ends
- Clean up: what leaves the garden
- Cover the soil: cover crops, mulch and garlic
- Review the season from the records
- Draw next year's rotation map
- 2. See it
- 3. Practice
- 4. Your garden
- 5. Check your work
- 6. Knowledge check and scenario
Start here Essentials
This module closes the garden and turns the season's records into next year's questions. Everything marked Go deeper is optional on a first pass.
- Clear the garden. Diseased and unidentified plants leave it and stay out of home compost. Shred healthy spent plants for compost. Clean up.
- Cover the bare soil with leaves or straw. Cover the soil.
- Write what worked and what did not. Read your sowing and harvest sheets and your brief, and give each finding a status: confirmed, provisional or unresolved. Review the season.
- Export the garden notebook to a file outside this browser. Export and print.
Minimum time: about 1 hour, plus the garden work. Done when: the notebook is exported.
This is the capstone. It asks for little new work. Each earlier module left something in your garden notebook: a brief, a bed list, a crop plan, a soil record, a sowing log, a water log, a harvest log, a problem log. This module closes the garden for the year, then reads those sheets back as one body of evidence and turns them into next year's plan. The end-of-season list on the season checklists page follows the same order as the sections below.
1. Extend the season at both ends Understand
The end of a season is set by frost for some crops and by light for others. Season extension means protecting crops so they can be planted earlier in spring or kept growing later in fall than open ground allows. It works on the frost limit. It does little about the light limit, and the difference decides which crops are worth covering.
Physical principle Every common method works the same way. UConn's Home and Garden Education Center explains that covers trap the sun's radiant heat during the day and release it at night as the air cools. A cover does not make heat; it slows the loss of heat the soil gathered during the day, and it blocks wind. That is why a cover protects best on a still night after a sunny day, and least after a cloudy day or in a wind that pulls the cover loose.
How much does a cover buy? Physical principle UConn says a floating fabric cover holds in about five degrees. NC State Extension's gardener handbook says row covers and low tunnels both give 4 to 5 °F of frost protection. Those few degrees are the difference between a light frost that damages tender leaves and a night the plants survive. They are not protection against a hard freeze. Read the forecast low with the cover in mind: a forecast of 31 °F is within reach of a cover; a forecast of 22 °F is not. Product-specific UConn notes that heavier fabrics protect to lower temperatures, as low as 25 °F for some crops. The figure for any one fabric is on its maker's label, not in this course.
In calendar terms, Convention Virginia Cooperative Extension's planting guide notes that row cover fabric and cold frames may extend the expected planting and harvest window by two to four weeks in spring and in fall. NC State says warm-season crops can get as much as a month's head start in spring or last a month longer in fall. UConn says the harvest can often be lengthened by a month or more. These are statements about typical years in the places those services serve. Your own gain depends on how often your nights fall just below freezing, which only your records and your local weather show.
Four methods, from simplest to most built
| Method | What it is | What it buys | What it asks of you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Floating row cover | Lightweight spun fabric laid directly over a crop and anchored at the edges with pins, sandbags or rocks (UConn). Air and water pass through. | About 4 to 5 °F (UConn, NC State). Also screens out some insects (NC State; Module 10). | Anchoring against wind. Removal when flowers need pollinators, or when it gets hot underneath. |
| Low tunnel | Wire or plastic hoops pushed into the soil over the row to hold fabric or plastic sheeting 2 to 3 ft above the plants (UConn). | The same 4 to 5 °F (NC State). Holding the cover off the leaves stops cold passing through where plastic touches them (UConn). | Venting on sunny days: plastic can heat to harmful levels (UConn). Hoops and covers to store. |
| Cold frame | A bottomless box, about a foot high, with a hinged clear lid, facing south with the south side a few inches lower (UConn). No more than 4 to 5 ft across for reach (NC State). | A sheltered bed for hardening off seedlings in spring and for cool-season crops into fall and early winter (NC State). | Propping the lid on sunny days and closing it early enough to keep heat for the night (NC State). A thermometer inside. |
| Cloche | A cover over a single plant: a bell jar, a plastic cylinder, a cut milk jug (UConn, NC State). | Warmer soil and frost kept off one plant (UConn). | Heat builds quickly inside; open it or lift it during the day (UConn, NC State). |
A low tunnel is a row cover or plastic sheet held above a row on hoops, so the cover does not rest on the leaves. A cold frame is a low, bottomless box with a clear lid that gathers the sun's heat by day and is closed at night. NC State adds siting advice for cold frames: a south or southeast exposure, a slight slope for drainage, and a wall or hedge on the north side against winter wind. It also says never to build one from wood treated with CCA, creosote or pentachlorophenol; cedar or block are the common materials. Module 4 covers lumber choices in more detail.
NC State describes a warmer version, the hot bed, which adds heat from buried electric cables or fresh manure. We do not teach it. Heating cables are electrical equipment: use them only as the maker directs, on a properly rated outlet, and ask an electrician about any outdoor or added circuit. Fresh manure under food crops raises the manure-to-harvest questions in Module 11.
Venting is the part people get wrong Go deeper
Physical principle The trapped heat that protects a crop on a cold night cooks it on a sunny afternoon. NC State says to open covers over crops such as tomatoes and peppers when the temperature under them is expected to stay above 90 °F for several hours, and to cut vent slits before the heat arrives, not after. UConn gives the same warning for low tunnels and cold frames and suggests pulling back the plastic or lifting the sides on bright days. Test it NC State recommends a thermometer inside a cold frame to read the daily high and low. A cheap one under your cover tells you more than any rule in this module.
Pollination is the other reason to uncover. Convention NC State says that for crops pollinated by bees, such as squash, cucumbers and melons, the covers come off about when the first female flowers appear. For tomato, pepper and eggplant, which are mainly wind-pollinated, removal is based on temperature, so that it does not stay above 90 °F for more than a few hours once the flower buds open. Module 10's row-cover section gives the pest side of the same decision.
Light limits the fall, and decides what to cover
Physical principle UConn points out that the short days of fall do not give fruiting crops enough light to keep producing, and that tomatoes, peppers, summer squash and cucumbers do poorly once nights drop into the high 30s °F. Covering a tomato in October may save the plant from one frost, but it does not give the fruit the light and warmth to ripen. Leafy and root crops are different. UConn says they tolerate cold much better, and that spinach, lettuce, kale, chard, carrots and radishes planted in late summer can be held under cover into late fall or winter, growing slowly. So the fall question is not "what can I save" but "what is still growing." In this course's crop list, that is mostly kale, spinach, lettuce, carrot, beet, radish and cabbage. Module 6's fall formula gives the dates to sow them.
In spring the same tools let hardy crops go out earlier and give tender transplants a few degrees on a cold night. They do not change soil temperature fast enough to override the germination minimums in Module 6. Test it A soil thermometer under the cover and one in open ground, read on the same mornings, show how much your cover warms your soil.
The 4 to 5 °F figure and the two-to-four-week gain are published typical values, not a promise for a given night or year. A windy night, a cover that blew loose or a forecast that was off by a few degrees can each defeat them. Whether a structure is allowed is not a gardening question either. Ask the authority Renters ask the landlord in writing; community gardeners ask the garden coordinator; members of a homeowners' association read its rules. This applies with most force to anything with hoops, frames or posts.
Clean up: what leaves the garden
Cleanup decides what problems are waiting for you in spring. University of Maryland Extension's fall cleanup article, written by a Montgomery County Master Gardener, gives the reasoning in a sentence: many vegetable plants are disease hosts, and diseased material left on the soil drops parts that bury themselves, where some diseases survive until next year to infect a new host. Removing it breaks that chain.
Maryland's article also answers a common objection. You may have read that plant stems should be left standing over winter for insects. Convention That advice is for perennial landscape beds. Maryland gives two reasons it does not suit a vegetable garden: the stems would have to stay until late spring, which is too late for spring planting, especially when rotation puts a spring crop where a summer crop grew; and vegetable plants carry diseases that perennial flowers mostly do not.
What goes where
| Material | Where it goes | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Plants with disease, or parts showing disease | Out of the garden as soon as you see it; at season end, into municipal yard waste or the trash, not home compost. If you do not know what infected a plant, Maryland says it may be best to throw it out. | UMD; EPA's home composting page also excludes diseased plants |
| Healthy spent plants | Shred and compost them. | UMD |
| Ripe fruit and mature seeds | Not into compost; volunteers that sprout from it may be cross-pollinated and unpredictable. | UMD |
| Weeds that have gone to seed, or have large roots | Not into compost. | UMD |
| Debris on the bed surface | Rake it up and out. | UMD |
Maryland's article notes that some fungal diseases are killed by thorough hot composting, and that a rigorous composter can take the chance. Preference We suggest the conservative path for a first season, because most home piles never reach the temperatures Module 11 lists for manure, and because the problem log rarely holds a confirmed identification for every sick plant. Use the problem log here: a plant whose problem is confirmed as a disease goes out; a plant marked provisional or unresolved goes out too.
Cleanup also covers the things you bring in. Clean and store tools, take up and dry row covers, and store hoops. If you hold any garden products, store them as their labels and Module 10 direct, in their original containers and out of reach of children. Maryland also suggests fall as the time to repair fences and other structures, so the work is not rushed in spring. If deer or rabbits were a problem, the wildlife sheet says which barrier to fix.
On a shared plot, cleanup has a deadline and a destination you do not set. Many community gardens have a clearing date and their own compost pile. Ask the authority The garden's rules and its coordinator decide where diseased material goes and what "cleared" means.
Cover the soil: cover crops, mulch and garlic
Bare soil over winter erodes, loses nutrients and grows weeds. Maryland's article says the last step of cleanup is to cover the soil, with a cover crop or with organic mulch. Penn State Extension's cover crop article opens with the same idea. There are three ways to cover a bed for winter, and a fall crop of garlic is a fourth for the beds it occupies.
Cover crops Go deeper
A cover crop is a crop grown to protect and improve the soil rather than to eat. Penn State says cover crops are often called green manure, because they are turned into the soil in spring and add organic matter as they break down. Convention Penn State lists what they do while growing: reduce compaction, capture excess nutrients that would otherwise wash away, and prevent erosion. Their roots penetrate and loosen heavy soils, which helps clay gardens. Legume cover crops (the bean and clover family) add nitrogen.
Penn State's sowing method for a home garden: rake the area smooth and remove debris and stones, broadcast the seed at the recommended rate, rake lightly, and water with a fine mist. In spring, turn the cover crop under as soon as the ground is dry enough, and at least 2 to 3 weeks before planting so it has time to break down. Do not let it go to seed, or it becomes a weed; cut it at or just before flowering. Winter rye, which Penn State notes germinates at soil as cold as 35 °F and can be sown as late as early November in Pennsylvania, should be turned under at 10 to 12 inches tall, or cut first if taller.
| Cover crop (Penn State) | Sowing window in Pennsylvania | Rate per 1,000 sq ft | Family (Iowa State) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual ryegrass | August through October | 1 to 2 lb | Grass (Poaceae) |
| Oats | Until September | 4 lb | Grass (Poaceae) |
| Wheat | Until October | 4 lb | Grass (Poaceae) |
| Winter rye (cereal rye) | Until November | 4 lb | Grass (Poaceae) |
| Brassicas: tillage radish, turnip, rapeseed | August | 1 lb | Cabbage (Brassicaceae) |
| Clovers and alfalfa | August or September | 1 to 2 lb | Bean and pea (Fabaceae) |
The months are Pennsylvania's. Ask the authority Your extension office gives the sowing window where you live; a garden with a mid-September frost has a much shorter window than one with a late-October frost. The rates scale to a small garden by simple arithmetic: rate x your area / 1,000. At Penn State's winter rye rate of 4 lb per 1,000 sq ft, a 64 sq ft pair of raised beds takes 4 x 64 / 1,000 = 0.256 lb, about 4 oz. A 200 sq ft plot takes 0.8 lb.
Penn State gives two cautions a beginner would not guess. Brassica cover crops start fast and suppress weeds well, but can smell like rotten eggs as they break down in a winter thaw. Legumes draw deer; Penn State notes that crimson clover is a common seed in deer food-plot mixes. If deer are already in your wildlife sheet, a clover cover crop invites them in.
Iowa State's rotation page adds the point that ties cover crops to next year's plan. Convention A cover crop belongs to a plant family like any vegetable, and its family counts in your rotation. Cereal rye, oats and wheat are grasses, the same family as sweet corn. Oilseed radish and mustard are in the cabbage family. Clovers, vetch and field peas are in the bean family. Put the cover crop's family in the rotation map the same way you put the vegetables'.
Mulch instead
Maryland gives the alternative for gardeners who do not sow a cover crop: cover the bed with organic material. Leaves, whole or shredded, work well in a vegetable garden because you remove them before planting anyway. Straw works too; Maryland specifies straw, not hay, to limit grass seed. A few layers of newspaper under leaves or straw help where weeds are a worry. Maryland calls black plastic or weed barrier a last resort: plastic keeps rain off soil that needs it, and puddles on it breed mosquitoes. Fall is also when finished compost can go on the beds (Maryland; Module 9 gives rates), and when manure can go on with time to meet Module 11's intervals.
Preference For a small raised bed worked by hand, a leaf mulch is easier than turning under a stand of rye in spring. For a larger in-ground garden, or heavy clay that needs loosening, a cover crop does more. Either covers the soil, which is the part that matters.
Garlic, planted now for next summer Go deeper
Garlic is the one crop in this course that goes in at the end of the season. Convention University of Illinois Extension's garlic sheet says to plant in fall, 4 to 6 weeks before the ground freezes, so each clove grows roots before it goes dormant. Garlic needs a cold period to form bulbs; Illinois says spring planting is possible only after the cloves have been refrigerated for about 8 weeks. Illinois' planting details:
- Separate the cloves from the bulb right before planting. Do not peel the papery skins.
- Plant each clove with the narrow tip up and the flat base down, 1 to 2 in deep and 4 to 5 in apart, in rows 15 to 18 in apart, or 5 in apart in every direction in a block.
- Choose full sun and well-drained soil amended with compost.
- Mulch with straw after planting. Straw prevents frost heaving, the lifting of cloves or small plants out of the soil as it freezes and thaws, and it also holds moisture and smothers weeds.
- Hardneck types are hardier; softneck types store better but are less cold hardy. Illinois prefers hardneck for its climate.
The ground-freeze date is the input most beginners do not have. It is not your first fall frost; soil freezes later than air. Ask the authority Your extension office knows when the ground typically freezes where you live, and many state planting guides give a garlic window directly. Illinois also suggests saving the largest cloves from this summer's harvest for fall planting (Module 11 covers curing them).
Garlic changes the rotation map. It is in the onion family, and it occupies its bed from fall until the next summer, so it appears in two seasons' rows of the map. Plan the bed it goes into now, before the cover crop goes on.
Review the season from the records
A season review is a written comparison, done once at the end of the season, between what you planned and what your records show happened. Iowa State University Extension's garden journaling page gives the reasons to keep records at all: they show what works in your own environment and soil, which plants thrived and which struggled, and what went wrong when something failed, so you can make better decisions next time. The review is where those records are read.
The review reads records, not memory. By October, July is a blur: the week the beans went unpicked, the dry spell, the night the deer came. Memory keeps the dramatic events and loses the ordinary ones, and a plan built on it repeats whatever was forgotten. Where a sheet is empty, you can still write an entry from memory, but label it as such. The course's green box below lists any sheet that is still empty in this browser.
What the review reads from each sheet
| Sheet (module that started it) | What the review reads | The question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Garden brief (Module 1) | Goals, weekly hours, the size you chose, what would make the season a success, in your words | Did the garden fit the time you said you had? Did it meet your own definition of success? |
| Beds and containers (Modules 2 and 4) | Sun hours measured per bed, fill, notes | Did any bed lose sun as trees leafed out? Which bed suits fruiting crops next year? |
| Crop plan (Module 5) | Crop, variety, bed, family, spacing, plant count, target planting date | What did you plan, and how far did the season depart from it? |
| Rotation history (Module 5) | Families grown in each bed this year, problems seen | What cannot go in each bed next year? |
| Soil test and amendments (Modules 3 and 9) | pH, nutrients, lead, lab recommendations; what you added, when and why | Did you apply what the test recommended, and nothing it did not? Is any result still pending? |
| Sowing log (Module 7) | Sowing and planting dates, varieties, packed-for year, emergence, germination percent | Which seed to reorder, which packets to retest, and whether your planting dates matched the calendar |
| Water log (Module 8) | Rain and water given per week, soil checks | Which weeks fell behind, and whether any problem followed a dry spell |
| Harvest log (Module 11) | Date, crop, amount, unit, quality notes | What each crop produced, when its harvest started and ended, and what was wasted or kept poorly |
| Problem log (Module 10) | What you saw, identification, status, who identified it, action, result | Which problems are confirmed, which are still provisional, which came back, and which families they hit |
| Wildlife sheet (Module 10) | Animal or sign, damage, barrier tried, result | Which barriers worked this year, and what to repair or change |
| End-of-season checklist (this module) | Cleanup, garlic, cover, review and export items | Is the garden closed, and is the notebook saved? |
One question has no sheet of its own: how many hours the garden took. The brief holds your estimate, and the weekly checklist's notes may hold clues. Test it If time matters to your plan, and Module 1 argued it should, write down your best estimate for the busiest month and label it an estimate. Next season, a line in the weekly checklist notes each week turns the estimate into a record.
Write each finding with its status
The course's sheets use three statuses where a judgment is involved, and the review uses the same three. Confirmed means the record shows it and a source or a lab agrees: a disease identified by the extension diagnostic lab, a germination rate counted in a paper-towel test. Provisional means the record shows it once, in one place, and nothing has tested the cause: "the shaded tomatoes produced less," "the new fence kept the deer out." Unresolved means the record does not answer it yet: a lab result still pending, a question you did not record data for. Most findings from a first season are provisional. That is not a failure of the review; it is what one season can show.
The review is your own evidence about one season in one place. It is good evidence about what happened. It is weak evidence about why. A variety that did poorly may have met an unusual summer; a method that seemed to work may have met a kind one; a bed that produced less may differ from the other in sun, soil and water at once. One season does not prove a variety or a method. Test it Treat each single-season result as provisional, write it down as a question, and carry the question into next year's brief. Change one thing at a time where you can, so next year's result can answer it.
Export and print the garden notebook
Everything you entered in this course's sheets lives in this browser on this device, and nowhere else. Clearing your browser's site data, switching browsers or replacing the device deletes it. The garden notebook page has three tools: export everything (setup, sheets and module progress) as one file you keep; import that file on another device; and print the whole notebook. Export now, before you change anything for next year, and keep the file somewhere other than this browser. Then print it. A printed notebook goes to the garden, gets written on, and is still readable in March when you plan; that is where Iowa State's journaling page says a journal belongs, close by while you are out in the garden.
Draw next year's rotation map
Module 5 introduced rotation; this is where it is planned. Convention Iowa State University Extension says not to plant vegetables of the same plant family in the same place for 3 to 4 years, or 5 or more if possible, because crops in one family tend to share diseases and insect pests, and many disease organisms persist in the soil for several years. Iowa State also notes a fertility reason: families draw on the soil differently. The squash family uses a lot of nitrogen, the onion family a greater share of potassium, and the bean family can add nitrogen.
A rotation map is a drawing or table of each bed or zone with the family planned for it in each of the next three or four years. It starts from this year's row in the rotation history sheet and from the problem log.
The families in this course's crop list
| Family (Iowa State's name) | Crops from the crop guide | Also in this family |
|---|---|---|
| Nightshade (Solanaceae) | Tomato, pepper, eggplant, potato | Weeds such as nightshade and horsenettle |
| Gourd (Cucurbitaceae) | Cucumber, summer squash, winter squash | Melons, pumpkins |
| Pea (Fabaceae) | Bush bean, pea | Clover, vetch and field pea cover crops |
| Mustard (Brassicaceae) | Cabbage, broccoli, kale, radish | Oilseed radish, mustard and turnip cover crops |
| Amaranth (Amaranthaceae) | Beet, spinach | Swiss chard; weeds such as lambsquarters and pigweed |
| Carrot (Apiaceae) | Carrot | Parsley, parsnip, celery |
| Amaryllis (Amaryllidaceae) | Onion, garlic | Leek, shallot, chives |
| Sunflower (Asteraceae) | Lettuce | Sunflower; weeds such as dandelion |
| Grass (Poaceae) | Sweet corn | Cereal rye, oats and wheat cover crops |
| Mint (Lamiaceae) | Basil | Not in Iowa State's list; family from the course's crop guide |
Iowa State's names differ a little from the course's crop guide: it calls Fabaceae the pea family (the crop guide says bean family), Brassicaceae the mustard family (cabbage family) and Amaryllidaceae the amaryllis family (onion family). The Latin names are the same, and WSU Extension notes that older publications use older names such as Alliaceae and Chenopodiaceae. Match on the Latin name.
How to draw it
- List this year's families per bed. From the rotation history sheet. Add any cover crop's family and, where you know it, any weed that grew thick in that bed (Iowa State says weeds in the same family can host the same problems).
- Group your families. Most gardens grow more families than they have beds. Iowa State says families can be grouped and rotated together; small families fill in around large ones. Aim for as many groups as you have beds or zones, up to four.
- Move each group one step a year. Assign the groups to beds so that no group returns to a bed within three or four years. With four beds and four groups, a simple shift does it.
- Read the problem log. A soilborne problem that is confirmed in a bed gives that bed's family the longest possible absence. A provisional one is a reason to watch, not to redesign.
- Check the other constraints. Tall or trellised crops on the north side (Clemson, Module 5); fruiting crops in the beds with the most measured sun (the beds sheet); garlic already in the ground where you planted it this fall.
- Write next year's row. Copy next year's plan into the rotation history so the map and the record are in one place.
When the garden is too small
Two beds cannot give any family a three-year gap. Iowa State addresses this directly and says rotating as well as you can still helps. Convention Its suggestions for small gardens: build three or four raised beds so rotation becomes a simple shift; grow an especially disease-prone crop, such as heirloom tomatoes, in containers to take it out of the main beds; set up small plots elsewhere in the yard where the sun is good; or coordinate with a neighbor, each growing different families and switching each year. Iowa State also warns that dividing one in-ground plot into zones is weaker than separate beds, because digging the whole plot at once mixes soil, and with it overwintering pests and disease, between zones.
Rotation reduces the buildup of some soilborne diseases and pests. It does not prevent every disease, it does nothing about problems that arrive on the wind or with insects from outside the garden, and it cannot remove a problem already established in the soil. A rotation map is a plan, not a protection. Ask the authority For a confirmed soilborne disease, ask your extension office how long that organism persists and what else it affects; the 3-to-4-year convention is a general figure, not a rule for every disease.
2. See it See it
Plot 14 in October. Dale Whitcomb and Ruth Asante share plot 14, a 10 x 20 ft (200 sq ft) in-ground plot of heavy clay at a community garden. The association's soil test (fictional) shows pH 7.4 and lead under 63 ppm. Their frost dates are invented for this example: last spring frost May 10, first fall frost October 1. They grew potato, onion, bush bean, winter squash, garlic and kale. The garden's rules: no synthetic pesticides, and plots cleared by November 1.
- Known: the clearing date (November 1, in the garden rules) and the frost date (October 1, a 50 percent date). Between them sits about one month.
- Known: kale is hardy (Purdue's class, Module 6) and is the one crop still growing. Winter squash is very tender and was harvested before the first forecast frost (Module 11).
- Known: the bean seedling problem is confirmed in the problem log, identified by the county extension diagnostic service from a sample after their first internet guess proved wrong (Module 10).
- Assumed (theirs): that "cleared" means no dead plant material and no structures. They have not checked this reading.
- Open: whether a low tunnel over the kale is allowed in October. Settled by: the garden coordinator, asked in writing.
- Open: whether garlic planted this fall, and a cover crop, count as "cleared" over winter. Settled by: the garden coordinator, in the same message.
- Open: when the ground typically freezes there, which sets the garlic planting window. Settled by: their county extension office.
Their reasoning. A low tunnel buys 4 to 5 °F (NC State), and Virginia's guide says covers may stretch the harvest 2 to 4 weeks. But the clearing rule caps any extension at November 1 whatever the tunnel does, and kale is hardy enough to take light frosts uncovered. So the tunnel's real value is a few more weeks of better-looking kale, against the cost of hoops and cover and a rule they may be breaking. They decide it is worth asking about and not worth building before the answer. Ruth writes one message to the coordinator with all three questions: the tunnel, garlic over winter, and a cover crop over winter.
Cleanup goes ahead regardless. Healthy squash vines and bean plants are chopped and go to the garden's shared compost if its rules allow, with no seeds or ripe fruit. Anything with disease symptoms, or with a provisional identification in the log, goes into the trash or municipal yard waste, as Maryland advises and the coordinator directs; diseased material does not go into the shared pile any more than a home one.
For the soil, Penn State's note that cover crop roots loosen heavy soils is the reason they want winter rye on their clay: 4 lb per 1,000 sq ft x 200 sq ft / 1,000 = 0.8 lb of seed. If the coordinator says no living plants over winter, they spread leaves instead, which Maryland describes and which meets the cover-the-soil goal. Ruth finds kneeling hard, so Dale does the spring turning, and they write that into next year's brief as a task with a name on it.
Garlic waits on two answers: the coordinator's (may it overwinter?) and the extension office's (when does the ground freeze?). If both say yes, they plant cloves 4 to 6 weeks before the freeze date at Illinois' depth and spacing, mulch with straw and mark the bed in the rotation map as onion family through next July. If the coordinator says no, garlic comes off this year's list, and the question goes into the brief.
Their rotation map is short work because 200 sq ft is one plot. Iowa State's warning about zones applies in full: digging the whole plot mixes the zones. They divide it into four strips anyway, keep a permanent path between them, and move each family one strip a year. The bean family moves farthest from this year's bean strip, because that is where the confirmed problem was.
The Okafor season review. Ada and Chidi Okafor grew tomato, pepper, bush bean, lettuce, cucumber and basil in two 4 x 8 ft raised beds (64 sq ft). Their frost dates are invented for this example (April 20 and October 20); so is their yard's soil result (lead 140 ppm), which is why the beds hold clean fill over fabric. They sit down with the printed notebook in late October.
- Known (beds sheet): 7 hours of direct sun in May, measured. From July, a maple shades the east bed after 4 pm.
- Known (crop plan, an assumption for this example about where the other crops went): four tomatoes at 24 in and the peppers in the east bed; beans, lettuce, cucumbers and basil in the west bed.
- Known (sowing log): 28 of 40 lettuce seeds germinated, 70 percent, from a two-year-old packet.
- Known (harvest log): every tomato picking by date and count.
- Open: whether the maple shade cut the tomato yield. Settled by: their own harvest log, as far as one season can settle it.
- Open: whether the fill matched the supplier's description. Settled by: the supplier's test results, which they requested; still pending, so the soil record's status reads unresolved and Chidi follows up.
Their findings, each with a status. Lettuce germination: confirmed, 70 percent counted; they sow a little more thickly from that packet next spring or buy fresh seed (Module 7). The tomato question: the harvest log shows what the tomatoes produced and when, but no unshaded tomato grew alongside for comparison, and the summer's weather is one more difference no one controlled. Status: provisional. The question goes into next year's brief in their words: "Do tomatoes in the east bed produce less than tomatoes in full sun?" Hours: the brief said 3 a week; Ada's notes on the weekly checklist suggest July ran closer to 4. They mark it as an estimate and add a weekly hours line for next season.
The rotation map exposes the limit of two beds. Swapping the beds gives the nightshades a two-year cycle, short of Iowa State's 3 to 4 years. It also moves the tomatoes out of the maple's shade, so next year's tomato result will mix two changes, a different bed and more sun, and will not answer the shade question cleanly. They consider Iowa State's small-garden options. A third bed costs money and lawn. Two tomatoes in large containers on the sunny patio, following Module 4's container sizes, would both lengthen the rotation and give them a full-sun comparison for the shade question. They choose that: next year the east bed gets beans, lettuce and cucumbers, the west bed gets two tomatoes, the peppers and the basil, and two tomatoes go in containers. The cucumbers move too, so no family repeats a bed. The review notes that a container is not a bed either, so the comparison stays provisional.
For winter cover, Penn State's winter rye rate would take about 4 oz of seed for 64 sq ft. Turning rye under by hand in a raised bed is work they would rather skip, so they choose Maryland's leaf mulch (a preference) and add finished compost first. Then they export the notebook, save the file to the family's shared drive, and print it.
- Season Extenders and Greenhouses (NC State Extension Gardener Handbook): row covers, low tunnels, cold frames and high tunnels, with venting and pollination rules.
- Cleaning up the vegetable garden in fall (University of Maryland Extension): why vegetable gardens are cleaned up differently from perennial beds, and what to do with diseased plants.
- Tips for Planting Cover Crops in Home Gardens (Penn State Extension): species, sowing windows and seeding rates per 1,000 sq ft for a home garden.
- Crop Rotation in the Vegetable Garden (Iowa State University Extension): vegetables, cover crops and weeds by family, and rotation in small gardens.
3. Practice Practice
Minimum: Clear the garden, cover the soil, write your findings from the sowing and harvest sheets and export the notebook; skip the rotation map. Time: about 3 hours in two or three sittings, plus the garden work on the end-of-season checklist. Materials: your garden notebook sheets, on screen or printed; graph paper or plain paper and a pencil for the rotation map; a printer if you have one (a copy shop works); the end-of-season checklist.
- Close the garden. Work through the end-of-season checklist: diseased plants out and kept out of home compost, spent crops cleared, garlic planted if you grow it, cover crop sown or beds mulched, tools cleaned and stored. Tick each item and note the date.
- Go deeper Fill in this year's rotation row. In the rotation history, record the families grown in each bed and the problems seen, from the problem log. Include any cover crop's family.
- Read each sheet in the review table's order. For each, answer the question in the table's right-hand column in one or two sentences. Note the evidence (the sheet and the rows) and a status: confirmed, provisional or unresolved. Write the review in the notes beside the "Season review written from the records" item on the end-of-season checklist, or on paper if you prefer, and tick the item.
- Turn provisional findings into questions. For each provisional finding, write the question that would test it next year, and what you would need to record to answer it. Add these to the garden brief's notes for next season.
- Go deeper Draw the rotation map. Follow the steps in the rotation section for three or four years ahead. Check it against the problem log and the beds sheet's sun hours.
- Export and print. On the garden notebook page, export the file and save it somewhere other than this browser. Print the whole notebook. Tick the last item on the end-of-season checklist.
4. Your garden Your garden
5. Check your work Check your work
Criteria
- Is every item on the end-of-season checklist ticked or marked as not applying, with a date?
- Did diseased or unidentified plant material leave the garden, and stay out of home compost?
- Is every bed covered for winter, by a cover crop, mulch or garlic?
- Does the review answer each sheet's question, with the evidence and a status for each finding?
- Is each provisional finding written as a question for next year, with what to record?
- Does the rotation map keep every family, including cover crops, out of its bed for as long as your beds allow, and does it say where it falls short of 3 to 4 years?
- Is the notebook exported to a file outside this browser, and printed?
Worked example
The Lindqvist garden (fictional; the frost dates are invented: last spring frost May 25, first fall frost September 15) is in its second season: 600 sq ft in-ground, two eaters, deer every night, a 55-gallon rain barrel beside the hose, about 6 hours a week. Their crops: pea, cabbage, carrot, potato, kale, winter squash and sweet corn. Checked against the criteria:
- Checklist and cleanup. All items ticked. Two cabbages with spots logged as provisional went to the trash, not the compost, as Maryland advises for anything unidentified.
- Cover. Penn State's months are for Pennsylvania, and their frost comes in mid-September, so they asked their extension office for a local sowing window before buying seed. They ruled out clover because Penn State notes legumes draw deer. At 4 lb per 1,000 sq ft, winter rye for the roughly 500 sq ft not still in kale needs 4 x 500 / 1,000 = 2 lb.
- Review, with statuses. Winter squash: in Module 6 they chose a variety printed at 85 days and started transplants; for this example, the harvest log shows mature fruit picked on September 10, before the frost date. Status: provisional, because one season with no early frost does not show the variety fits every year; they keep the question and the same variety for a second trial. Deer: the wildlife sheet records the new fence and no deer damage this season. Status: provisional, for the same reason. Sowing log: pea germination confirmed by count.
- Rotation map. Six families into four zones. They group them: potato (nightshade); winter squash with sweet corn (gourd and grass); cabbage with kale (mustard); pea with carrot (pea and carrot). Each group moves one zone a year, so each family returns every fourth year. The cover crop check catches a conflict: winter rye is a grass, like sweet corn, so rye goes only on zones where corn will not grow next year. Because they dig the whole garden at once, they keep a permanent path between zones to limit soil mixing, which is Iowa State's warning about zones.
- Notebook. Exported and printed. Because they want to preserve, the review also notes which crops they had more of than they could eat fresh, for the USDA and extension preservation guidance Module 11 points to.
Common mistakes
- Reviewing from memory. A review written without opening the sheets repeats impressions. Open every sheet, even the ones you think you remember.
- Reading one season as proof. "That variety does not grow here" after one season is a provisional finding. Write it as a question.
- Leaving cover crops out of the rotation. Rye after corn is grass after grass. Give the cover crop a family on the map.
- Composting what you could not identify. If the problem log says provisional or unresolved, treat the plant as diseased.
- Covering and forgetting. A low tunnel or cold frame left closed on a sunny day can overheat. Put a thermometer under it and vent before the heat, as NC State advises.
- Planting garlic by the frost date. Illinois' rule counts back from when the ground freezes, which is later than the first frost. Ask your extension office for the local timing.
- Not exporting. The notebook exists in one browser. A cleared cache in February erases the season. Export it now.
What is still unresolved
Every provisional finding. That is the point of the review: it turns one season's results into next season's questions, and a second season's records start to answer them. Some answers come from outside the notebook: what a structure needs from a landlord or coordinator, when your ground freezes, how long a confirmed disease persists in soil. Those belong to the people named in each section. The course ends here; the notebook continues.