In the Garden
Ralph Purkhiser, Purdue University Master Gardener
As warmer weather moves in, gardeners will be getting anxious go get their hands in the dirt. If you are active on social media gardening sites, you have no doubt been seeing posts telling you to not clean up your garden until temperatures are above fifty degrees for at least a week. At this time of the year, temperatures will still be cooling below the freezing point at night. However, if you wait for the warmer temperatures, you will have a lot of work to do to get ready for spring planting. What is a gardener to do?
There are ways for one to start cleaning the garden and still protect the beneficial insects overwintering in the garden debris. One way is to stockpile the debris. Go ahead and clear it from your garden beds, but keep it in a pile where you will be able to get it later for shredding for the compost bin. Choose an out-of-the-way spot, perhaps at the edge of the garden, for your stockpile. The insects will be able to emerge from the pile when time comes for them to awake from their winter nap.
You may want to get crafty with the stockpile. If you have a spot where you would like a small wall, cut some straight samplings and stick them in the ground in two rows about a foot apart, forming the outline of the wall. Use the garden debris to fill the form to the desired height. You may want to use sawmill slabs or other dense material at the top to give you a surface that will support a potted plant or some ornament. Of course, this is not meant to be a permanent wall, but it will last for a year or two, and you may continue to add debris to the pile as it settles.
Another way to help the insects is to cut your debris high. Most of the over-wintering insects will be in the six inches or so nearest the ground. You may safely cut and dispose of anything above that level, leaving a short bit of stubble that will be easily hidden by the new foliage when it emerges this spring. The stubble will continue to be used by native bees and other insects seeking a place to lay eggs.
We still have several weeks of winter, and it is likely that the weather in southern Indiana will give us another taste or two of wintery weather, but get out there while the weather is nice and make a start on the 2025 garden season. It is full of promise and dreams may come true.