November 2026-From Pumpkin to Pie

Every year I grow pumpkins for their beautiful fall color, festive displays, and freshly roasted seeds. This Thanksgiving, I’m finally going to turn a homegrown pumpkin into a pie. I have always loved pumpkin pie, but I always reached for the can of Libby’s pumpkin. My grandma insisted that everyone keep a can on hand at all times, so in my family, no one ever attempted a pie any other way.

Libby’s canned pumpkin comes from its own strain of Dickinson pumpkin, so when considering a pumpkin for culinary use, it’s important to pick the right variety. Some of the best choices are old heirlooms, including New England Pie, Long Island Cheese, Winter Luxury, and Small Sugar. They are known for their flavor and dense, smooth flesh, and they tend to be less stringy and watery than varieties grown for carving.

For my Thanksgiving pie, I’m planning to use the huge Cinderella pumpkin currently growing in my garden. I first found this heirloom, Rouge Vif d'Étampes, years ago through Baker Creek Seeds, and it’s a stunner. It has earned a permanent place in my garden year after year. If you want to read more about the French history surrounding this variety, Baker Creek has a wonderful description on its website.

Here are the steps from pumpkin to pie:

·  Choose a fully mature pumpkin. Look for mature color, a hard rind that resists a fingernail, and a firm, dry stem. Cut it from the vine and leave several inches of stem.

·  Cure it if appropriate for the variety. Keep it somewhere warm, dry, and well-ventilated for roughly a week or two after harvest. Curing helps harden the rind and improves storage life. 

·  Wash the outside before cutting. This matters because the knife can carry organisms from the rind into the flesh.

·  Cut it in half or into manageable sections, then scoop out the seeds and stringy center.

·  Roast cut-side down on a baking sheet at around 375°F until the flesh is completely tender when pierced with a fork. Depending on the thickness and size of the pieces, this could take roughly 45–90 minutes.

·  Let it cool, then scoop out the flesh and purée it in a food processor or blender until smooth.

·  Check the consistency. Fresh pumpkin can contain considerably more water than canned pumpkin. If the purée looks loose, let it drain in a fine-mesh strainer or cheesecloth until it's closer to the consistency of canned pumpkin.

·  Measure it after draining. Now it’s ready to go into your favorite pumpkin pie, bread, muffin, soup, or other recipe that calls for pumpkin purée.

Now, doesn’t that sound easy? I’ve been putting this off for far too long, and I’m excited for the prospect of my own home-grown pumpkin pie. Many thanks to all the readers out there who have sent me emails with questions or shared stories about their own gardens. If you end up making something delicious with a fresh pumpkin, I’d love to see how it turns out. 

Happy Gardening!

October 2026-The Dark side of the Garden

With Halloween approaching, October is the season for celebrating things that are spooky, mysterious, and a little dangerous. As it turns out, the garden has its own dark side. Hidden among the flowers and foliage are surprisingly toxic plants, including many we grow without a second thought.

Many plant toxins are essentially a plant protecting itself. Since plants can’t escape predators, they have evolved other ways to defend themselves. Thorns are an obvious example. Tough or unpleasant-tasting leaves are another. Plants are also remarkably sophisticated chemists, producing compounds that can irritate skin, interfere with digestion, or affect the nervous system and heart. In other words, many of these defenses are built right into the plant.  

Interestingly, humans have learned to use some of these same compounds to our advantage. Take foxglove, Digitalis.  Foxglove contains cardiac glycosides, compounds that affect the heart. Research into these compounds eventually gave us important heart medications, but that doesn't make the plant itself medicine. Eating foxglove can cause nausea, changes in heart rate and rhythm, and, in severe cases, life-threatening poisoning.

Remember, these aren't necessarily unusual plants growing deep in the wilderness. Many are plants we intentionally grow in our own gardens.

One of my favorite plants, lantana, grows throughout my raised beds. It adds a brilliant pop of color amongst my veggies, and the flowers last a long time in bouquets. I’ve always clipped off the berry clusters to encourage more flowering, but while researching this article, I learned those berries and the plant itself can be toxic to pets. Lantana can cause gastrointestinal illness and, in larger amounts, even liver damage. We recently adopted a puppy who will eat just about anything, so discovering that one of my favorite garden plants could harm him was quite a surprise.

Then there is oleander, one of the most familiar examples of a beautiful but deadly plant. Anyone who has driven California's freeways or many spots on our own River Road has seen it. Oleander has been planted extensively because it is evergreen, drought-tolerant, fast-growing, and attractive with its pink, white, and red flowers. 

But every single part of oleander is toxic if eaten. The leaves, flowers, stems, and branches contain cardiac glycosides that can interfere with the heart's normal function. Even dried leaves and branches remain toxic, something worth remembering when pruning and disposing of plant material.

Not every toxic plant needs to be eaten to cause trouble.

Euphorbia, a large group of plants commonly known as spurges, produces a distinctive milky white sap when its stems or leaves are cut. That sap can cause significant skin irritation and can be particularly dangerous if it gets into the eyes. One of our community gardeners ended up in the emergency room after getting the sap in her eyes while pruning her euphorbia.

And lantana, oleander, foxglove, euphorbia, and other familiar ornamentals are hardly unusual. Rhododendrons and azaleas, daffodils, hellebores, delphiniums, and many other garden favorites contain potentially harmful compounds. Even the seemingly innocent lily of the valley, with its delicate white bells and famous fragrance, contains cardiac glycosides and is poisonous if eaten.

This doesn't mean we need to fear our gardens or rip out every toxic plant. The more useful approach is to know what we're growing and who may have access to it. A poisonous plant in an ornamental bed may pose very little practical risk to an adult who knows not to eat it. Put that same plant within reach of a curious toddler, puppy, or other pet, and the risk changes.

So this October, while the skeletons and jack-o'-lanterns are out, take a closer look at what's growing in your own garden.  Some of the most interesting characters of the season may have been hiding in plain sight all along.

Happy Gardening!

September 2026

Does anyone else find that every year there's one star performer that outpaces every other crop? I'm getting better at gauging how much my family consumes and which crops are the most popular, but I still end up with an overabundance of certain vegetables. Just when I think I'll have a bountiful year of broccoli, or I'm hoping my lettuce will be as crunchy and sweet as last season, I end up with gobs of cucumbers instead. It's a reminder that despite all my careful planning, crop rotation, and tending, nature always has the final say.

I tend to remember my gardening seasons by their star performer. Every year, one crop seems to steal the show, and because there's always so much of it, I find myself coming up with creative ways to use it. In 2022, it was dried beans. I'm still working through jars from that harvest four years later. Last summer, however, was the Year of the Cucumber. I was up to my eyeballs in cucumbers, and I didn't want them to go to waste, so I bought an inexpensive juicer. It turned out to be one of my best garden purchases. Fresh cucumber juice is surprisingly delicious, and I later learned it's packed with health benefits, too.

Juicing is also an excellent way to use up a surprising amount of produce. Since our apples begin ripening around this time of year, I started making my favorite combination: apple, carrot, beet, and lemon. I can’t take credit for inventing that combo. I stole it from Howard’s Station Café in Occidental.  If you haven’t tried their fresh juices, you’re missing out.  

This season, I'm experiencing an overload of greens. My beets are thriving, and I've finally found a great way to use the leaves instead of just the roots. I harvest enough greens to fill a gallon-sized Ziploc bag and freeze them. Each morning, I grab a handful and toss them into a smoothie. It's an easy way to get an extra dose of vitamins and use up those greens without always turning to yet another salad. You can also make your own blend with kale, Swiss chard, collards, broccoli leaves, spinach, or whatever leafy greens happen to be overflowing in your garden.

Now, you must evaluate your own garden.  Who is your all-star this year?  And more importantly, are you still a fan?  

Happy Gardening!

August 2026-Pruning Continued

Last month, I briefly introduced summer pruning and why it’s important for maintaining healthy, productive stone fruit trees. The best time for summer pruning isn't a specific date on the calendar. It's any time after the tree has produced the growth you want to remove and before it settles into winter dormancy. Remember: summer pruning devigorates and winter invigorates a tree. Pruning is a vast subject, and I recommend a deeper dive if the topic interests you. Anyone in my family can attest to my lifelong love of pruning, which started with one of my favorite pastimes: climbing trees.

I grew up on a small orchard, and my sister and I spent hours up in the trees, our favorite being a cherry tree. Its lowest branches began only a few feet off the ground, making it easy to pull ourselves up into the canopy. We loved this tree because the two of us could easily move from branch to branch and reach fruit from nearly every direction. We weren’t poked or prodded by branches, and there was enough shade to keep us cool without totally blocking out the sun.

Years later, after learning more about pruning, I realized that our “perfect” cherry tree didn’t naturally grow that way. My great-grandfather had spent years shaping it. By removing vigorous upright growth and encouraging strong outward-facing branches, he created the vase shape or open-centered tree I mentioned last month.

When shaping your own trees, start by walking around them and viewing the canopy from underneath, or even stepping inside if the tree is large enough. Could a bird fly through the tree without getting caught in a thicket of branches? The goal is to allow light and airflow throughout the canopy while leaving enough healthy leaves to ripen the fruit and protect branches from sunburn. Each leaf is like a tiny solar panel collecting sunlight and turning it into energy for fruit ripening. Just make sure you don’t remove too much growth, or you’ll limit the tree's ability to ripen fruit.

As you start removing branches, use sharp, clean pruning shears to make precise cuts. To control the tree’s shape and size, cut back to an outward-facing bud or branch. The growing tip at the end of each branch produces hormones that keep many buds below it dormant, allowing the branch to grow longer while side buds remain inactive. By pruning back to an outward-facing bud, you break this dominance and encourage the tree to grow fuller and bushier.

This phenomenon is called apical dominance. If you dig deeper into the term, you’ll learn quite a bit about tree growth and where to make pruning cuts. It’s the same concept as pinching the top of a basil plant to encourage bushier, fuller growth.

It took me years of reading books, watching videos, and practicing to really understand pruning. Believe me, I’ve definitely made my share of bad cuts and created odd growing shapes. With one specific apple tree, I didn’t understand that the fruit was developing directly from the branches (not spurs), so I accidentally pruned all of next year's growth, resulting in zero fruit that season.

I now take photos before and after pruning. It helps me see whether the branch responded to my cut as I intended. It’s a helpful way to see patterns and build confidence in your skills. Pruning is a bit like a game of chess. You need to think several moves ahead to make sure you’re shaping the tree you’ll want five or ten years from now.

Happy Gardening!

June/July 2026- Pruning

Vase Shaped Stone Fruit

Over the years, I’ve been asked many questions about pruning fruit trees. Let’s take a moment away from the veggie garden to focus on the rest of the yard, specifically stone fruits. July is the ideal time to begin working on cherries, plums, apricots, peaches, and nectarines. In our climate, stone fruit trees grow vigorously, so pruning prevents them from becoming overgrown and unproductive. Summer pruning is vital for maintaining a manageable tree height and ensuring fruit doesn’t become out of reach.

To understand the best way to prune, it helps to know where the fruit develops. 

Peaches and nectarines produce almost entirely on what gardeners call “one-year-old wood” or branches that grew during the previous season. In other words, the shoots that grow this summer will be the branches producing fruit next year. You can often identify one-year-old wood by its smoother appearance and reddish or lighter-colored bark. It is usually more flexible and vigorous than older, gray wood.

By the second or third year, those same branches become less productive and begin slowing down. Without pruning, a tree gradually fills with older, less fruitful wood, while the productive growth moves farther and farther out toward the ends of the branches and the top of the canopy.

The goal of summer pruning is not to strip the tree bare, but rather to open it up for light, airflow, and fresh, productive growth.

Open-Centered Apricot Tree

Start by removing any dead, damaged, or crossing branches. Next, look for vigorous upright shoots, often called water sprouts, which grow quickly but rarely produce quality fruit. Thinning these out helps direct the tree’s energy where it is most useful.

For home gardeners, height control is one of the biggest benefits of summer pruning. After all, there’s little reason to allow backyard fruit trees to grow 15 or 20 feet tall when harvest, thinning, and even netting become difficult at that size. Most stone fruits can be maintained between 7 and 10 feet tall with regular summer pruning.

An open-centered tree structure is ideal for most stone fruits. Gardeners often describe this as a “vase shape,” where the middle of the tree remains somewhat open rather than crowded with dense interior branches. As a result, sunlight can penetrate throughout the canopy, improving fruit ripening and reducing fungal disease pressure.

One of the biggest mistakes gardeners make is waiting too long between prunings. Fruit trees respond best to small, yearly cuts rather than severe corrective pruning after years of neglect. It’s also important not to over prune during periods of extreme heat. Leaves help protect branches from sunburn, especially during hot summer afternoons. 

Summer pruning may feel intimidating at first, but it becomes easier with observation and practice. The more time you spend studying your trees, the more clearly you’ll understand how they grow, fruit, and respond to care. In time, a well-pruned fruit tree rewards your attention with healthier growth, easier harvests, and seasons of beautiful fruit close enough to pick by hand.

Happy Gardening!

May 2026- Fertilizing

Often, May arrives with a mix of lingering spring weather and longer, brighter days that suddenly push plants into rapid growth. One week it’s raining, the next, it’s 75 and sunny.  As that shift begins, I always make sure my soil is well-fed because I know the garden is about to take off.  

One of the most common mistakes I see is underfeeding early in the season and only fertilizing once plants begin to show signs of stress. Many gardeners are afraid of over-fertilizing, while others assume compost alone will carry the entire season.  In organic gardening, there can be a belief that adding fertilizer is somehow less natural. 

Healthy Lettuce and Flowers

Feeding the soil is not forcing growth; it is supporting it. Organic fertilizers work best when applied ahead of peak demand because they rely on soil biology to break them down gradually. With readily available nutrients, microbes can process them immediately and build the root system as the plant expands.  The biological process is already behind if you wait to fertilize when plants are stressed.  

Compost is wonderful and essential for soil health, but most finished compost averages only about 1-1-1 in N-P-K value. That’s the ratio I use for tiny seedlings in my greenhouse, not for larger starts or to give a good boost early in the season. Heavy feeders like tomatoes, peppers, squash, and onions demand more as they build foliage, flowers, and eventually fruit. Without adequate nutrients early on, those crops may grow, but they rarely reach their full potential.

Here’s my simple way of remembering the N-P-K ratio:

·       N = Nitrogen → Green Growth

·       P = Phosphorus → Roots and Blooms

·       K = Potassium → Health and Hardiness

Nitrogen fuels leafy growth. Potassium strengthens cell walls, supports water regulation, and improves stress tolerance. But during May, or an establishment phase, phosphorus plays a critical role.

May Garden Off to a Good Start

Phosphorus drives root development. In the early stages of plant growth, root systems are forming rapidly. If nutrients aren’t immediately available, the plant builds a smaller foundation. You can’t get that time back. Later in the season, root growth does continue, but it competes with leaves, flowers, and fruit for energy. Once flowering and fruiting begin, the plant must direct much of its energy upward. Root expansion slows because reproduction becomes the priority.  Have you ever pulled a plant at the end of the season and been surprised at how small the root ball was? Or noticed that the roots never branched far from the base? Often, it’s the same plant that struggled to produce well. Strong early root development determines how well a plant performs later in its life. It directly affects how deeply it can draw water during heat, how efficiently it absorbs nutrients, and how resilient it remains under stress.

In organic gardening, phosphorus often comes from bone meal, fish bone meal, soft rock phosphate, or composted poultry manure. I typically sprinkle a small amount of bone meal into the planting hole for new starts or seeds. A little goes a long way, and because phosphorus does not move easily through soil, it needs to be incorporated where young roots will encounter it.  

It’s also important to avoid over-applying phosphorus year after year. Unlike nitrogen, which can leach away, phosphorus binds tightly to soil particles and accumulates over time. A light, well-timed application into the root zone is usually sufficient, and I only apply it once in May.  If you’re unsure about levels of phosphorus in your soil, a simple soil test every few years will prevent unnecessary amendments.

Strong growth starts below the surface, so when nutrient-rich soil is available from the beginning, plants establish deeper roots and require far less intervention later. Don’t wait for a problem to tell you what your soil needed weeks ago.   

Happy Gardening!

April 2026- Growing Onions

In my opinion, an onion a day keeps the doctor away (possibly friends too?), and this is the perfect time to consider planting them in your garden. I often hear from gardeners that they can grow just about everything except onions.  I think it takes a little knowledge up front to understand the way the bulb forms, and once you get it, you’ll be successful year after year.  Onions fail when gardeners misunderstand timing, not because onions are difficult to grow.

Onions require a certain amount of light each day to form a bulb, and you must grow the right type of onion for your area.  There are three types: long-day, short-day, and intermediate-day varieties. For our region, it’s best to grow intermediate-day onions. Here’s why. When we plant an onion from a set or start, the green growth must happen first. This is called the vegetative stage, and each green leaf produced later becomes one ring (layer) of the onion bulb. For example, if you have seven leaves, you’ll have roughly seven layers in your onion. While our days are relatively short on light, onions focus on leafy growth. As daylight increases to about 12–14 hours, that change naturally triggers the bulb to form.

Onion Seed Head

Another common problem is planting in the fall.  When I moved here, I kept planting onions in November, because I thought it would give them a jumpstart during our mild winters. Instead, I kept ending up with leafy growth and emerging flower stalks in January.  Digging down, there was only a tiny bulb.  If you’ve had this happen, you know that once a flower emerges, it’s over.  You can’t cut the flower and hope the bulb will start forming. Cutting flowers off in crops harvested for leaves or stems helps prevent them from going to seed, but not for onions, because the bulb is finished by the time flowering begins.

Onions are biennial, meaning they naturally flower in their second year after experiencing a cold period or vernalization.  If young onion plants are exposed to prolonged cold (below ~45–50°F) too early, the plant thinks it’s had a winter.  When it experiences a few weeks of warmth, the plant behaves as if it’s in year two and sends up a flower stalk.  When I planted in November, there were too many opportunities for my onions to experience cold, resulting in many seed heads.  If you want a cheap way to produce seed, try some onions in the fall.  Each seed head contains 150+ seeds.  It gave me so many that I was able to experiment for years, figuring out the timing of planting.  

Enormous Candy Apple Onion

April is the ideal month to transplant onions because we are past any prolonged cold snaps.  I have had great success with these Intermediate-Day Varieties:

• Candy – sweet, yellow, large bulbs, easy to grow

• Super Star – white hybrid, fast-growing

• Red Candy Apple – beautiful, red-skinned onion (my FAVE!)

Freshly Harvested Sweet Onions

Once your onions begin to bulb and summer sets in, monitor their tops. Harvest when they begin to yellow and fall over, then dry naturally, typically in mid to late summer. I like to gently squeeze the stalks, and if they give easily or are floppy, I know the onions are ready to harvest.  From there, stop watering and let them dry out in the soil to begin the curing process.  After a few days, I gently remove them and place them in a shady area of the garden.  You can store them in the garage, a shed, or somewhere out of the sun for about 2-3 weeks, or until the neck is completely dry. 

Once cured, trim the tops to about an inch and cut the roots short. Store in a cool, dark, well-ventilated place. As with garlic, you might find that home-grown onions are more potent and a little goes a long way.  

Happy Gardening!

March 2026 Using Clover in Spring

March is the first point in our year when daylight and darkness become equal. The Spring Equinox marks the official beginning of spring, and around the Lower Russian River, excitement is in the air as we begin to shift from winter to summer gardening.

It’s important to remember that March can still bring frost, especially in our river corridor and low-lying areas. While it’s tempting to plant everything at once, it’s best to pause on most warm-weather vegetables. The equinox falls around March 20–21, and it’s really toward the end of the month that we begin to feel the shift toward longer days. More daylight means more growing hours and gradually warmer soil, which is why April and beyond is the safer window for crops like tomatoes, peppers, squash, and basil.

March also brings St. Patrick’s Day, a time when we think about clover and the excitement of a four-leaf find. In the garden, though, clover’s real “luck” shows up in healthier soil and more vigorous plants.

Clover is often thought of as a fall cover crop, but it can also be used intentionally during the growing season as a soil cover in place of straw or mulch. When planted between established vegetables, clover helps protect soil from drying out, suppresses weeds, moderates soil temperature, and supports soil health.

If you’ve been gardening for a while, you’ve likely heard the term nitrogen-fixing. I certainly had for years before I finally sat down and learned what it meant. Nitrogen-fixing plants don’t pull usable nitrogen from the soil. Instead, they partner with specific soil bacteria that live inside small structures called root nodules. These bacteria take nitrogen gas from the air (which plants can’t use), and convert it into ammonium, a plant-available form of nitrogen. In exchange, the plant feeds the bacteria sugars produced through photosynthesis. This nitrogen becomes available over time rather than all at once, supporting steady, balanced growth.

Nodules on Pea Roots

To witness this process yourself, pull out a pea or bean plant, shake off the soil, and look closely at the roots. You should see small, pale bumps along them. These are nitrogen-fixing nodules. If you don’t see them, it’s often a sign that something may be off in the soil. Compaction, disturbed soil biology, or excessive synthetic nitrogen can all prevent nodules from forming. When nitrogen is already abundant, the plant simply doesn’t maintain the partnership. If you’re interested in learning more, I highly recommend the Teaming series on organic growing by Jeff Lowenfels, who presents complex soil biology in an accessible and engaging way.

This year, I’m planning to experiment with clover as a living soil cover in half of my garden. At the end of the season, around our next equinox, I’ll compare the results. How did it affect soil health? Was it easier to manage than mulch? Was it more labor-intensive? And how did it influence the growth of nearby plants? I’ll share what I learn in a future article.

In the meantime, happy gardening!

Controlling Cucumber Beetles

It may seem early, but this month is a good time to start thinking about garden pests, specifically the cucumber beetle. I had never heard of a cucumber beetle before moving to Northern California. When I first saw them in the garden, I thought they were cute little bugs, similar to ladybugs. In fact, they are the opposite. Ladybugs eat aphids; cucumber beetles nibble petals and leaves, leaving tiny holes in nearly everything.

Because they are strictly plant feeders, cucumber beetles are capable of causing widespread damage in a short amount of time. Leaves often develop a skeletonized appearance, with most of the soft tissue eaten away, leaving only the veins. I do not know of many other common garden pests here that leave plants looking quite like that.
Part of what makes cucumber beetles so frustrating is how well they suit our climate. Our mild weather lines up perfectly with their life cycle and feeding habits. They never experience a population reset because we do not have extended periods of frost, which is why their numbers compound year after year. Organic sprays often fail against cucumber beetles for several reasons. Many organic products work by direct contact or ingestion, but cucumber beetles have a hard outer shell that limits absorption. They also tend to drop off or fly away when disturbed, reducing contact time with sprays.

I eventually found a sticky lure trap specifically made for cucumber beetles. Over the years, these traps have become increasingly difficult to find, and the price is steep, about twenty dollars for two lures. I need at least four lures in my garden, and replacing them every two weeks quickly becomes cost-prohibitive. I scoured the internet for alternatives, and after testing this method last season, I can confidently stand by its effectiveness.

Items for Lures

Making the Traps:

1.     Choose a yellow plastic cup. The brighter, the better. Cucumber beetles are strongly attracted to yellow, which is why commercial traps use bright plastic housings to attract them.

2.     Coat the outside of the cup with Tanglefoot. This sticky horticultural glue is traditionally used to keep crawling pests off fruit trees, and Harmony Farm Supply usually keeps it stocked. Apply a thick, even layer around the outside of the cup, stopping about a half inch from the top so you can still handle it. Alternatively, coat the cup once it is already in place in the garden.

3.     Place a cotton ball soaked in clove essential oil inside the cup.  Cucumber beetles find the scent irresistible. The oil lures them close enough to investigate the trap, where they get stuck. I also put another layer of Tanglefoot inside the cup, almost up to the cottonball.  This provided one more area to trap them.

Fresh Lure

4.     Attach the cup to a stake, tomato cage, or nearby structure. I have had great success punching a hole in the rim of the cup and tying it onto trellis panels, but a simple stake works just as well.

5.     Check and refresh as needed. When the cup becomes covered in beetles, replace it.

The earlier I place the lures, the faster I can get ahead of the population. This method occasionally harms beneficial insects, but it is rare, usually one or two bees per lure. This low impact is one reason this has been a successful strategy for controlling cucumber beetles.

Happy Gardening!

January 2026- Soil Health

January is the month of resolutions and promised changes, yet we all know transformation doesn’t happen overnight. Gardeners have long used the garden as a metaphor for life, and I see it clearly in the way meaningful work happens out of sight. Real progress begins slowly, beneath the surface, long before we notice any results.

In our own lives, we shift patterns and adjust over time. We don’t decide to change on January 1st and wake up a different person on January 2nd. Soil works the same way. Improvement is gradual, biological, and cumulative. The advantage is that in winter, we have time to start building the layers our soil needs. And just like in our own routines, the results will show up later, long after the “groundwork” is done.

A few years ago, I read Soil Science for Gardeners by Robert Pavlis. I’ve mentioned the book before because it truly changed the way I view my garden. I’ve always leaned toward minimal disturbance and the layering, or “lasagna,” method in my raised beds, but reading the science behind soil biology gave me a deeper understanding of why those instincts were working.

Did you know that one teaspoon of healthy soil contains more living organisms than there are people on Earth? I find that fact hard to wrap my mind around. Basically, when we dig deeply or till aggressively, we aren’t “fluffing soil”. We’re destroying a functioning ecosystem. In one or two beds, I’ve dug deeply when I had no choice, because there were problem pockets I needed to diagnose. But in the beds I’ve left undisturbed for years, the plants are strong, resilient, and far more productive.  

Gardeners sometimes assume they can dig up the soil, toss in compost, “mix it in,” and expect an immediate transformation, like baking a cake. But soil doesn’t respond to mixing. It responds to time, biology, and consistent inputs. Beautiful soil isn’t built in a season, but through a sequence of layers, living roots, decaying roots, and microbial activity. Nature is extremely good at breaking down organic material, and our job is to stop interrupting her.

What does work is feeding the soil from the top down, as a forest floor naturally does. By adding layers of organic materials, you let biology incorporate them without mechanical disruption. Over time, this produces soil that is richer, more structured, and full of life.

Each autumn, when I pull out summer crops, I examine the roots:
Were they long? Fine or thick? Did they spread widely or stay constrained?
Year after year, the healthiest, most productive plants always come from the beds I haven’t disturbed.

If you want to start layering this winter, the rainy season provides the perfect opportunity. I never leave the soil bare, especially this time of year. Over time, I’ve watched how mulch, specifically aged wood chips, protects soil structure during our wet months. Without that protective layer, rain compacts the surface like a hammer. The years I intentionally left a bed bare “just to observe,” the soil level dropped by nearly two inches. That’s two inches of organic matter lost to oxidation and runoff. When you layer materials now, such as wood chips, shredded leaves, finished compost, or any combination of organic matter, you’re letting the rain help settle those layers gently while preserving pore space and improving infiltration.

As we head into another gardening year, keep in mind that the real work happens well before anything shows above the surface. A little attention now will set your soil and your garden on the right trajectory for spring.

Happy gardening!