Winter 2025

Winter at 'Our Garden'

by Joie Spinelli

“Anyone who thinks gardening begins in the spring and ends in the fall is missing the best part of the whole year;
for gardening begins in January with a dream.” ~ Josephine Nuese

The demonstration garden 'Our Garden' in Walnut Creek started the new year with much quieter Wednesdays, yet each day the garden glistens in winter’s welcoming arms, whispering in the silent chill of the vibrant rich beds filled with cabbage, kale, broccoli, and chard, while other beds have been enriched with cover crops. We continue our weekly harvest, providing a generous bounty to the homes that partner with Monument Crisis Center. In recent years, the produce donation from 'Our Garden' averaged nearly 15,000 pounds. Throughout each year we have perfected each season at 'Our Garden' with more composting-in-place; shredding the material when we can, and spreading it back on the bed, or hand cutting-in-place; covering it with compost and adding either a blanket of straw or burlap bags to maintain a more ambient controlled environment.

The simple practice is to keep the soil covered as much as possible (mulch, mulch, mulch), disturb the soil as little as possible (no-till), keep plants growing throughout the year to feed the soil, and diversify crop rotations as much as possible, including cover crops.

Thanks to 'Our Garden' leadership’s implementation of the nourishing composting-in-place practice these last few years, our composting crew is still able to produce close to 5 cubic yards of compost. That compost was made from shredding all the shrubbery and pollinator plants surrounding the grounds, as well as oak tree cuttings, trimmings from our productive vineyard and orchard, and the September through November harvesting of tomatoes, peppers, and brassicas.

“Don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter.
It’s quiet but the roots are down there riotous.” ~ Rumi

Composting in place, especially with the designated cover crops, does create a soil sponge of activity which enriches the diverse soil microbiome, creating a deeper passage of roots, a highway for nutrient activity. All to improve soil health, enhance water infiltration, and reduce or mitigate soil compaction.

UC Master Gardener volunteer John Fike’s voice echoes all this ‘riotous’ activity beneath our feet in an online webinar where he identifies that in one teaspoon of soil, there are 4 billion bacteria, 400 million actinomycetes, millions of fungi, nematodes, and algae, all competing, interacting, recycling and enriching ‘The Soil Beneath our Feet’, alive and riotous indeed!

"Nature Does Not Hurry, Yet Everything Is Accomplished." ~ Lao Tzu

Each year, our composting efforts create an additional blanket for each garden bed when using the composting-in-place method. Compost is most effective when made from the very site to which it is applied, using the local inoculum to enhance the protective immunity provided by native microorganisms. Nature creates the compost — we simply provide the space and do the work to support it.

We would be hard-pressed to think of anything else one can put in the garden that does more than compost to improve growing conditions!

We always communicate with what 'Our Garden' surroundings offer each week. In mid-December, it was a leaf gathering. We filled the 2 bins with leaves from the fruit trees in the orchard and another with generous oak leaf droppings around the garden gates, a practice we repeated till year’s end. We need that carbon material year-round for composting, mulching, and enriching the ground beneath our feet.

All our demonstration gardens in West County, East County, and 'Our Garden' in Central County are masterfully led by knowledgeable UC Master Gardener volunteers of Contra Costa County with the mission to extend research-based knowledge and information on home horticulture, pest management, and sustainable landscaping practices to the residents of our community.

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. ~ William Blake