---
season: late-fall
section: who keeps good company
---

## good

- a thick mulch of straw over the garlic, the cold cannot find it through the gold
- compost spread where the heavy feeders worked all summer, the worms will turn it through the dark
- a cover crop of rye sown thin into the bare beds, it will hold the soil through every wind that comes
- daffodils tucked among the fruit trees, the deer pass them by and so leave the bark alone
- a low hedge of garlic chives at the edge of the strawberry rows, they wake earlier than the slugs do
- horseradish at the corner of the potato bed for next year, it asks for nothing and keeps the beetles off

## bad

- do not leave nightshade vines on the ground over winter, they carry the blight forward to spring
- never compost the diseased leaves, burn them or send them out, the pile will not get hot enough now
- do not mulch right up against the trunks of young trees, the voles winter in the warmth and chew through the bark
- bean stalks left in the bed look like rest, but they hide the eggs that will hatch first thing