From the Archives: Fallowness
no such thing as dormancy
This week, we’re revisiting a very seasonally on-point article from the archives. With the orchard in its third year—a year when we can expect significant growth from the fruit trees, since they’ve now had ample time to re-establish their root systems—it’s fun to look back on this post, which was written when the whole site was still a dream.
All gardeners experience a nagging restlessness in winter. The year's decline is over, with all its distracting holiday ceremonies. The garden, which we were so glad to put to bed, and which may have still borne some herbs and brassicas for us to use during holiday meals, begins to resemble a truly blank canvas. Now, as the days begin to lengthen after the winter solstice in late December, a sense of gathering energy makes us eager to do something with that fallow, productive space.
And there are certainly plenty of tasks that can be done this time of year. February is the right moment in the season to prune roses, and any late-flowering vines or shrubs since they are deep in a state of dormancy that will prevent the sap from running out of the wounds. In fact, winter pruning actually promotes improved growth during the warmer months. If there is any hardscaping to be done—paths to put in, brick to be laid, etc—the winter can also be a reasonable time for such tasks, as long as the ground isn’t frozen so hard that it turns the edge of a spade. Composting is a four-season discipline, too.
At the Classical Roots Program, we have spent the colder months harrowing the site of our future orchard. Below the surface, the 6,000 tulip and daffodil bulbs we planted in the fall are waiting to burst up in early spring. But we also have a five-pound sack of native New England wildflower seeds to plant and, given that our grass is probably an aggressive non-native variety, we need to take some measures against those seeds being choked. The solution is a process called harrowing—from which we get our colloquialism “a harrowing experience”—which basically means doing anything to a field that thins or weakens the existing grassy layer. In early fall, we raked out all the dormant or dead thatch. This winter, we are taking an additional step by “scalping” off chunks of the grass, one to two feet across, to allow the seed to make direct contact with the soil. With a little luck and a lot of weeding, the hope is that our wildflowers will get the chance to germinate this spring without competition from the grass.
But, of course, there is only so much you can do during the colder months. And, in an age of on-demand experiences, this is a healthy reality with which to reconcile ourselves. For all our ingenuity, we do not get to determine the timeline of growth. Sometimes, the best and only thing to do is wait and hope. In the meantime, we can take comfort from the knowledge that the apparent inactivity of our gardens is actually not inactive at all. In fact, the cycles of freezing and thawing, the burrowing of underground creatures, the rotting of last year’s roots, and the nitrogen-fixing power of snow all conspire to aerate our soil and infuse it with nutrients that outperform any artificial fertilizer. As with our own life cycles, it is actually these moments of fallowness that allow life to surge forward in spring. The gardener understands that there is no such thing as dormancy: only a productive and necessary stillness.
