My vegetable garden is winding down and I am starting to think about getting ready for winter. We put landscape fabric just where our plants are and then wood chips everywhere else. We had the best garden we ever had, except for tomatoes. We didn't produce many tomoatoes. I am working on getting our soil tested, but my question for you is whether to remove the wood chips or just till them under. Will they decompose by spring of next year? There is a lot of mulch.

Thanks for your help,
Irene

Unless the woodchips are mostly decomposed now don’t expect them to become part of the soil by spring. You may have more woodchips left in your soil than you wish to contend with. More important than that they will rob nitrogen from your plants as they continue to decompose in the soil next year. The decomposition process itself requires a lot of nitrogen and if there is a lot of woodchips around the plant roots the plants may loose out. I would take the time to pull the woodchips away before I tilled the soil. I would also get the soil tested as you stated. Fall can be a good time to get a soil test because you are not competing with as many commercial growers as you would in the spring. Soil tests in the spring can be a little slow because of the heavy loads on the labs. With a fall soil test you will have the results available with lots of time to plan how to address the needs of your soil. You will also have the opportunity to start on necessary soil amendments before the soil freezes rather than trying to do it all in the spring.

Concerning your tomatoes: You didn’t say why you were dissatisfied with them so I don’t know if it was lack of fruit, size of fruit, quality of fruit or something else. I assume that they had the water they needed because you say the rest of your garden did great. Because I don’t know the specific shortcoming I will list some possibilities.

How close were the woodchips to the tomato plants? Wood chips sitting directly on the soil will also compete with plants for nitrogen. Even mulch directly on the soil can rob surrounding plants. We use a lot of leaf mulch in our vegetable gardens but we usually do not put it directly on the soil. First we lay down newspapers several sheets thick (8 to 12). This serves two purposes. First it forms a layer that is harder for weeds to penetrate. Second it reduces the amount of nitrogen moving from the soil to the woodchips. In the fall it can all be tilled under.

How did your tomatoes look? Were they lush and green or somewhat yellow? A yellow cast could indicate a lack of nitrogen. Too much vegetation might indicate more nitrogen than they needed and therefore they just grew lots of green plant.

Did the tomatoes have an abundance of blossoms? Did they set fruit? Our tomatoes did well early in the season but are coming up a bit short at the end of the season. The largest reason for this was the very hot weather we had around the first part of August. Most tomatoes will drop their blossoms if the temperature rises above 85 degrees for any amount of time (more than a couple of hours). Very warm nights can also reduce the amount of fruit that a plant will set.

Did your tomatoes suffer from blight or any other disease? Our tomatoes were hit with blight late in the season but we were able to pull them through that. There is lots of new growth, blossoms, and small fruit but there will not be time in our Michigan growing season to ripen much of it.

Please let us know if any of this fits. If not give us more information and we will try to help more.

John Franklin