what to do with your empty beds (it's not too late)

Let's talk about what's going into your empty beds this month. I know, the instinct after pulling the last tomatoes is to rake everything clean and call it a season—but bare soil is the worst thing you can leave behind going into winter. Rain and snow pound it into a crust, nutrients wash out, and come spring, the first thing to "cover" that bed will be weeds. (Nature hates a vacancy.) A cover crop fixes all of that. It's a bed of plants sown thick and close, grown for the soil instead of the...