My "guess" is to cut the leaves back enough that you can cover them more easily.

Dave - Are you using straw/hay or leaves for mulch. If you are using straw/hay, do you shred it somewhat before laying the mulch around the plants?

straw is by far the better mulch for winter roots. leaves do not allow moisture exchange as much. but straw is expensive, and leaves are free. in my case I do not have to worry about leaves, I just mulch after the first freeze.

<Dave - Are you using straw/hay or leaves for mulch. If you are using straw/hay, do you shred it somewhat before laying the mulch around the plants?>

For winter protection, straw, it provides the best natural insulation IMO. If not available then I'd go with hay but it isn't as effective for protection and it stays wet longer and tends to compact and mat down.

And no, I don't shred it and I don't lay it "around the plants" but right on top of them, build a mound of it right on top of them. My ground never freezes here so 10-12" tall mound works for me. If the ground freezes, much more would be needed for protection.

If I had to use leaves I'd shred them first.

Dave

Dave - thanks for linking me to this thread from the Harvest Forum. Over there, I liked Annie's description as it is identical to the way I stored my carrots & parsnips in Michigan some 40 years ago! A lot of sand though the hourglass since then and I wanted to be sure I remembered how to do it the way it worked for me there. :-) Also can relate to her comment about only digging the parsnips in the spring - except that shortly after New Year's is when I get my first parsnip cravings! LOL

I have leaves a-plenty but I do have a couple of bales of straw I was given (I never would use hay because of the likelihood of weed seeds). I prefer leaves since as they decay they give more to the soil than does straw, but do you think that the straw is a better insulator due to its hollow stems? I still think I'll go with the leaves since I have a LOT, they are dry, & shredded to corn-flake size, pretty much, and so much easier to go down through to get to the roots in winter than the straw, IMO.

Glib - if you see this, I'd like you to expand upon your statement, "straw is by far the better mulch for winter roots. leaves do not allow moisture exchange as much." There is a fair bit of moisture in the bed from the rain we recently had, just enough, I think, to keep the veggies hydrated but not sitting in mud. Just not sure exactly what you mean by moisture exchange. (Good thing, bad thing?)

Finally, I think I *will* trim the tops back. I think it'll make harvest easier/neater if I don't have to deal with dead foliage. I'll leave about 4" so I easily can see where the roots are.

I have covered with finely chopped leaves. I think that it provides an even better winter cover.

basically, straw allows some moisture to escape, and packed leaves do not. When I wrote that, I was thinking more about burying cabbage and cardoon under leaves/straw. So I was slightly off topic, the title of this post is root crops only. I t works extremely well with straw, but I get a lot of rot under matted leaves. Perhaps I should chop them, as Wayne and Dave suggest.

Right, glib, I fully agree with you regarding packed leaves not allowing moisture to escape and getting "a lot of rot under matted leaves." Absolutely! But as I mentioned above, the leaves I am using are dry, shredded to corn-flake size, and I also will be covering them with a sheet of plastic (black or clear, whichever I have out in the shed). I never use leaves that are not shredded, not even in the compost pile or piled in my "landscape dump" in the back of our acre, so must, along with Wayne & Dave, urge you to shred them - using a mower or leaf vac. I have heard of some folks putting the leaves in a trash can & then weed-whacking them to grind them up!

I expect my fastidious, lawn-obsessed neighbor thinks I am nuts as I use my leaf blower always as a leaf vac & suck up all the leaves that have blown around the base of my various foundation shrubs, evergreen & deciduous -- and then turn around & empty the bag right back onto the soil from which I sucked up those leaves! But now, of course, they are nicely shredded and give the plants a nice mulch that will readily break down by the next summer, enriching the soil.

Re hay vs. straw: I've been using hay in my vegetables gardens for mulch for almost 50 years. The key is getting hay cut at the proper time, that is before it's headed out and seeds have formed. You want hay that has been spoiled by rain, or is old and the farmer wants to get rid of it. If I had to buy straw for my always mulched, permanent bed garden, I'd have gone bankrupt years ago. BTW, only once in all those years did I get hay that was too far gone; I stopped using it immediately and never had much of a weed problem.