winterkill

Because buckwheat is not frost-tolerant, late-season plantings can be left to winterkill in your beds.

“It should be noted that winterkill this year was minimal, which gives the crop some advantage.”

Some 15 to 20 percent of the region’s soft red wheat crop may be at risk of winterkill early next week, the Commodity Weather Group said.

This is an extract from Winterkill by Cal Flyn, published in Granta 142: Animalia.

Leave it, and they will stay: any tree, every bit of branch and lovely dense thickety-thick, the tumbled bramble, the untidy winterkill — that’s where the birds were.