Now’s the time to Prepare your Garden for the Season Ahead

 

As the growing season winds down, the days get shorter and temperatures drop, time to start preparing your garden for the winter months. Done now, winterizing your garden will reduce pests, enrich soil, and help ensure your garden is ready to plant cool weather crops early next spring. 

Gather your tools and follow these steps to ensure your garden gets off to a good start next year. 

Start with a thorough cleaning of your vegetable garden.  Leaving tomato plants, green tomatoes, cucumber vines and other vegetable plant debris in your garden after you've finished harvesting, will provide hiding places for plant diseases and insect pests, giving them a head start on your garden next spring.  

Powdery mildew is a classic example of a plant disease that can survive our winters. You'll want to remove and destroy any vegetable plants that show signs of powdery mildew. Don't add these plants to your compost pile. The temperatures won't get hot enough to destroy the fungus.  

 

Vegetable garden debris can also attract insects. Western flower thrip is an insect that will winter over in your garden, then emerge in the spring to infest your tomatoes and other vegetables.  Best to clean up the garden now and reduce the chances of thrips or other insects surviving the winter in your garden.   

 

The second reason for fall cleanup is to facilitate adding organic material to your garden bed while the soil is warm and workable. Healthy soil is key to your garden, and a clean garden bed is the ideal time to amend your soil. Plan to add 2" to 3" of organic materials to the existing soil.

This can be in the form of packaged organic compost, worm castings and coconut coir that you can easily transport and work into the garden. Adding organic material will improve soil structure and increase microbial activity, which leads to stronger root development and improved nutrient uptake.  

Three, protect your garden soil through the winter with cover crops.   Soil is a microscopic world teeming with a vast array of organisms that breathe life into your garden. Soil organisms like earthworms, fungi, and bacteria break down plant debris into nutrients, aerate the soil, and turn organic matter into humus. 

 

Cover crops like winter rye, oats, peas, or vetch add nutrients to the soil, while protecting the soil microbiome through the winter. In early spring, you can turn the cover crop into the soil to improve soil texture as well as fertility. 

 

Garden chores done now, allow you to focus on planting in the spring, knowing that your garden beds are healthy, and your soil is ready for planting early next spring. 

 

 

How to use autumn leaves to improve your garden

 

Continuous improvement is the way to ensure soil health, structure and fertility, all of which lead to improved crop yields. Good things happen when you add organic material to your garden soils on a regular basis. Clay soils become more workable, sandy soils retain water more effectively, earth worm populations go up, microbial activity increases, and the overall health and balance of your soil improves. The result is better plant nutrient uptake and improved tomato and vegetable yields, next season. 

Now is an excellent time to work on improving your garden soil. The soil is warm, it’s easy to add organic amendments, and this time of year we have the added benefit of an abundance of autumn leaves.    

 

Bagging leaves and throwing them in the trash creates a lot of unnecessary waste. These same autumn leaves could be used to make your crops grow better, by improving your soil.  Here’s how.  

 

Autumn leaves are one of the best sources of organic materials around. Packed with organic material, carbon and other nutrients, autumn leaves serve as a natural soil amendment, an organic mulch and a compost pile ingredient. 

 

An easy way to put autumn leaves to work is to rake them up and scatter them across the surface of your garden or raised bed, then cover them with three to four inches of Earth Essentials Sheep, Peat and Compost.  Through the winter the leaves will break down. Come spring, use your garden fork to work the resultant rich compost into your garden's soil.    

Another option would be to incorporate the leaf material into the garden now. 

Spread the leaves out over the garden bed, cover with three to four inches of Earth Essentials Sheep, Peat and Compost and dig the mixture in six to eight inches.     

To speed up the process, mow the lawn with the catcher in place or use your leaf blower with bag attachment to shred and catch the leaves, as opposed to raking. The resulting smaller pieces will break down faster in your garden or compost pile, plus shredding helps prevent the leaves from packing together into layers that water and air can’t penetrate.    

 

Once the ground is cold – usually around Thanksgiving, you can apply a layer of shredded leaves and compost around each perennial. Mulching will help retain moisture and protect plants from winter temperature fluctuations.    

  

Autumn leaves are a great source of carbon when added to your compost pile. Leaves count as "browns" in making compost. A good ratio of browns and greens is about 4:1 brown (carbon) to greens (nitrogen). Adding leaves in thin (2" to 3") layers will help the compost pile stay warm and working during the winter.    

 

At the end of a beautiful autumn, it seems only fitting we put those fallen leaves to work in the garden. You'll have a healthier, more productive garden next season.