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.