Fall Garden Prep

 

There are plenty of reasons to have a garden, from saving money on groceries, enjoying fresh produce, or simply having a hobby that will keep you active. While we have already been through upkeep and produce specific posts, we want to now provide a few tips to get your garden ready for winter.

 

Why do you need to do anything?

 

Clean up plants before frost to make your yard clean up easier (prevent the green sludge).

Fall garden care will make spring planting much easier.

Get the most from your plants by harvesting all remaining vegetables and fruits before the frost.

Add nutrients, soil additives, other good things to your soil for better garden growth next summer!

 

 

Getting Started

 

Being your fall garden care by picking any remaining vegetables or fruit. When I say any remaining, I do mean any and all. Tomatoes will ripen on your counter or in the garage, small cucumbers have many uses, and small peppers are still quite tasty. If you do not want all of this produce, feel free to dispose of properly (compost, garbage, etc.). For best results with tomatoes, place unripened tomatoes on cardboard to prevent condensate and allows for easy cleanup. Allow one to two weeks for ripening.

 

 

 

Once all the produce has been harvested, pull all the plants from your garden. Once again dispose of these properly. For plants, this may mean bringing them to your local yard waste disposal, composting, throwing them in the trash, or if you live in an area where burning is acceptable I would recommend doing that. Burning creates ash which makes a great additive to your soil which you can re-spread when you till.

 

Tilling

 

Now that your garden is mostly clear, you can begin tilling. Tilling is important as it loosens up your soils to allow for easier planting and weeding next year. It also allows for bacteria and nutrients to be spread through the soil which will support better growth in the future. Ideally, you will have a tiller that will make this a piece of cake. However, if you do not own a tiller, do not despair. You can recreate the effects of tilling but using a shovel/spade to turn over topsoil. This may take a bit longer, but produces great results and is a great workout!

 

The best time to till is when the soil is slightly damp, but not wet. When soil is too dry you will create a lot of dust and soil can be blow away. This is a huge problem is you don't have very deep topsoil to begin will. If soil is too wet (or muddy) you can cause a lot of wear on your tiller and will also disturb the bacteria cultures. Tilling can also help expose vine borers and other pests resulting in a natural kill of without pesticides.

 

Soil Additives

 

It is a good idea to do a rough tilling job to start and follow it by spreading soil additives. You can then till again to get additives well mixed into the soils. If you have time before the frost, you can apply a herbicide or pesticide. However, we follow that a more natural approach is more effective and keeps chemicals out of your food. Tilling reduces problem insects and weeds.

 

A few other additives to think about applying to your garden are fertilizers (depending on the soils in your area and crops grown), compost, and leaves. If you have poor soils and grow intensive crops such as corn, now would be a good time to introduce some nitrogen and other fertilizers to your garden. A better plan would be to use crop rotation techniques and plant a nitrogen fixing crop in the corn area next spring. This would likely be a bean or pea plant.

 

Compost and leaves are wonderful ways to promote soil production and replenish soil nutrients. Many municipalities allow you to pick up compost for free from the yard waste disposal sites or you can begin your own composting at home. We typically add only leaves and possibly ash from burning our old plants. To do this, we use a bagging lawn mower to collect leaves or rake them into the garden. We follow this by tilling or turning the soil one more time to mix them in. Over the winter, bacteria will break down the leaves and allow the carbon and other nutrients from the leaves to spread into surrounding topsoil as well as breaking down leaves into more topsoil.

 

 

Overall, fall garden work is fairly simple, shouldn't take too much time, and will produce great results! If you have more ideas on getting your garden ready for winter or questions, let us know!