What you do now to your garden will either help or harm it for the next growing season. Follow these steps on how to get your garden ready for winter to get the best garden ever!
Why you need to prepare your garden for winter
How you treat your garden now will effect how well your garden produces next year. If you feed and protect the soil this winter you will reap the benefits next summer! Here a just a few benefits to preparing your garden for winter.
- Lowers the weed pressure for next year
- Creates better soil
- Prevents soil erosion
- Saves you time in spring
Clean up
After you have a had a few frosts it is time to cut back your perennials and pull out your annuals. You can then take these trimmings and compost them.
This is also a great time to pull up all of your trellises, cages, and stakes. If you have a temporary fence you could also take it down for the winter.
Chickens can help
Put your chickens to work in your garden and they will help you with the cleaning up. Your chickens will enjoy eating all those extra vegetables that you didn't get to.
Your chickens can also eat all of those weed seeds that may be on the soil's surface (less weeds anyone). Your chickens will love scratching around and eating all those bugs and the extra protein will be great for them.
While your chickens are rummaging around in your garden they will also fertilize it with their manure. Putting your chickens in the garden is a great idea as long as you are done harvesting.
Compost
Any plants that did not have diseases should be sent to the compost pile. Fall is the best time to start your own compost pile and it allows your pile to decompose over the winter.
I keep my tomato vines out of the compost because sometimes they do get blight and I do not want that in my soil. You can either burn these diseased plants or take them to a city dump.
This is also a great time to spread any compost you have over your garden. I usually sprinkle my compost on top of my layer of leaves which will help it to slowly release into the soil when it rains.
Compost gives your plants nutrients, feeds the soil life, and helps you grow the best plants ever! You can learn how to start a compost pile here.
Don't till
While you may be tempted to till your soil under for the winter this is one of the worst things you can do for your garden. Tilling before winter will harm your soil and expose it to the harsh conditions.
Just cut the tops off of all your plants and leaves the roots in the ground. By springtime many of these roots and stalks will have decomposed helping tomadd nutrients to your soil.
Often times people will till their soil in the fall but there really is no need to do this. If you till your garden you should only be doing it once in the spring.
Cover your soil in leaves
Now that your garden is cleaned up you need to "tuck" it in for the winter. Covering your garden in leaves will improve your soil.
I think this is the best thing you can do for your garden. I have done this for years and it greatly improved my soil.
I used to have a very heavy clay soil in my garden. After adding leaves and other organic matter now my soil is nutrient dense and easy to work with.
I take all my leaves from my yard and pile them in the garden. This creates about 6 inches of leaf cover over my whole garden.
This layer will help insulate your soil protecting it from the constant freezing and thawing cycle of winter. In spring the leaves will decompose and add nutrients back into your soil.
Plant fall bulbs
Fall is the time to plant any flower or other bulbs that you want to grow. Now is a great time to plant some hardneck garlic so you can harvest it next year.
Pull those weeds
Even though it is almost winter you will still need to pull your weeds. This will prevent perennial weeds from coming back next year.
You can toss these weeds into the compost pile as long as they have not gone to seed. If you let your chickens in your garden they may even clean up these weeds for you!
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