How do you prepare your garden for winter

twinspringsnc
twinspringsnc Posts: 21 ✭✭✭
edited November 2020 in Seed Saving & Fall Prep

Growing season is coming to a quick end for most veggies. What does everyone do to prepare their garden for winter and to be be ready for and make spring planting easier?

Comments

  • silvertipgrizz
    silvertipgrizz Posts: 1,990 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @twinspringsnc I'm planting a cover crop/cool weather/Broadleaf Mustard, for which I am also going to forage lol...Also I am in the process of redoing my cats shelter and incorporating the necessities for a winter green house...so to speak with an additional cattlepannel extending it to double it's size to allow room for all of that while also ensuring that my cat and I will stay dry at feeding time. his bed is a barrel stuffed with straw and a coupld soft blankets. I will cover the pannels with heavy plastic of course, fortified with lots of straw..so he is always warm and dry in his shelter/greenhouse.

    I will be growing late fall, early winter broccoli, cabbage, greens, onions including my egyptian onions, radishes carrots and some kale..

    Also, I am laying straw, a thick layer, full 2 rows and in spring I will plant potatoes in the straw..according to Ruth Stout.

  • kbmbillups1
    kbmbillups1 Posts: 1,390 ✭✭✭✭✭

    In a couple weeks I'm going to plant my winter garden and I'm excited! I have kale, cauliflower, & cabbage to plant. I'm hoping to plant kale and broccoli as well. I already planted collars. lettuce, and brussels sprouts. I love my winter garden b/c all I have to do is check under the leaves once a week and knock all of the eggs off before they hatch and start eating the leaves. Every once in a while I pick a few weeds but mostly they grow with much less work and less pests than my spring/summer garden.

    I miss being able to go out and pick tomatoes when I need them but I love being able having greens and other things all winter!

  • herbantherapy
    herbantherapy Posts: 453 ✭✭✭✭

    Normally I let my garden go fallow in the winter with a deep mulch of straw. By the time Spring rolls around the mulch has all but disappeared and I can pull it back and plant, using the remains as weed barrier.

    This year I’m planting my first fall/winter garden. We get a ton of rain so I am looking at options to protect my soil and plants from becoming overwatered. I’m thinking colorful umbrellas would be cute but won’t likely stand up to the 70 mph coastal winds. Lol

  • Monek Marie
    Monek Marie Posts: 3,539 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I add compost and cover with mulch or ground up leaves

  • JodieDownUnder
    JodieDownUnder Posts: 1,483 admin

    @twinspringsnc I try and leave a couple of beds to rest. Fork in some compost and cover with thick mulch, usually organic sugar cane mulch. That way things are looking good to plant into when the time comes. Otherwise the other beds that are growing winter veg get topped up with the same, compost and mulch but not quite as thick.

    I also rake up lots of winter leaves and pick up horse poo from my neighbours and put down more compost.

  • COWLOVINGIRL
    COWLOVINGIRL Posts: 954 ✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2020

    I've been covering the beds with mucky chicken bedding from the coop.

  • Merin Porter
    Merin Porter Posts: 1,026 admin

    This year, I'm trying trench composting, so I've been working on filling holes in my garden beds with fruit and veggie scraps. Then, like I do every year, I will clean out my chicken coop (I use the deep-litter method, so I only clean it out completely once a year), and then spread all that used litter over my garden beds and let everything rot over the winter....

  • Wendy
    Wendy Posts: 138 ✭✭✭

    I am covering my soil with eggshells and leaf litter. Come spring, whatever is left will be tilled under for new planting.

  • AngelaOston
    AngelaOston Posts: 249 ✭✭✭

    Im putting grreenhouse tents on my containers. Hoping for the beat with the tomatoes and other greens

  • VermontCathy
    VermontCathy Posts: 1,987 ✭✭✭✭✭

    We had harvested much of the greens in our two cold frames, so in the past week I transplanted enough lettuce, tatsoi, and some of my experimental perennial onions to refill those cold frames.

    I also brought some perennial onions in the house to the grow-light shelf and planted the first batch of sprouts and shoots.

    High today is about 38F. Last night I lit the woodstove for the first time this year. Low tonight is predicted to be well below 20F. We're at the end of the outdoor gardening season, apart from those cold frames.

    It's not just the temperature. We have been rapidly losing daylight. Even with Daylight Saving Time, sunset here is happening before 6PM. Stuff will hold in the cold frames, but new growth won't happen.

  • Monek Marie
    Monek Marie Posts: 3,539 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I cover my beds with shopped leaves, wood mulch and chicken manure. By spring they have broken down and by mixing with my hamds or small hand tool I am ready to plant.

  • Kelley
    Kelley Posts: 140 ✭✭✭

    Leaf litter, much and compost. My first year trench composting so we will see how it goes.

  • lewis.mary.e
    lewis.mary.e Posts: 225 ✭✭✭

    Most years we would pull the dead plants, turn over the dirt, turn in some manure and let it be for the winter. This year, because the location of the new garden is grass covered, we aren't doing anything. We'll till it next spring, add lime and aged manure, and begin planting.

  • Merin Porter
    Merin Porter Posts: 1,026 admin


    My first year, too! Actually, it's weird. I've been working on a combination of trench composting and then topping that with cardboard this year to try to pre-empt next summer's weeds, and then I'll top that all with the litter from my chicken coop before winter hits. But it's weird, because the cardboard in places where I've done the trench composting is covered in purple/brown mold-looking stuff, but the cardboard in other places in the garden just looks like cardboard. All I can think is that the pre-compost is attracting little microbes that are attaching to everything? Maybe? I just don't know.

    I do know that I've got chives growing out there still and decided against cutting them recently because they were so close to the mold-looking stuff. Not gonna chance that until I know for sure what's happening....

  • Grounded
    Grounded Posts: 153 ✭✭✭

    Have a rented community garden plot. Had to clean out all the plant matter. The park district will till the soil, hopefully, before the ground freezes. I will add leaf matter, egg shells and mulch to cover the soil over the winter. They will till it again in the early spring. By the time I can get into the garden plot, the ground will be hard again. I will have to rototill just to get the boulders down to size, add more compost, mulch and put cardboard and straw down for pathways to keep the weeds down.

    I have a small area that I would like to put in a few raised beds and get garlic planted and some rhubarb and chive transplanted into before the ground freezes, but our daughter is trying to get married in just under two weeks, so, I'm not sure what kind of time I'll have this year.

  • VermontCathy
    VermontCathy Posts: 1,987 ✭✭✭✭✭

    We received about 4 inches of snow this week, so we're done gardening in the outside open beds. It's possible that some of the greens will survive under the snow and be harvest when it melts, probably later this week, but I'm not counting on it.

    When I get a chance, probably after snow melts later this week, I will go out with a pair of scissors and trim all of the green onion stalks down to the ground and discard (not compost) the stalks to reduce risk of pests overwintering. The bulbs will stay in the soil.

    I cleared out most of the other dead plant matter, other than leaves, before the snow came. It went into compost.

    All the beds were covered with several inches of fresh leaves to serve as winter mulch.

  • Silkiemamuska
    Silkiemamuska Posts: 99 ✭✭✭

    I planted australian field peas about a month ago to grow as long as they can and add nitrogen. Top dressing with composted horse manure and continual additions of fallen leaves thanks to my teenager's chores. I did not have any diseased plants so all skeletons are going to age in place and follow what happens in nature.

  • MissPatricia
    MissPatricia Posts: 318 ✭✭✭

    Putting wood chips on. Have some root vegetables planted. May plant some oat seed if I get that far. Mostly still playing "catch-up" all year. Planting some elderberry and blackberry. That is it.

  • nksunshine27
    nksunshine27 Posts: 343 ✭✭✭

    i'm cleaning out my chicken coop of the compost that's formed in it over the last couple years putting it on my garden. then planting everything i plan to grow next year.

  • DurwardPless
    DurwardPless Posts: 162 ✭✭✭

    Are there some leaves you should not use?

  • MissPatricia
    MissPatricia Posts: 318 ✭✭✭

    I am still putting wood chips on my garden and trying some hugelKulture. My Christmas gift from my son-in-law was to pick up our brush mower, get it fixed, and delivered to us. My husband used it three days already. There is some good soil in that brush pile. I am thinking that I could plant potatoes, or sweet potatoes, or pumpkin or watermelon in/on that mound.