Things You'll Need:
- Rake
- Pitch fork
- Wheelbarrow
- Rototiller
- Patience
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Step 1
A garden is something you have to prepare for next winter right after you've picked the last fruit or vegetable. This is an important part of gardening that most gardeners completely overlook. What you do this fall will have a direct bearing on what happens in your garden next spring.
After the harvest is in most gardeners just walk away from their garden and forget all about it until next spring. The preparation for winter however will eliminate quite a few pests and blights that can come back down on you next spring. Old plant stems are a great place for various garden pests to survive the winter, as well as some of the blight s. -
Step 2
The first thing that you have to do is remove all of the old plant stalks and put them in a compost heap. The very next thing that has to be done is to lightly rake over the whole garden with a broom rake to remove any loose litter that can be added to the compost heap. While the compost heap is breaking down you don't really have to do anything in the garden until just before freeze up.
At that point you take the broken down compost and scatter over the top of your garden. Then you plow it into the ground with a Rototiller to let soil and compost become thoroughly mixed. It doesn't make any difference if the compost is completely decayed. Over the winter the compost will continue to break down, and the following spring will be a natural fertilizer. Now your garden is ready for the winter.
There is still plenty of work to be done and that depends upon whether you have any raspberries, strawberries, or blueberries. Each of these require special work to become ready for next spring.
After the raspberries have borne their crop the old canes die, and have to be removed from the raspberry patch. This can be done in late fall. In early spring you have to cut the new canes until they are about 4 feet high. The reason for doing this is because the shortened canes will actually bear more fruit. Without cutting raspberry bushes grow long and gangly making it hard to pick the fruit.
Strawberries are another plant that needs special care like raspberries. In this case the plants are close to the ground and are propagated by putting out runners. The plants bearing strawberries this year will die down, and the younger plants are the ones that will bear next year. If you have colder winters you have to cover your strawberry plants with a mulch for the winter. Most farmers use straw for this purpose. The mulch has to be removed in the early spring before the strawberry plants start growing. The mulch can be disposed onto the compost heap, and composted.
Blueberries are another crop that needs special attention, but this can be done in late January or early February. The plants have to be trimmed during cold weather. Trim off all the suckers first, they are the ones coming up from the base of the plant that are smooth and a sorted of reddish green. The other thing that has to be trimmed is where the blueberry bush bore fruit last summer. This is recognized by the appearance of being bushy, and in some cases you can even tell where the blue -
Step 3
Preparing a garden properly is a year round chore, but it pays off handsomely the following year. You will have fewer pests, and blights. Your garden will also look better the following summer if you take the proper steps this fall. It is also easier to deal with when it comes time for spring planting.
Comments
jenbeth said
on 8/25/2009 Great tips, I never knew what to do with my garden over the winter.