After the final harvest of the year, it will be time to winterize your garden. I promise not to be surprised or offended if some of you don’t know that winterizing the garden is a thing. It seems like a lot of people don’t. However, when you winterize your garden, you get a great head start on the next growing season.
Winterize Your Garden for an Amazing Spring
When you winterize your garden, you get a spring with less work, more planting, and healthier plants. Here’s how.
Don’t Throw Out Spent Veggie Plants
This is important. I see so many gardeners pulling up their vegetable plants and pitching them after the growing season is over. Don’t do that! Instead, keep them in the garden, so that they can decompose and return nutrients back to the soil. The stalks, leaves, and stunted fruits that always accompany the end of the growing season will add nutrients as well as composting material and help keep the soil loose. Just remember to pull up corn stalks. Those are just too tough and fibrous.
Which brings us to my next point.
Lay Down Compost.
One key step to remember when you winterize your garden is compost. Hopefully, you have a compost pile or a composter which you’ve been using all season. There’s gold in there! If you have it, lay down a 2 or 3 inch layer of compost across the entire garden. Just throw it right on top of the old vegetable plants.
Till
The two previous tips on how to winterize your garden go hand in hand with this one. After you’ve laid down a layer of compost – or if you don’t have any, just left your old plants in the garden – till it all in. This will evenly distributed all the good stuff throughout the soil. Remember to till to a depth of about 12 inches. A lot of gardeners say 6 inches, but I’ve found that 12 inches helps to increase drainage and aeration.
Black Landscape Fabric
This is the final step to properly winterize your garden. Put a layer of black landscape fabric across the entirety of your garden bed. Black landscape fabric will soak up sun and transfer heat to the bed. It will also help retain heat. It’s woven, which means that water can pass through to keep the soil moist as well.
[tweetthis]DYK that black landscape fabric can be important when winterizing your garden?[/tweetthis]
This does a couple of things. It helps with further breakdown of the compost and old vegetable plants that you tilled into the soil. That means richer dirt for the next season. It also allows you to begin planting your garden sooner. Remember the heat transfer and retention I just mentioned? Landscape fabric and increase a garden’s soil temperature by several degrees, meaning that you can plant seed and plants earlier.
[tweetthis]Use these tips for winterizing your garden and next spring and summer you will reap the rewards.[/tweetthis]
Winterize Your Garden Now for A Better Start Later
With these four tips to winterize your garden, you can get a jump start on the next growing season with tasty dirt for your hungry plants and an early planting season so they have longer to grow. This extra grow time is especially important for those of you who like to do a fall garden as well.
If you want a garden that’s ready and raring to go next spring, winterize it this season. You WILL see results.
These are great tips. I don’t have a garden, but if I did, I would want to make sure to protect it.
We didn’t have too much in our garden this year as the weather has not been the nicest. The only things that we “dig” up are our carrots because we want to be able to use them all, and we always try to put in some compost as well to help speed up the process so we are able to get the best nutrients that the plants need for the next year.
We always leave in the old plants, and till over them eventually. Usually it works great as a compost type thing, but sometimes we wind up with plants we didn’t expect to return because we’ve put the seeds back into the ground.
I’m going to have to remember this. I’ve never tried tilling everything in before winter. I need to give that a shot.
I need to try and remember to wrap my pots this year, I forgot last year poor things. x
Great tips for getting that garden winter ready. I never knew about the tilling aspect. Great tip!
Great tips, I should try this at my garden. This is so helpful to me.
Those are great tips. I will have to get my garden ready.
Lucky me, I was too lazy to actually plant a garden for the past way too many years lol
Ugh! I just tossed out all my veggie stems. I’ll have to remember to NOT do that next year!
Letting the plants decompose is always very important. It creates much better and healthier soil for next years planting.
We don’t have a garden but I remember my Dad doing these things when he had one for so many years. His garden was always so magnificent and really grew some awesome produce.
These are very helpful tips for those who have a garden. I wish I had one, but I will share this with my friends who have gardens.
oh . .. I’ve always removed my plants, great tips thank you!!
I wish I had a garden to winterize. Great tips, hopefully next year! I have been missing a garden since moving to the big city 5 years ago!
Great tips, thanks, didn’t know about the fabric.
I think gardens are beautiful. It’s important to protect your garden during the cold weather months.
Never thought about the importance of winterizing your garden – thanks for the suggestions!
I never knew you can do such things. I know of a friend who is always sad during winter because she cannot grow stuff in her garden. I will share this post with her so she can prepare her garden for growing vegetables and nice flowering plants when the time is right.
Good tips, I don’t do any of these so will have to remember to try them out.
Great tips. Hubby always digs them up and add them to his compose. Must pass the information on to him.
Lots of wonderful tips but we have since moved from our home which did have a garden to an apt bldg but I can let others know who do have one
Thanks – these are great tips! My son & I planted a garden this year.
I always cut healthy parts of my plants back into the soil, but don’t want to put back the diseased once. And I have one more step for my garden – to ensure that mice don’t make their winter home in my garden box 🙂
Fabulous tips thank you so much.
We are in the throes of doing this right now, so I appreciate the tips.
These are some great tips. I need help with better gardening.
We only have gardens at our trailer and it is already closed up for the season, will have to try some of these tips out next year.
great tips! thank you!
These are really good tips, I just wish that I had a garden where I put them to good use. Alas we only have a small plot and it’s behind our house and north facing! All we have so far is lawn 🙁
I have to admit I’ve neglected my garden since my son was born. He’s 2 now and I’m really hoping to get back into full garden mode next year.
wonderful tips..I always did remove my plants…