Preparing The Winter Garden

You wouldn't think that much yard work goes on in the winter months, but the weather here is mild enough that I use the winter to catch up on some basic garden maintenance.  Autumn and winter are a good time to go through and clean up the garden beds.  I generally remove the dead vegetation and add amendments to my soil using what I have on hand.  This year I have been burning piles of dead ragweed bushes and will be adding the ash from that to each garden bed to increase the mineral content of the soil.  A friend of mine also gave me bags of leaves which I am mixing into the soil in each bed to increase the amount of organic matter which will also help feed my future crops.

Eventually I would like to move towards a no till approach in my garden, but at the moment I think turning over the soil in the beds is helping to improve the soil.  The first year that I had a garden here, turning over the soil was a chore.  The soil is hard packed clay that is loaded with river cobble.  Using a shovel was tedious, but I felt that I was able to remove more of the larger rocks from the beds using this method.  I have also been trying to plant deep rooted crops like carrots where I can to help break up the deeper soil and help bring nutrients closer to the surface to make them more available for shallower rooted crops.

That first year and even the beginning of the second year I found the soil to be oddly devoid of earthworms.  Finally as I have been turning over the beds this fall I have started finding signs of life in my soil.  I have been adding leaves and grass clipping to the beds both as I turn them over and also as a mulch after the beds are planted.  I think they have helped to improve the composition of my soil quite a bit.  It holds water much longer than the hard dry soil in other parts of my yard and thanks to the mulch it doesn't get muddy when it does get soaked.

This winter I am planning on trying to grow a few overwintered crops in some of my beds.  I always get a bed of garlic planted in the fall so it can come up in the early spring.  I also want to try growing a bed of spinach under a low hoop tunnel and a bed of turnips for the chickens.  Both of those veggies have germinated well for me in the cold in the past so I am going to try to get them planted in the next few weeks to see if they can get established before the temps get too low.

Foe the most part the garden is done for the year.  I still have root crops like my potatoes, carrots and parsnips that are waiting to be harvested, but there is no hurry for those crops since they seem to keep just fine where they grew in the soil.  The potatoes might have to be fully harvested before deep cold sets in, but the others can be harvested as needed all the way through early spring.  The cold weather actually improves the flavor of carrots and parsnips which is another reason to let them overwinter outside.