Preparing Garden Soil For Winter

Adding a thick layer of mulch to the soil surface helps regulate soil temperatures and moisture and ease the transition into winter. It may seem like not much is happening in your yard as you watch deciduous trees and shrubs drop their colorful foliage and other plants slow their growth as they prepare to go dormant. Protecting the soil and plants is especially important here.

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Break up tasks over time and work through the garden one bed.

Preparing garden soil for winter. This prep work can save you untold disappointment and, perhaps more than any other factor, assure a bountiful and delicious harvest. Once fall arrives with its beautiful turning of the leaves, everyone knows what comes next … the cold chill of winter. The vegetable garden is such a mess by the end of the season that it seems overwhelming at first.

There are a lot of great things you can do for your garden in the fall and winter. Depending on the size of the stem or stalk, use either a good pair of garden pruners or scissors, or a good pair of loppers, i love these, and cut the stems off just below ground level and leave the roots in the soil. Your vegetable garden can be messy during the end of autumn.

It is a generally accepted fact that once soil temperatures drop below 45°f (7°c), biological activity slows to a crawl, and the soil and all its life forms hibernate through winter. This is especially important if the soil is being worked for the first time. Start with a soil test to find out what nutrients your soil needs and whether the ph is balanced.

In order to begin preparing your garden for winter, turn the soil over. Leaving your soil bare throughout the winter is one of the biggest mistakes of all for a garden. As author and respected gardener frank tozer writes, “when building soil you not only improve your plants health, but you can also improve your own.” organic soil is rich in humus, the end result of decaying materials such as leaves, grass clippings and compost.

Plus, by preparing your garden now, the soil amendments will have all winter to fully compost, adding to the soil fertility prior to spring planting. Add organic matter each year during soil preparation to build and maintain the soil. In our particular area, this does not happen very often, but it might happen after a warm spell, where most of the snow melts.

Another option for prepping your soil is to plant a cover crop such as clover, red wheat, cereal or annual rye, agricultural mustard, fava beans, alfalfa, sorghum, or wooly pod vetch. It is essential to know some tips in preparing your soil for winter. Dead roots, stems and foliage can harbor insects and diseases that emerge in the spring to infect next year's garden.