Skip to main content

Fall Gardening Chores: Prepare the Organic Garden for Winter

The onset of autumn is bittersweet for many gardeners, as we say goodbye to our tender annuals and vegetables but welcome the respite from intense gardening chores. Note your successes and failures in your garden journal, and make plans for next year’s growing season.

 

Fall Gardening Chores

 

Clean Up Autumn Leaves

Organic gardeners with deciduous trees face a mixed blessing in the fall. Dead leaves are an unparalleled source of carbon in the compost pile, and gardeners should keep a ratio of four parts carbon to one part nitrogen in the compost bin. However, gathering all this free fertilizer is laborious, and it’s tempting to neglect raking chores.

Fallen leaves quickly mat together and form a suffocating blanket on the lawn. If you can’t see any green under the leaf mat, it’s time to rake. For gardeners with many trees, this may mean raking two or three times a week. If your compost bin is overflowing with leaves, run over the leaf pile with your lawnmower and use the shredded leaves as garden mulch.

 

Plant Spring-Flowering Bulbs

Although garden centers may begin offering spring flowering bulbs in early September, you can continue planting them until the ground is frozen. This allows gardeners the opportunity to cash in on end-of-the-season bulb clearance sales. Plant your bulbs three times the depth of the bulb’s size, and amend the soil with bone meal to enhance root development. Dispose of any stray papery bulb coverings carefully to avoid attracting the attention of bulb-loving squirrels.

 

Fall Lawn Care

Cooler temperatures and fall rains turn heat-stressed lawns green again. Assess your lawn for bare spots, as fall is the best time to reseed. The warm soil temperatures combined with cool air temperatures allow grass to establish a healthy root system before winter. You may also notice a resurgence of weeds in these growing conditions, so treat your lawn with a corn meal gluten product that prevents weed seeds from germinating and gives the lawn a nitrogen boost. Wait at least six weeks after planting new grass seed before applying corn meal gluten.

 

Protect Garden Containers

Some gardeners wish to reuse potting soil for economical reasons, but this leads to stunted plants grown in soil depleted of nutrients, or plants that succumb to diseases or pests that over wintered in the soil. Remove all spent potting soil and dead plants from their containers, and add them to the compost bin. Don’t add diseased plants to the compost bin.

Store all ceramic and terra cotta pots in a sheltered environment, preferably one that remains above freezing. When gardeners expose these pots to freezing temperatures, the moisture in the pores of the pots can expand, which causes the pots to crack. If a freeze claims one of your favorites, add a new garden container to your holiday wish list.

The post Fall Gardening Chores: Prepare the Organic Garden for Winter appeared first on Downtown Homestead.



from Downtown Homestead http://downtownhomestead.com/fall-gardening-chores/
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Harvest and Store Garden Vegetables

Vegetables gathered at just the right time can be stored naturally or, in many cases, by deep freezing, for use months later in the kitchen. Nature, however, makes its own provision for over- winter storage and the survival of the species, which involves either the production of seed (peas, beans, etc.) or roots to remain in the ground to produce seed heads the following season (parsnips, carrots, etc.). Vegetables in this latter group store much better if left in the ground and lifted as required, or stored in clamps. parsnips can be left in the ground throughout the winter Root crops should never be stored in plastic bags, for they will invariably rot. If you have well- drained soils, where slugs are not a problem, a winter hardy variety of carrot such as ‘Autumn King’ is best left in the ground; carrots stored in sand or peat often shrivel, rot or go moldy. Parsnips are certainly best left in the row; frost improves the flavor but it is a good idea to lift a few at a time during...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Changes Can I Make to My Garden to Be More Natural?

Gardening has changed a bit in recent years as people’s philosophy of gardening is starting to change to go back to more natural and organic methods. For those who have been gardening for a number of years, these new practices might be a bit hard to understand at first since the traditional ways of doing things is adding chemicals to the soil or plants to take care of problems and grow larger plants. Organic methods work a bit differently. Traditional methods use chemical fertilizers to add nutrients to the soil. Organic methods use compost . This is organic matter and carbon matter mixed together. This would be things like fruit peels, vegetables, grass, hay, leaves, and other types of waste mixed together. Over time it breaks down into rich soil that doesn’t need any fertilizer at all. A good compost is natural and doesn’t require extra chemicals. Pest control is a bit more difficult since you don’t want to use chemicals on your plants that end up killing everything. There are a fe...
Post a Comment
Read more

Biochar – Promising Way to Reduce Greenhouse Gases

Imagine this: You have a garden or yard full of trees. Each year you prune and cut dying branches to make room for new growth. Each autumn you rake in several pounds of dead leaves, fallen fruits and other garden “leftovers.” What are you going to do? Ordinarily, you would just leave them alone scattered on your yard, where they would just decay or be buried in winter frost. You probably would clear out a fallen branch or two as well.   How to make Biochar Clear your garden of all living, organic material. Dig a trench approx 12 inches deep. Use a fork to loosen and turn the soil at the bottom. Pile brush in the bottom of the trench, approx 8 inches deep. Light the brush on fire, and allow it to smolder until the smoke thins and turns bluish-gray. Cover lightly with an inch of dirt and let it continue to smolder until it turns to charcoal chunks. Put out with water. Turn and mix the charcoal with the soil turned underneath and then fill in the trench. Continue the proce...
Post a Comment
Read more