Soil is considered as an essential foundation for growing plants and trees. Though each plant type requires different needs, you can easily give them appropriate nutrients through soil preparation.
Fall is the best time to prepare your soil for winter. Certain activities may be completed such as stray plants clean up and tilling your soil. Provided in the next section are tips on preparing your soil for winter.
Tips and Tricks in Preparing Soil for Winter
It is essential to know some tips in preparing your soil for winter. Discussed in this section are some of the steps you may complete before the winter starts.
1. Prep your Garden Beds
Your vegetable garden can be messy during the end of autumn. Thus, it is important to clean up your garden beds. You can break-up the cleaning work in a schedule to aid you in completing the whole garden.
- Dead vegetation removal – The first thing that you may do is to remove the dead plants or vegetation. This is to prevent diseases from spreading on good fruits in your garden. You can burn or trash the dead or unhealthy plants in your garden to eliminate the risk of spreading the disease to your healthy pile
- Addition of mulch and finished compost layer – We recommend you pull weeds and set aside mulch in your garden. After this, you can add at most two inches of finished compost layer. Then, you can start covering the beds using old mulch. This is to aid in suppressing weeds as well as protecting the soil. Once the winter commences, can add another mulch layer to keep the soil from completely freezing.
2. Conduct Soil Testing
It is best to have your soil tested before winter. With this, you can easily determine if it needs additional nutrients or adjustment in pH levels.
The results of the soil test will help you determine the amount of lime or fertilizer you can add to improve the condition of your soil. Note that lime is usually used to adjust the pH level of the soil.
3. Garden Expansion
Before winter arrives, you have a great opportunity to expand your vegetable garden. You may raise a few beds above the grass.
On the other hand, you can purchase on sale compost and organic soil for the garden during the autumn season. As you fill the beds with soil, you can prep them for winter and get them ready for planting when spring comes.
4. Gather Stray Leaves
Leaves during the fall are very useful for gardeners. We recommend you gather a number of leaves and use them to fill up your compost bins. These are very useful in creating mulch, compost, and leaf mold.
Mulch is layers of leaf mulch that are shredded over the surface of the soil. These help in suppressing the weeds, soil enrichment, and moisture-retaining.
On the other hand, the leaves are the carbon element of the compost pile. The gathered leaves can be tossed over the compost bins to help offset the nitrogen or green material.
Lastly, the leaves that are piled on the compost bin shall break down. This will form a rich humus which you can incorporate into the soil. This will help in tilling your soil. It essentially provides benefits to the soil organisms.
There are many benefits in preparing your soil. For example, you can start tilling your soil to aerate it. Moreover, it prevents weeds from and insects from growing in your garden.
Thus, preparing your soil for winter is excellent to have the ability to grow plants and crops during this period. We recommend you try this out.