Getting Ready for Spring

[missmanors]

It's not yet time to hang up your gardening tools and forget your gardens for the winter. There's much that you can do to prepare for next spring.

By spending a few more hours in your gardens now, you can have a much more trouble-free beginning to your garden next spring. You may even still have a lot of produce still in production, but there are still things you can do to get a heard start on cleaning up before the first frost arrives.

The first thing that needs done, is to gather and mulch the garden litter, such as vegetable tops and stalks, any rotting vegetables or other debris that is in the garden. Place all these into the composter. If left in the garden for the winter, you could be inviting disease into your garden. Many problem pesky insects or spores can survive the winter on what is left of your plants.

Some diseases can survive in a composter as well (as optimum temperatures may not be reached in the cold weather), so be sure that you dispose of any plants that could be suspect. These should be bagged and disposed of or burned.

This is a good time to work all the empty spaces in your garden in order to keep weeds from taking hold. This is also a good time to condition the soil by working in compost or other organic matter. You can use manure or lime to sweeten an acidic soil. If you are going to chemically fertilize your vegetable garden, wait until spring to do this step.

If you have a garden in which you have winter erosion, you may want to consider using a cover crop (wheat, barley or annual ryegrass). These quickly germinate and will set up a dense root system that will squeeze out any invading weeds while encouraging beneficial soil organisms and earthworms. In the spring, till this crop under. It will give your garden a huge boost of organic matter and nitrogen.

You can also give your garden some winter protection after the first frost by mulching with about 6" of leaves, seedless grass clippings, straw, peat moss or other organic matter, which can be worked into the soil in the spring. (The reason you need to wait until after the first frost, is to keep pests from nesting in the mulch throughout the winter.)

If you are planning an expansion to your garden in the spring, now is the time to prepare the ground. You can either cover the area with heavy black plastic to keep the weeds and grass from growing in the early spring; or for less expense, you can weigh down a thick layer of cardboard or newspapers which will also keep the weeds and grass out and can be tilled into the soil in the spring.