Garden Prep For Fall and Winter/Planting a Fall Garden

 

The "BER" months are upon us and you can feel a shift in the air. This is the time when many gardeners start seeing a decline in harvest. Summer is at an end,  and the plants are slowing down on production. Unless you have things like pumpkins still going strong. For us this year it is at an end. 

This is the part of the season or year that you start to clean up your garden from the summers harvest and prepare it for next growing season. If you are growing a fall garden, we will get to that later down the post. 

If your closing your garden for the season, here are some things we do on our farm. We pull out all plants that have died out and finished producing. We throw them in a compost pile or sometimes we let them compost in the garden. We do this one of two ways. First way if dear hubby will run the tractor through with a bush hog or disc. This cuts down and mulches things down to the soil where they will compost on their own through the winter. Corn stalks, and okra stalks are a perfect example. They make great compost and add nutrients back into the soil. The next way is to pull up other plants and let them compost in the garden as well. If you don't want to leave them in your garden at all, just pull them up, pile them into a compost pile or feed them to live stock. Just take precautions if you have used any kind of bug spray on them. You do not want to make an animal sick. You can burn off your garden as well. Sometimes we do that too. It depends on what our garden needs at that time and what kind of time we have as to what method we use. 

We remove t-posts, twine, clips and then the cattle panels. We take down our solar fencing for the winter too. 

If we need to lime or fertilize, we will do it before a snow so the snow will melt and carry the nutrients further down into the soil. Some years we don't have to lime or fertilize like this. Soil testing comes in handy to tell us what our soil needs and doesn't need. 

Some people will plant cover crops like native grasses or peas with high nitrogen content to put those  nutrients into the soil to be ready for early spring season. 

We play it year by year and according to what we grew that year as to plan how we need to prep for early spring season.  You will have to be the judge and planner according to what your garden needs. 

Now, if you are growing a fall garden, just clean out what needs to be cleaned out according to the rows and space you need for your fall vegetables. If you don't need the whole garden space, only clean out what you need. 

Follow the same process as above to clean it out. Then plant those wonder fall vegetables and repeat your growing season. Not sure what vegetables to grow in the fall? Here are some ideas. Basically it is any plant that needs cooler temperatures and can be harvested before the first frost. Sometimes you can still protect them even in a frost. I have many times. I have covered tender broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage plants with sheets before or heavy hay. Now, a freeze in completely different. I have lost several plants to freeze because I didn't get them covered. 

Here are some creative ways to keep them covered and protected. I may have just found some new projects for dear hubby. 😂 Cold frames can be built many different ways with ingenuity. You can also just use row cover material. I've seen gardeners with cold frames and still gathering vegetables with snow on the ground. Talk about extending your season. Nurture and take care of the fall season crop just as you would spring and summer but at least the weeds and bugs want be as bad. After your fall season is finished, follow same steps as above to do a clean up and prep before early spring season or you can just let it go and wait until early spring to do the prep work. Either way is ok. 

If you are harvesting your pumpkins, here is some ways to make sure you are utilizing every part of the plant. You can also take the leaves and dry them, grind them into a powder and use in cooking, baking and even use in teas for medicine. 

I hope you have found this information useful and as always, thanks for hanging out with me. 

Tracy

Keeper of the Home 

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