Putting Your Kitchen Garden To Bed In 5 Easy Steps

Next year's fantastic, healthy, organic, kitchen garden begins right here, right now. What you do now to winterise your beds, makes the difference between a great garden year ahead and a frustrating one.

Here are five easy steps you need to know to put your kitchen garden to bed for winter. How organic gardeners maintain healthy, happy beds that are 'almost' weed, disease, and pest free.

Ruby Tuesday helps with garden clean up...  'Hey mom, I found some nasturtium seedlings' ; )  

1. Post Harvest Clean Up!

After you have harvested your summer veggies, canned and stored them to enjoy throughout the winter, it is garden clean up time. This is the most important step you can take for a pest free garden next year.

Remove everything from the surface of your beds... spent tomato, squash and cucumber vines, all stems, leaves, seedlings and other plant debris lying around on top of the bed. Try to get all the leaf material and debris that you can, as they provide winter hiding spots for bugs and their eggs. Cabbage moths, stink bugs, aphids, leaf hoppers, crickets, grasshoppers, and so many more, may all be trying to overwinter their off-spring in your garden. The better your clean up now, the less bad bugs you will have next year.

The only green material left standing should be your winter veggies and perennials like rhubarb, strawberries, asparagus. Clean them all up really well, removing any dead or yellowing bits.

Compost your garden waste, layering browns and greens for faster cooking compost. Bring all diseased and super buggy plant material to the dump, or burn, do not compost.

Knock down those weeds and seedlings ...

2. Weed control!

This is the time to get those weeds under control. When the fall rains start, weed seeds on the surface of the soil suddenly all sprout to life.

Remove them by hand, or knock them over with a hoe. I gently pull out all large and/or tap rooted weeds but prefer to knock the wee ones down and rake them up. I never leave them on top of the beds to die at this time of year ... they may quickly take root again or harbour insect eggs.

My favourite tool for this is the Winged Weeder. It slices the weeds down from all sides, push or pull, without digging into or disturbing the soil. As it just skims right under the surface, is perfect for us no-dig gardener types. Regular hoes disturb the soil surface which just brings up more weed seeds to deal with. (Nope, no kick backs for telling you about this tool, just sharing)

If you are a companion planter, as I am, you will have lots and lots of volunteers at this time of year. Calendula, nasturtiums, marigolds, borage, lemon balm, all kinds of wee little sprouts springing up everywhere. I remove them all. More seedlings will sprout up again in spring, so I then pick and choose which ones are in the right place, and how many to keep.

Chicken manure ...

3. Top dress!

Top dressing is literally food for your soil! Feed your garden beds with 1 to 3 inches of compost or manure annually.

Top dressing feeds your soil, suppresses weeds, makes for great water penetration and retention, and keeps beneficial micro-organisms thriving in your garden. You will never need to use fertilisers again.

Layer the manure on top of your soil, rake to smooth out, and walk away. Nutrients will be carried through your soil by the elements, the earthworms, and the beneficials that live in your soil. Do not dig in, do not turn your soil, and do not ever roto-till. Roto-tilling destroys soil structure, not to mention what it does to the earthworms, beneficial insects, microbes, and fungi threads.

Investing in your soil, feeding it to make it rich, fertile, and friable, is the single best investment you can make towards a fantastic, healthy, productive kitchen garden.

Growing great carrots this year! 

4. Test and amend!

Test your soil to check for deficiencies and amend accordingly. Do not dig in, just layer on with your manure and you are done. The amendments will be carried through your soil by the winter rains and earthworms, ready for you to plant up again in spring. Organic amendments may be wood ashes, lime, alfalfa, bone meal, blood meal...

Amending now means that the nutrients have time to break down over the winter months, and are therefore available for your seedlings to uptake in spring. Some nutrients will take 4 months or more to become accessible in the soil.

Organic gardening is all about feeding the soil to feed the plants. The more time and effort that you put into it now, the less work you will have next summer. You will not have to feed your plants in summer, at all, if you have invested in creating great soil.

Insect Hotels aka Bug Houses

5. Beneficial insects!

So ... Now that you have removed all the leaves and bits of debris from your veggie garden, you may be wondering where the beneficial insects, like ladybugs, are supposed to over winter?

Easy answer ... anywhere and everywhere, except in your food garden! You want to make your yard into a wildlife haven so that the good guys are there, all around, thriving and more than happy to eat up your bad guys ... before they find your kitchen garden and attack your veggies ; )  

Make the rest of your yard a paradise for birds, bees, frogs, snakes, spiders, bats, and all kinds of other beneficial insects and critters by creating a wildlife friendly habitat. Leave your ornamental grasses and perennial flowers standing to offer seeds for birds and refuge for critters and insects. Make brush piles, and wood piles, or raked leaf piles. Mulch around your trees, shrubs and perennials with wood chips, or bark, for them to live in. They (ladybugs) also love to live in your wood lot!

Make a bug house, they are both super cute and fun to make with your kids. Sure, the bad insects may over-winter in them, too, but if you have a healthy organic garden with great diversity, the good guys will soon get rid of them

You want your yard to be a year round home for all small critters and insects, so provide places for them to hide, live, reproduce and be. You will have a fantastic, happy, healthy yard, and a super happy kitchen garden!    
 

The garden before harvest and clean up begins... 

The garden after being put to bed for winter...

Ruby Tuesday says 'Grow organic'

Happy fall gardening!