With Jack Frost knocking at the door, the time to put the vegetable garden to bed for the winter may not be far off, so now is the time to begin preparing.Removing spent veggie
plants, specifically tomatoes and cucumbers, before winter improves your possibilities of getting rid of bugs and diseases that reside on dead plant material.If you compost, you can include healthy dead plant product to the
bin, however any diseased product needs to be thrown in the trash or burned.I read that it is likewise smart to wash tomato cages and supports utilized for growing vining plants with soap and water. You can also wipe them down with rubbing alcohol or Lysol. Do the exact same with the blades of gardening tools whenever dealing with diseased plants, be they dead or alive, and before storing the tools for the winter.When winterizing a no-till, also called a no-dig garden, the plant product is cut off at the roots.
and the root structure is left in the ground undisturbed. As the roots pass away in the soil they feed the biology and all the animals who live there. The broken down roots also add carbon to the soil at levels tilling or digging can not reach but living roots do.However, if you have unhealthy plants in your no dig-garden, they should be thoroughly dug and all roots eliminated. A deeply rooted seasonal weeds, such as a dandelion needs to also be dug out at the root. I utilize an extremely narrow bladed trowel that disturbs extremely little soil. Due to the fact that of building, I needed to do a total clean-up on my no-dig plot last weekend and I just had 2 weeds in the 5-by-10 foot bed, and during the summer, I only pulled one weed.A hard-and-fast rule to follow whether you practice no-dig or regular gardening is never ever leave your ground bare in winter, so the last step is spreading an inch or so of garden compost and 3 to 4 inches of excellent wood mulch over the soil surface.If you have actually never had your soil tested, fall is the very best time to do it. Soil testing can be a crucial step to growing healthy plants. It will likewise assist you conserve cash by making notified choices when purchasing fertilizer and soil amendments and diagnose and fix possible plant problems. Numerous amendments, consisting of natural material, require time to break down for the plants to be able to utilize them, so waiting up until spring to add them might not offer you the outcomes you’re hoping for.Nancy Szerlag is a master garden enthusiast and Metro Detroit freelance author. Her column appears Fridays in Homestyle. To ask her a concern go to Yardener.com and click Ask Nancy. You can also read her previous columns at detroitnews.com/homestyle.