Putting the Garden to Rest for the Winter

11/12/2013

This spring I got a crazy notion to expand my garden, just a little, check out my photos! I was able to plant many of my beloved herbs with plenty of space for my annual plants that I can preserve and add to my food storage. While I am so excited about the space, it is a lot more work than what I previously had and sometimes wonder what I got myself in to.

My original garden was made up of 8, 4x4 garden squares.

Expanded garden view 1

Big man loved rolling up and hauling all that sod we cut out for the expanded garden.

Expanded garden view 2

The time of year has come to put that garden to rest and I am ready for the break winter brings. I got some great tips fromOld World Garden Farms and will be making the expanded garden into raised garden rows come spring. We pulled all the plants out of the garden and composted all but the tomatoes and peppers. In order to prepare for the spring I will be laying down a 6" layer of mulch on all exposed soil. This protects the soil from losing precious nutrients and prevents weed seeds from settling in while adding nutrients back. Because leaves are in abundance and readily available this time of year, that is what I will be using. We sent a call out to all neighbors getting rid of leaves that we would pick them up or they could drop them off at our house.

We also used this as a service opportunity for the children to rake the leaves of neighbors that could use a little help.

We soon had the best leaf pile in the neighborhood and the kids had way too much fun exploring and playing in them. They had so many leaves they were able to make a leaf fort with a room for each child.

All good things must come to an end though and I had Big Man mow the leaves to help them decompose faster, before spreading them all over the soil. Any leaves we have left will be saved for the compost pile and come spring we will add a layer of compost and topsoil over the leaves.