Tag Archives: soil preparedness

Prepping your square foot garden for winter and….

Setting you up for major success in the next growing season. While my work for making compost is done for the year-at least the active part-there’s one last item that I’ve done for years to continue improving the tilth of the soil. 

If you live in an area where there’s freezing temperatures but can still work your soil it’s not too late. I remove 4-5 inches of soil, add a layer of fall leaves, and then put the soil back on top. When you come back in the spring to plant, you most likely won’t be able to find any leaves. The earthworms have been doing their job all winter long. 

This is a great way to continue improving your growing medium with a free and natural resource. Don’t throw those leaves away! Save and use as many as you can and then use the remainder next year to make the best compost around.

If you’d like to learn more about how to make that compost, you can find the recorded class available on this site under the “shop” section. You won’t be sorry. When you learn how to do it you’ll never need to buy another fertilizer again. Ever. 

Prepped box for winter

prepped-garden-box-for-winterI just pushed about 3 inches of soil over, filled it with fall leaves and pushed the soil back on top. You won’t see the leaves-they are covered with soil. And you won’t see the leaves come spring time either. This is a great way to prepare your soil for the next growing season.

It takes about 5 minutes per box to do this. When spring arrives all you need to do is cover your boxes with plastic to heat the soil up. Even after a very hard winter season, your soil will be ready to plant in about one week.

If you were to turn your soil and look for leaves at that time, they’ll probably be gone. They are eaten and “mulched” into fertilizer by our friendly earthworms[ois skin=”3″]