It’s pretty normal to now have hard freezes every night.  For the most part, my work is done for this year.  The square foot garden boxes have all been amended with a blend of compost, leaves, and a light horse manure mixture.  This past weekend found me raking and gathering the leaves in our yard.  I think its safe to say that most folks probably don’t like this work-but, I absolutely love it.  I know what I am doing now will pay off big next year with my 12 or more bags of leaves.  What I really love is the smell of those leaves in the black plastic bags.  I cant explain it in words very well, but those of you who know what I’m talking about can relate to that smell.  I also painted all of my boxes before the real heavy snowfall will hit.  I could have done it in the spring, but then I would lose 3 or 4 months of it getting hammered by our winter season.  I kind of like to think of my raised boxes as an investment.  I want them to last as long as possible.  This is my way of doing just that.  These boxes are now about 12 years old and still holding up very well-with the exception of a couple of corners where I didnt follow the rules for building the boxes.

You know what they say about not following the rules-if it doesn’t work, you cant complain.  So, I’m not complaining, I’m just doing all I can to make it last.  When I amend my soil for winterizing, I try to empty both of my compost units into the boxes.  I then will top that off with leaves-not even leaves that have been run through the shredder or lawn mower-just plain old leaves.  Whats next is a mixture that I have always used successfully.  With all of our shrubs, trees, etc. that we have in our yard, we get a lot of things that I can run through my shredder.  I will put all of those items through, and I will then start to shred some of my leaves.  I mix in about half of one of these blue Rubbermaid tubs with horse manure and then toss everything together.  You can imagine what this looks like when I come back and heat my gardens up in the spring.  Its perfect soil.  All those regular leaves?  Gone!  Earthworms to the rescue and now ready to plant in a great growing medium.  You don’t need to wait years for the perfect soil…this system shows you how to do it the first year….[ois skin=”below post”]

Two days ago I cut down most of our bushes in the yard and put them in the compost pile.  Today, I decided to get the shredder out and get to work on it.  This shredder is just great-I bought it about 10 years ago at a garage sale for $20.  Its old, its loud, and its big.  But, it certainly does the job.  See that large green thing in the back right hand corner?  That’s it!  As you can see, it turned this pile into great looking compost material in about 10 minutes.  Years ago, I would amend my soil one last time in late fall to let it sit until spring.   After turning it over, I would add my yard leaves.  Then, I would spread this material(in picture) over the top of everything.  It worked well.  There was only one small problem-because of all the small twigs in the mix, birds would dip into my garden and pull up small seedlings while getting the twigs for their nests.  That made me change my strategy-what I now do is take a little bit of soil out of the garden box and put it in a Rubbermaid tub. I then add compost, leaves from the yard, and this material first, and then put back the soil that was removed earlier.  I top the whole thing off with several shovels full of more compost.  Next spring, I heat up the boxes, and then check to see what the soil looks like just under the surface.  Sure enough, those earthworms have taken care of all those leaves and small pieces of twigs, etc. You cant even find any leaves left under there!  Its such a great thing-I know that I can grow just about anything in my garden because of this mix….when I picked up a handful of this material, it smelled like a forest floor just after a rain shower….give a look….

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