YES! You Can GARDEN In The WINTER! - Soil Prep For NEXT SPRING!

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It's almost January and I hear the lamenting online about how people wish they could be gardening. Real gardening doesn't stop. It may take a slight break but tending to your garden in the winter season is key to making sure you have a good planting and good harvest next summer and fall.

Winter is a wonderful time to be working on your soil conditions. I hope you realize that every year with all the yummy veggies you are pulling out of the ground, it's using up nutrients found in the soil. What do you think makes up all those tomatoes, spinach and cucumbers? Winter is the best time to give back to the soil what it needs to keep producing all that food. We are talking natural items instead of chemical fertilizers here.
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Nitrogen - Carbon - Natural Amendments

During the winter, we are adding carbon nutrients in the form of small wood chips on top of the soil. These break down over the course of the winter and spring and provide a type of protection over the soil. The wood chips from the year before all almost all broken down into a moist soft black dirt. The new chips on top help to hold in the moisture when the spring and summer sun is beating down on your garden.

Nitrogen is added in the form of straw that we also but down on the soil in the winter. Usually this is placed down under the wood chips. Also, each winter the old dead plants from the summer before are mulched and spread over the soil. We simply mow down the garden with a mower and this sufficiently chops up old plant material and spreads it over the soil. Hay or horse manure can also be added for nitrogen but you have to make sure you add this before the wood chips because these sources will contain large amounts of grass seed and you don't want all that growing in your garden along with your plants. Covering it with a thick layer of wood chips will keep the seeds subdued.

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Consider other soil amendments like fungi and rock dust that are high in mineral content that healthy soil microbes love to grow in. Fungi LOVE growing in carboard. Plants LOVE Fungi. Fungi help to feed plant root nodules. So consider placing cardboard in your garden and maybe add some mushroom mycelium. It will help control weeds, give fungi a safe place to grow and it usually cost next to nothing at your local recycle center. Then over the top of your cardboard place your thick layer of straw or wood chips.

We have been layering our garden now for 5 years and it works great! If it's your first year and your soil looks compacted and rough, try adding a good layer of manure at the bottom. Then add mulched leaves or straw, wood chips and hay. Whatever you have or can get a hold of to layer on your soil. But putting that manure at the bottom will soften the hard soil beneath it and you won't even have to till it up. Over the course of the winter, the soil will soften on its own.

This is our garden after a snow storm last year. It's a little hard to get out and garden in this. But do you see the bale in the picture? That is baled up wheat straw that will be spread over the garden as soon as the snow melts. It's a great way to add nitrogen to your soil without adding the weeds.
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Pretty soon, spring will be here and you will be harvesting those first spring veggies and your garden will thank you for all the hard work you have put into it. These are some of my favorite spring veggies, the Japanese Turnips! YUMMY! A few more months and I will be pulling these out of the ground.

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So yes, you can garden in the winter season. In fact, I highly encourage it in order to add back much needed nutrients to your garden. So put your coat on and get out there in the dirt and have fun!


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Thanks for this interesting post. You make me want to go out and start a garden right now!

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your post is very good, very useful, your post is so inspiration for me and all users of steemit, I am proud of you ... I am amazed to you, you are very fantastic in making a post, hopefully triumph in the work .. Thank you 💏😘

Excellent info as always! @ironshield

I've been gardening just a couple of years now, last year I didn't do a thing over winter but this year I'm trying to pile on leaves, old manure from the chickens, grass clippings I collected, and mulch my paths with old bark from splitting firewood. As time goes on I realize the huge importance of building soil, gardening is not just sticking a seed in here and there and sitting back til something grows!

Bingo! Yep, gardening is a year round effort and activity!

This was really fun to read! Insightful too!

Another good set of skills for those looking to get off the grid. To produce our own food. Besides, the philosofy of the crypto investor isn't far from that of a Farmer. Teaches pacience, atention and caring, lots of research. Keep'em a groin'!!!

Gardening takes practice! You will have different successes and failures each year no matter what your experience level is.

I made a small atempt last spring/summer with Lettuce, tomatos, green peppers and Butternuts. In the end, only the Lettuce came out as a successfull experiment (it makes a great soup). I plant at home, in pots. After I tried Parsley and Mint and I got it right :D Next Spring I'll attempt to plant Lettuce, Coriander, tomatoes, peppers and maybe aubergines. I'll keep on trying. I just discovered your blog here on Steem. Nice info! Would advise me about any particular book or site to follow (besides your blog, ofcourse)?

I do more to my gardens in the winter time before I do in the spring!

Yes. So you work the foundations? Then, in the Spring, the soil is ready to help the plants grow?

I'm an expert in growing weeds.

There are a lot of good weeds to eat! I'm getting ready to dig up some dandelions for their roots and leaves, for the Steemit Iron Chef contest. Even in the winter, when there's any time above freezing, there are som good weeds to eat! :D

Dandelion wine! It's a great time spent picking the flowers with a loved one, and then once the wine is ready it's a special brew that brings back memories of that time spent together. Great for anniversaries or other times of reflection and gratitude.
https://www.thespruce.com/how-to-make-dandelion-wine-1327932

You know what's worth doing! :D I've made dandelion wine a few times. There's a certain time in the spring when so dandelions are in bloom that it's easy to pick a lot of blossoms! But even in the winter, a few flowers appear here in Oregon's Willamette Valley. And they are nice in salads or deep-fried. Enjoy your dandelion wine! :D

It depends on which weeds they are, but many of them are real food for regular people. In the US, so many of our weeds came from the UK and Europe as food crops. In my Steemit blog and on my YouTube channel, I show how I forage and eat a lot of different weeds. Weeds are worth getting to know! :D

It's not too big of an effort to move over to things you can actually eat. :)

Man, # 19 on the trending page! Nice to see something like this on there!