Here are some ideas on how to prepare your bed for winter. Break down containers, remove water containers and decorative items, clean pipes, remove weeds and plant debris, apply winter mulch and safely store plant supports, among other tasks. Are autumn leaves covering your garden? They will also be useful as mulch and an excellent soil conditioner.
Remove any used vegetable plants. While we recommend maintaining a tidy fall garden to feed and protect beneficial insects, birds and other wildlife, this logic applies even more to keeping annuals and perennials planted.
Remove all annual plants from your garden, especially fruiting plants such as tomatoes, ground cherries and tomatillos. If you leave the fruit in the garden and let it sit until winter, you will pick it up like weeds in the spring.
Annual plant protection
Protect perennial plants, especially herbs such as sage, garlic, thyme and oregano. If you protect them, you can harvest them all winter. Or leave them alone and they will come back in the spring. Harvest when there is no snow cover, but if it snows, wait until spring to enjoy it again.
Frost-resistant green vegetables such as cabbage are winter-hardy. You can fill it with antifreeze.
Perennial vegetables can be used as cover for winter harvests (such as Jerusalem artichokes) or for protection from the elements (such as asparagus crowns).
Garlic is usually planted in October. Carefully inspect the raised bed soil, carefully removing clover, purslane, chickweed and other weeds. If you are planting garlic in the fall, add a few inches of compost to the soil and cover with straw. This not only serves as winter mulch, but also hides the freshly dug soil from squirrels. Even if they don't like garlic, they are still interested in what's going on in the garden. Other crops that can be planted in winter, such as carrots, can be deeply mulched for the next harvest.
Plant cover crops as part of your bed preparation for winter.
Planting Winter Cover Crops Can Help the Garden
Cover crops can help control weeds by adding organic matter to the soil. Examples of cover crops include winter rye, buckwheat, legumes, clover and mixed peas. However, cover plants well before fall. Fall cover crop seeds are usually planted at least a month before frost occurs in your area. However, check your seed packaging carefully as some seeds require warmer temperatures to germinate while others do not mind colder temperatures.
Remove stakes and plant supports. Tomato cages, cucumber trellises, stakes and anything not attached to your garden should be stored for the winter. Remove, clean and set aside all plant supports such as stakes, trellises and cages to prevent rot and winter damage. Throw away anything that can't be reused so it doesn't accidentally end up in the compost.
Check the plate for movement and any other repairs you want to make in the spring. You may want to add a medium bet on each long side. This is done to ensure that the top and bottom layers of wood do not change.
Look for moving or rotten boards that may need to be repaired or replaced in the spring—or that can be repaired quickly to prepare for next year's growing season.
Improve the soil in your raised bed.
One of the questions gardeners ask is how to clean up flower beds for the winter. The answer is that you leave the soil but continue to cultivate it over time to replace the nutrients that have been used and carried away by the plants through irrigation.
Prune your flower beds in the fall to prepare for spring.
The soil can be changed in the fall, spring, or both. If it is repaired in the fall, it will be ready for planting in the spring.
After clearing the beds of annual flowers and vegetables, add a few inches of compost. You can use compost or a bag of vegetable compost for this.
If you don't want to add compost, take the opportunity to enrich the soil by adding cut fall leaves as winter mulch. Shredded leaves added to the garden bed will decompose and enrich the soil in winter. Covering your garden beds with soil also helps prevent erosion.
Check the snail. They hide and idle, waiting for the spring crops to be planted.
Keep a daily diary, write down what you have done, what you want to do in the future, what worked and what didn’t. Don't forget to replace the plants.
Susan LaFontaine is the Master Gardener at Ohio State University's Sandusky and Ottawa County Extension.
This article was first published in the Fremont News-Messenger: Master Gardener: It's time to winterize your flower beds.
