Quickie Fall
Garden Tune-Up
Written by: Dottie Baltz
We are all pretty busy these days and are not always able to do the things in the garden that need to be done at the right time. Gardening is not that hard, but we always seem to make it harder than we need to.
Maybe it's because there are so many companies out there trying to sell us something. Trying to sell us a product to make our grass green, or to reduce weeds, or that will make our flowers grow bigger and "stronger". I understand people need to make a living, but most of these things for sale today are just not necessary and in fact, make more work for us in the end.
Autumn is a great time to get your garden ready for the next growing season, and you don't need a lot of money or time to do it. I suppose that ultimately depends on the size of your garden, but really it's not that hard.
The first thing you need to do is to pull out all those weeds you missed over the season or that may have grown back after you weeded everything in the spring. This is so important. I can't stress that enough. Your plants will be so much more robust if they are not competing with weeds in the spring.
Weeds are also pretty easy to pull during the autumn months. The weather is cooler, making it more pleasant to work outdoors and rain is usually plentiful making the soil softer and easier to work.
The second thing you must do is apply compost to the soil after you have finished pulling the weeds. You need to replenish the soil of the nutrients it used during the growing season. The organic matter that may have been applied the year before has broken down and been used up by the plants and microbes in the soil. You must replenish that organic matter in the form of sompost.
That's it. If you don't have a lot of time to spruce up your gardens and put them to bed for the winter, just perform these two tasks. If you have more time and want to do more, I have a more in depth article here.