Design & Build, Grow & Gather

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We spend our Summer and Fall working hard on harvesting and preserving our garden and fruit harvests, putting up our food for the winter months. We hustle to get everything done in time, before the weather turns cold and makes it unpleasant, if not impossible, to work outdoors.

Preparing your garden for winter is a bit of a tedious, and sometimes unpleasant chore, but like many of our winter preparedness activities, it needs to be done at the end of the harvest season in order to make everything easier come Spring.

Winter on the homestead is a beautiful quiet time, with the hush of snowfall, patter of rain, and the beauty of the changing landscapes. With the onset of cold weather, our routines change and our focus turns inward to hearth and home and indoor activities. It’s a satisfying feeling to know that you’ve done all you need to do outdoors to make ready for next year’s garden while enjoying all the bounty from the Summer growing season.

Planning For Next Spring

One of the most important things you can do on your homestead is think ahead. Without proper planning, you can get caught unawares, and create problems for yourself. This goes for all aspects of homesteading, and definitely applies to your garden spaces. Think ahead to next Spring’s planting. What plants do you want to grow? If you had an abundance or bumper crop of one item this year, maybe you’ll want to plant a different vegetable next year. Or, if, for example, your peppers did really well, maybe you’ll want to try a different variety.

It can be fun to draw out a picture of your garden and brainstorm ideas about the layout, the sizes of the garden beds and what kinds of plants you want to put in. Think about what you have put up in your pantry, and how long it will feed your family. If your preserved food won’t last until next Summer, you might think about planting more next year.

Conversely, if you’re overrun and overstocked on a certain food, and you don’t know how you’ll ever use all of what you have on hand, you might want to cut your bed in half, and plant something else there next time. Play around with different configurations until you feel satisfied with the plan. There are seemingly endless possibilities to consider, and you can keep changing it up until you actually put the plants into the ground.

Photo courtesy of MyDomaine

The Lay Of The Land

Another step in preparing your garden for winter is to take a look at the lay of the land. Does it slope? Are there low spots that will collect rainwater, or mud flows? Is there a place that gets more sun in the summertime, more shade in the Fall? These are things to consider when you plan your Spring planting. Some plants need more sunlight, and others need partial shade. Use this knowledge for both vegetables, flowering plants, annuals and perennials both. As your perennials mature, you can plant partial shade plants in their shade.

The More You Do Now

Getting your planting beds cleaned up, cleared and prepared for winter gives you not only the freedom to work on other pressing projects that are always waiting on the homestead, it makes Fall and Spring planting a breeze. It’s like having a ready-made blank canvas to paint the garden of your dreams. Can’t you just see the flowers in bloom and the burgeoning vegetable plants with their bounty waiting for you to harvest next summer?

Final Harvest and Clean Up

Preparing your garden for winter starts with making sure that all of your garden crops have been harvested from the plants. Rake out your beds and pull any plants that are left after harvesting is finished. Pull weeds and rake leaves from flower beds around perennials, cleaning any leaf litter or debris from under fruit trees. This is also the time to “lift” or dig up bulbs to replant in the Spring.

Time For Trimming

Fruit trees, rose bushes and other shrubs can be pruned in the Fall. This stimulates new growth in the spring and increases the yield for fruit trees.  Not everything needs to be pruned, so do  your homework before you start lopping!

Photo courtesy of Millcreek Gardens

Fall Planting 

There is a rhythm to planting and harvesting on the homestead. Once Summer plants have been harvested, there are plenty of Fall crops that you can plant in their place. Make sure you leave room in your garden planning for root crops, cruciferous vegetables and other Fall crops.

Mulching 

Some trees and shrubs benefit from mulching. You can use bark chips, straw or other organic materials to spread on top of the soil to protect the soil and root systems of the plants. These organic materials will also help hold moisture and improve soil health as they break down and leach nutrients and minerals into the soil. There are inorganic mulches as well, such as gravel or stone. These don’t need to be applied as thickly as the organic materials, and they do little towards increasing soil health, but they do help with decreasing erosion of the soil.

Photo courtesy of Growing The Home Garden

These plants will be harvested before the first frost.

Compost And Soil Amendments

Growing plants annually will eventually and progressively deplete your soil, so you’ll want to amend it with compost or other amendments that will add nutrients back in. It’s also a good idea to plant nitrogen fixing plants among your other vegetables. This helps to replace the depleted nitrogen from the soil. 

You can buy garden compost at any garden center or nursery, or collect it on your homestead. All kinds of manure works well for organic soil amendments, including goat, rabbit, horse and cow, even dog. They do, however, have different levels of “heat” and some will need to be mixed in with other organic materials and water, and aged for a bit. It’s not recommended that you put the fresh manure into the soil.

Covering plants

In some climates, temperatures can dip down into freezing for days and even weeks at a time. This might require that you cover some of your plants during the cold snaps. There are row covers available for purchase, though some people choose to make their own out of old sheets or fabric. There are hoop systems you can purchase that allow you to clip your covers on. You can be as sophisticated or basic as you want to be. Raised beds with lids that can be closed and greenhouses with materials that absorb the energy from the sun are other methods of keeping plants covered in cold weather.

Learn how to build your own raised bed cover here:

Pastures and Grass

Re-seed grass and pastures before the first snow if you live in cold weather climates. Time the spreading of grass seeds for just before the weather turns rainy or snowy to give your grass the best chances of coming on strong in the Spring. If you do it too early, you’re likely to lose a lot of seed to birds.  The rains and snowstorms will cover the seed and help drive it into the soil and germinate for a better crop in the Springtime.

What To Do with the Waste?

Depending on your homestead location, size and layout, there are several options for you to dispose of debris and leaf litter from cleaning out your garden beds . If you have animals, you may be able to feed things like corn stalks or leafy greens to them. Make sure you know the content of the feed you are giving, to make sure they don’t ingest anything toxic.

Some environmentalists recommend that you pile your leaf litter and let it break down organically because it becomes a haven for the larvae of beneficial insects and composts itself over the winter into usable soil amendments for the spring.

You can burn your yard waste, and the ash that remains is a useful soil amendment. Make sure you pay attention to weather conditions, and always have a shovel and hose near your burn pile for safety. Most local fire districts have designated burn days and permit requirements.

You can use a bin or barrel and compost your leaf litter and other organic matter such as kitchen scraps, adding water to keep it moist through the winter to create nutrient -rich leaf compost that can be dug into your garden beds when it fully breaks down into love black compost. 

See our article on the Benefits of Leaf Litter Compost here:

There surely is a lot to consider when preparing your garden for Winter weather. We recommend you start your garden preparations as you take your last harvest from the land. With some forward thinking and planning, you can have your garden beds cleared and have everything mulched and seeded by the time the cold weather hits. 

As with everything on the homestead, good planning and timely execution will mean the difference between being prepared for your next planting and harvesting season and scrambling at the last minute to get everything done in order to get your garden planted in time.

As you grow with your homestead, you’ll get acclimated to the rhythms of the land and the timing of projects to learn the priority of projects around the farm and garden. Being prepared for winter on the homestead is a wonderful feeling. Knowing that you are well-prepared for the following season takes away the worry and stress of planning next year’s crops.

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