This week my mom visited from California and we spent some time weeding the garden. Sadly, the garden is overrun by bind weed. It’s nasty stuff. We pulled up the peas and potatoes, making room for some fall crops. Then we planted carrots, beets, radishes, turnips, arugula and bulbing fennel. I’m trying to use up all my older seeds so I’m not sure whether or not everything will sprout. So far the radishes and arugula have come up.

Another challenging element of planting a fall garden is getting seeds to germinate during the heat of July and August. I laid down some row cover, flat against the ground to help keep the soil moist. Carrots are the especially slow to start, so I’m hoping that I manage to get some to come up.

photo credit: net_efekt

Technorati Tags: fall gardening, fall vegetables

photo credit: dawnzy58

Many people think of fall as the time to put your garden to bed or take a break from gardening, but fall is a great time to get a head start on your spring garden. Part of sustainable landscaping is planning your garden work so that it is personally sustainable for you. Getting a jump on your landscaping in the fall will save you a bunch of time in the spring when you will have more gardening tasks than time to do them.

If you want a winter vegetable garden, it might be kind of late, depending on your location. In many mild climates winter vegetables are planted in August and September for harvesting during the winter. I’m planting on a few winter greens on my patio, especially fast growing ones like mustard, chard, various chinese greens, and my favorite – arugula.

Things to plant now for your sustainable landscape:

• Bulbs – Tulips, daffodils, irises, crocuses. Bulbs can provide interest in your garden when other things aren’t blooming. Plant under trees or around roses.
• Garlic, onions, shallots – You can plant garlic, onions, and shallots in the spring, but you will get larger harvests next summer if you start them now.
• Shrubs, trees, and perennial herbs – Lots of nurseries are having sales right now, so it’s a good time to find deals on shrubs, trees, and perennial herbs. Just make sure that you have time to get your new babies settled in their beds before a hard frost. Planting in the fall allows plants to get their roots settled and growing a little over the fall and winter and get a jump-start on the spring.
• Covercrops – Leaving your garden beds bare all winter exposes your valuable soil to erosion. The last thing you want is for your topsoil to wash away. Cover crops help add nutrients to your soil as well as holding it in place throughout winter rains and snows.

Technorati Tags: bulbs, cover crops, fall gardening, Organic Vegetable Gardening

photo credit: dok1

One task you should be thinking about in your fall garden is preparing your sustainable landscape now for spring planting. There are lots of different ways to prepare your garden dirt for spring planting from double digging to lasagna gardening. If you prepare your garden beds now then you can plant earlier in the spring, when the dirt is still too cold and wet to dig.

There are many good organic amendments you can add to your garden dirt now because the soil amendments will have time to rest over the winter and be ready to enrich your soil in the spring. Many organic soil amendments like compost or manure can chemically burn your plants if you add them to your while they are too fresh. Adding them to your dirt now will give them time to mellow before you plant.

What should you add to your soil now? Compost! If you don’t have compost from your own compost pile ready many cities now compost green-waste and allow residents to pick up the finished compost. If your city doesn’t do this you can buy compost from your local nursery.

One of my favorite soil amendments is old bedding from horse stables. Most stables have a huge pile of this stuff sitting around and are happy to let you truck it off for them. The bedding is a usually mix of horse manure and wood shavings which enriches and loosens your garden soil. It will contain some grass seeds that might germinate, but I have found that these are easily weeded in the spring when they are small. If you don’t want to risk it nurseries sell various types of animal manure that has been sterilized to kill any bacteria or seeds.

Again, this manure might still be chemically “hot” and burn your plants if you put it straight on your plantings. If the manure still has a strong yucky smell I would be cautious about where you put it. Finished compost and composted manure shouldn’t smell bad.

Another great thing to add to your garden dirt is leaves. You have to rake them off your lawn anyway, you might as well put them to good use. Composted leaves can be a great soil amendment. The trick is getting them to stay where you want them and not blow around. If you have a chipper you can put them through that and then spread them directly over your beds. You can also run over them with a lawn mower to break them up before spreading them. Some gardeners spread them as is on their beds, but I find that whole leaves tend to mat up over the winter making spring planting difficult. They also blow around causing you to have to rake them up again. Another option is to bag them up and allow them to decompose over the winter and then add them to your soil in the spring.

The final question in preparing your garden dirt for spring is whether to dig your amendments into the soil or mulch. Gardeners generally have strong opinions about this one way or another. I prefer to dig amendments into the soil of my vegetable beds once a year and then mulch. I also dig in lots of organic material like compost or manure when I first prepare a perennial bed or border. Many people advocate a no-dig method in order to reduce erosion and avoid disturbing soil ecosystem. No-dig can work, but it takes time (as in years) and I’m too impatient. I like to jump start my garden dirt! How about you? What are your favorite ways to prepare your soil for planting?

Technorati Tags: fall gardening, Garden Dirt, organic soil preparation