Garden Preparation for Winter That Sets You Up for Success

Preparing your garden for winter is one of the best things you can do to ensure a successful growing season next year. A little work in the fall can help improve soil health, reduce pest and weed pressure, protect perennial plants, and make spring planting easier.

Whether you garden in raised beds, containers, or directly in the ground, these simple tasks can help improve your vegetable, herb, and flower garden. Do yourself a favor and don’t skip garden preparation for winter!

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Time for Rest and Renewal 

When the growing season starts winding down, it’s tempting to just put away the garden tools and settle in for a winter break. After all the months of planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting, I think we’ve earned a little rest.

But before you call it a year, there are some important preparations you should do. I hope you’ll utilize these blog posts to boost your garden production:

• Grow a Late Season Garden with These Fall Garden Plants

• Bulbs Planted in Fall: Premium Plants For Your Garden 

• How to Protect Potted Plants in Winter

• Make a DIY Cold Frame for Cold-Weather Growing

• Gardening in Winter: Methods for Growing in Cold Weather

• How to Heat a Greenhouse

• Winter Sowing Guide to Starting Seeds in Cold Weather 

When Should You Prep Your Garden For Winter

The best time to start preparing your garden for winter is early fall. You may still have a lot of plants growing, but it’s not too early to begin!

A lot of people ask if they can just leave all the garden clean up until spring and let last year’s crops act as a mulch overwinter. And the answer is that you can do what you would like in your garden. Try new things, see what works for you and what doesn’t, keep records in a garden journal, and then tailor your methods to your own gardening style!

But I will say that the information in this blog post has been put together after many years of gardening experience to help save you the trouble of trial and error yourself. It has been tried, tested, and found to improve soil health, reduce pest and weed pressure, protect perennial plants, and make spring planting faster, like I mentioned at the beginning of this article.

Even if you decide that garden preparation for winter isn’t for you, I would highly recommend that you still cover any bare soil with mulch and fertilize perennials! 

This timeline can help you prioritize fall tasks.

Fall Garden Clean Up

Fall clean-up doesn’t have to be complicated. Focus on protecting your soil, caring for perennials, and laying a good foundation for next year’s garden.

1. Harvest - Harvest herbs and the last of your warm-season vegetables before a killing freeze. Cold-hardy crops like kale, Brussels sprouts, swiss chard, and spinach can tolerate some freezing weather, so I like to leave those in the ground and continue to harvest them as long as possible.

2. Fertilize Perennials - Fertilization of perennials in the fall is just as important, if not more important, than fertilizing in the spring! Plus, fall is a great time to transplant existing perennials.

3. Save Seeds - Collect seeds for seed saving before winter sets in.

4. Plant Fall Bulbs - Garden bulbs planted in the fall will reward you with some of the very first blooms and fresh harvests after a long winter. Make sure you get your garlic, shallots, multiplier onions, and fall-planted flower bulbs in the ground before winter sets in.

5. Protect Potted Plants - Raised beds and in-ground gardens have a distinct advantage in overwintering perennials, where containers tend to struggle. If you have plants in containers outdoors that you hope will survive the winter, check out these tips on how to protect potted plants in winter.

6. Extend the Season - If you want to extend your growing season, start using frost blankets or a DIY cold frame to protect plants.

7. Cover Root Crops - Root crops like carrots, parsnips, and potatoes can be stored right in the ground! Cover those crops with 6 to 8 inches of leaf mulch and a tarp overtop of the leaves. Whenever you are ready to harvest your root crops, pull the snow and tarp off, and push the leaves back. The soil should be unfrozen, and you can simply dig up your fresh vegetables like you would in the fall! 

8. Remove Dead Plants - After the frost kills off annuals, I remove any weeds and dead plants, leaving the stumps and roots in the soil where they were so the soil structure remains intact. (The old roots will get broken down and return nutrients and organic matter to the soil.) If you know how to make compost, you can put the dead plants in your compost pile, or you can chop and drop them back onto the soil as mulch if you want. Pro-Tip: Getting rid of weeds and their seed in the fall will limit the jumpstart weed seeds have to germinate and take over your growing spaces next season.

If you have been struggling with slugs, snails, or an earwig infestation in your garden, the best prevention strategy is removing their habitat by cleaning up leaf litter and plant debris! Here’s more information on how to get rid of slugs and snails and how to get rid of earwigs.

Winterizing Garden Beds

Preparing the garden for winter is a wonderful thing, but if you just pull up the plants when the garden dies off and stop there, you will be left with exposed soil, and exposed soil is a gardener’s worst nightmare! If soil microbes and bacteria in the rhizosphere are not protected, they will die in extreme weather.

Your garden may look like it is resting during the winter, but there’s still a lot happening beneath the surface. Soil bacteria, worms, and other beneficial organisms stay alive in the winter (especially if protected by snow or mulch) and continue to break down organic material. 

Mulching will protect the soil organisms and soil quality by creating an insulated barrier. If you are not mulching your soil in some way, shape, or form, then you are doing your soil a disservice! 

Mulch!

Whether you mulch with cover crops, compost, grass clippings, leaf mulch, wood mulch, or straw, get that soil covered! 

You can go to the store and pick up bags of mulch, pine shavings, or compost to do the trick. If you’re all about finding the frugal option like me, using organic matter from around the property is free and has less of a chance of bringing in disease and unwanted pests that may be stowaways in store-bought products.

If you already have a compost pile that is active, virtual high-five! That’s added to the ways your garden is working for you. Mature compost can be used as a mulch or winter blanket for beds by putting down about a 4” layer to cover the beds.

Silage tarps are a physical barrier that get the job done, but they do limit water and airflow into the soil and make a sterile seed bed, if used properly. If you are someone who loves the joy of volunteer plants, this is not the best option for you.

Garden Preparation for Winter

Congratulations, your garden is ready for freezing temperatures and falling snow! Winter is a great time to clean garden tools and start planning next year’s garden, so grab yourself a cup of coffee and the MIgardener seed catalog, and start dreaming of your next garden.