High harvest time is here, and gardens and lush landscaping ideas are everywhere are beginning to spill their bounty into our waiting baskets and boxes. Fresh corn, ripe tomatoes, fat squash and juicy melons are rewarding us for our patience, with their stunning colours and sun kissed juices. Yumm.
Unfortunately, all the goodness mother earth produces tires out our gardens, leaving them looking bedraggled and spent. By the time autumn arrives, our gardens don’t even faintly resemble the vibrant green growing spaces we’ve shared all season. But… wait! There is hope. Autumn is one of the very best times to plant perennials, shrubs trees and bulbs. Yes…. you heard me right:) Autumn is an excellent time to plant your trees shrubs and roses. Why is that? Well… because these particular plants benefit greatly from overwintering and moderate frost hardening. This produces much hardier, more productive and long lived plants.
Autumn is also a wonderful time to replenish and nourish your tired garden soils. And it is so very easy to do. After you’ve cleared out all spent plants and debris (leaves, branches and other plant leavings), rototill your ground up to a 13″ depth. Once you’ve gotten your soil loosened and crumbly, add bags of rotted organic compost, phosphorous, bone meal and cottonseed meals. You want to dig or till this in until you notice the texture of the soil getting finer and lighter, with little compaction when squeezed in your hand.
At this point, you can merely cover the soil with leaves, or you can overplant a winter crop of alfalfa, red clover, or sorghum. All during the winter these crops will grow slowly adding valuable nutrients to your gardens soil. Once they start to blossom, dig or till them in and plant another crop. In Spring,simply till it in, and add more of the Fall feeding meals to the soil, 4-6 weeks before planting.
This is a wonderfully natural and healthy way to give your garden back some of the vital nutrients it spends in feeding our hearts and tummies with summers bounty.
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