Fall Gardening Strategies for Healthy Spring Soil
It’s been a long gardening season. You’ve picked your last good tomato, the perennial grasses are going to seed, and your annuals look as tired as you feel. Time to hang up your gardening gloves, right?
Incorrect! Fall is arguably the most important season for investing in your garden’s soil. Building its fertility and protecting it from winter weather goes a long way in setting the stage for stronger and healthier plants next year.
What does building fertility and protecting the soil look like in autumn? We’ll show you! We’ve gathered some fall gardening strategies for you to implement now that’ll become a superior growing foundation come spring.
Add Mulch
Adding mulch to your gardens is a “two birds with one stone” sort of deal. Actually, its addition is way more than two birds, it’s a whole flock! On the surface of things, mulch makes the garden look tidy. But its contributions to the garden and the soil itself are so much more.
For example, adding a thick layer of organic mulch in fall helps to:
Insulate the soil from winter’s cycles of freezing and thawing. These cycles can disrupt living things in the soil such as soil microbes, not to mention plant roots.
Suppress weeds that may pop up during winter’s occasional warm spell.
Reduce erosion that may occur from fall rains and winter’s melting snow.
Feed the soil as its components break down during the winter season, making nutrients available for both plants and the soil’s microorganisms.
Apply mulch of shredded leaves or straw in a 2- to 3-in. layer over vegetable garden beds and around perennials. No access to leaves or straw? Our Organic Mechanics Planting Mix Compost Blend does double duty as a mulch, too, and has all the benefits of other organic mulches. A 2-in. layer of the planting mix will suffice. Whatever mulch you use, be sure to keep the mulch pulled back from around stems and the crowns of asparagus and rhubarb—this will help prevent root rot.
Add Compost
Think of adding compost to your garden like running a marathon. Applying a bunch in spring is like the pasta dinner the night before. Topdressing with compost midway through the season is like the packet of nutrient goo midway through the race. Adding compost to your garden in fall when your crops are harvested and your perennials are cut back is the recovery after the race is done.
As beds empty out, spread a generous layer of compost over the surface—about 2 inches should do it. Winter’s rain and snow will work it into the soil, and by spring, the soil will be more friable, fertile, and teeming with beneficial microbes.
Our Organic Mechanics Planting Mix Compost Blend is a fantastic choice. It’s a premium mix of organic compost, earthworm castings, and other natural ingredients designed to improve soil structure, add organic matter, and support microbial activity. By incorporating this blend in the fall, you’re essentially prepping your garden beds with a slow-release buffet that will be ready for roots come spring.
Cover Crops
Bare soil is vulnerable soil. Just as you would wear a jacket to shelter your body from inclement weather, so too soil is protected from wind, rain, snow and cold. Consider cover crops to be the jacket your garden’s soil wears for the winter.
What is a cover crop? It’s a fast-growing crop such as winter rye, buckwheat, crimson clover, or oats that you plant in your garden after harvest that:
· shields soils from bad weather
· helps prevent erosion
· feeds soil microbes through their living roots in winter
· suppresses weeds
· adds organic matter to the soil when tilled under or cut down in spring
Another fast-growing cover crop that is gaining some momentum is the ground radish. Ground radishes have long and thick taproots that grow deep within the soil. They help to break up compacted soils and improve drainage as they die back, leaving channels in their wake. In spring, your compacted soils will be looser and better draining.
In colder climates, sow your cover crops at least 4-6 weeks before your ground freezes.
Plant Native Perennials
You may have heard the slogan, “Fall is for Planting Perennials.” It’s true—for native perennials especially! Fall’s cooler weather and consistent moisture allow plants to establish strong root systems before winter dormancy. By spring, they’re ready to burst into healthy growth with minimal stress.
Planting native perennials in fall is also great for your garden’s soil. Deep-rooted native plants help improve soil structure as they root in for the winter. By spring, these perennials are well-established in the soil and therefore are better able to take whatever Mother Nature throws its way—drought, pests, and more. And since they are already in the garden, they’ll get growing early in spring, and that means benefiting pollinators and the local ecosystem’s critters with food and shelter when they need it most.
Biochar
Cleared-off vegetable and perennial beds also offer you the opportunity to add biochar to your soil. Biochar is a carbon-rich material that improves soil structure, increases water-holding capacity, and provides a long-lasting home for beneficial microbes. And unlike compost—which does a lot of similar functions—biochar does not break down and instead stays in your soil for decades, continually working to support your soil’s health.
But that doesn’t mean you don’t need compost! Biochar and compost together combine with Super Twin powers, each boosting the effectiveness of the other. Our Organic Mechanics Biochar Blend is a ready-to-use mix that pairs biochar with compost and other organic ingredients. Just spread a half-inch layer across your beds, lightly work it into the soil up to 5” depth and its magic will happen over the winter. Come spring, your soil will have improved soil texture, better nutrient retention, and a healthier microbial community. Our founder Mark Highland swears by it. Learn more about it from Mark himself in this VIDEO.
Quite honestly, your fall gardening strategies can be wrapped up in a weekend. And when you’re all done, grab yourself a pumpkin spice latte and an apple cider donut and congratulate yourself for delegating your spring soil prep to the organic materials and microorganisms that do it best.
By Ellen Wells
