Putting Bed To Rest

Beds must be turned down for winter by 11/1

Please ensure:

🌱 Your plot has summer plants removed

🌱Chop & drop or dig in what you can into your plot

🌱 Diseased plants, squash & tomatoes should all be trashed - not composted or dug into your plot. Our compost doesn’t get hot enough to deal with diseases & some diseases can last 7 years 😮 (squash & tomato is per DUG as they typically have disease)

🌱 If you do have things to compost, put it to the right of the 3-bin system where we put the weeds

🌱 remove any nonpermanent things (like tomato cages) or lay them down and secure in the plot so they don’t blow around over winter

🌱 clean tomato cages, etc. with a 10% bleach solution, this ensures any disease that may be on the items will be removed. Diseases can live for 7 years.

🌱 Leaves leaves leaves! Every season our gardeners dig fall leaves into their garden beds to add bulk organic matter that decomposes (slowly) over the winter season. By the spring these leaves have become part of the soil structure and add organic matter and therefore improve the water retention capabilities of their garden soil

🌱 what “dig into the soil” means - take a shovel, shove it into the ground until the “top of the blade” (the flat spot you usually step on) is at soil level. Shovel up, and then drop that pile of dirt back into the hole you just dug. Repeat, overlapping holes slightly. Use this method to dig in garden scraps, leaves, grass clippings, plant material, etc.

 🌱 plant cover crops - any will do. Winter Rye with a legume (clover or vetch, field peas) will add a green mulch to your soil beds and if some grows in the fall, great. If not, it will sprout in the spring and that valuable early-season greenery can be incorporated into your soil beds to add more bulk organic matter.

🌱 highly recommend covering your plot in some way - leaves, straw, cardboard, burlap sacs - anything to preserve the soil environment. Dry soil is dead soil - so nurture your beds over the winter. Also helps reduce the seeds that blow into your plot or get dropped in by animals.

🌱CSU information: https://livesmartcolorado.colostate.edu/putting-your-garden-to-bed-for-the-winter/