Your Fall and Winter Garden Checklist for a Fruitful Spring

The weather is cooling and you might be harvesting the last of your fruits and veggies for the year, but you don’t have to stop tending to your garden quite yet. In fact, if you want a fruitful spring next year, there are things you should be doing now to set your lawn and garden up for success. Read on to get your checklist for fall and winter garden care.

Your Fall and Winter Garden Checklist

Prep Your Garden Bed

• Get rid of lingering vegetation. Once all of your plants have died off for the year, it’s time to pave the way for success next spring and summer. Pull out any plants you can get your hands on that won’t make it next season, and till the soil to break up any roots. You should also rake and remove any mulch that you used to protect the soil. Once your garden debris is removed from the bed, you can add it to your compost pile or bag it up for your waste management company’s yard waste pickup day.
• Fertilize the soil. No need to wait until spring! You can start the fertilization process now so your bed is ready to go. Spread a couple of inches of compost on top of your bed and add supplementary nutrients like phosphorus, nitrogen, and potassium. It’s a good idea to test the pH of your soil now so you can make adjustments as needed.
• Sort and start your seeds. Get everything ready to grow. Sort your seeds, whether leftover from packages this year or ones you have collected from successful crops. If there are any varieties you can start from seed now, find a sunny window and be ready to care for seedlings that will be ready to plant in the spring.

Tune up Your Tools

• Sharpen pruning equipment. Rather than putting away dull blades you’ll need to address next year, sharpen your pruning equipment now. First, get off any rust with steel wool, and then use a sharpening stone to get sharp edges on your blades. To protect your sharp equipment, it’s a good idea to coat the blades and moving parts with oil
• Check your digging tools. After a long year of tending to crops, do you have a few tools that have seen better days? Rather than buying new ones next year, see what you can repair yourself. Good quality tools deserve a new handle rather than throwing them in the trash to end up in a landfill. At a minimum, wash off any accumulated dirt and debris and dry thoroughly.

Consider Making Changes

Just because you’ve always had your raised garden bed in a certain area doesn’t mean it has to stay there forever. Or maybe trees grew that now cause your in-ground bed to be covered by too much shade throughout the day. Now’s a great time to consider making changes for next year. Don’t hesitate to dream big, like completely rearranging your yard to better suit your growing goals.

Set Your Garden Up for Success with Harvest Hero

Now’s the time to fertilize your soil with the macronutrients your future plants will need to thrive. Harvest Hero Enhanced Perlite Mix is the easiest and most effective way to get your garden ready, offering more than just nutrients for your soil. It is a nutrient-rich soilless amendment and growing medium that is a 3-in-1 blend comprised of perlite, diatomaceous earth, and essential nutrients. This patent-pending mix has been designed by Harvest Hero’s team of engineers and agronomists to improve soil structure for nutrition which promotes bigger plants and bigger yields and helps protect your plants against abiotic stressors like extreme heat and drought. Harvest Hero Enhanced Perlite Mix will meet your plants’ needs throughout the first critical 6 weeks of growth by improving soil quality, providing plant nutrients, and amending soil properties to make it easier for the plant to absorb and translocate essential plant nutrients to the root system. Try a bag now and see the difference a hero makes in your garden!