Dirt Diva’s 10 tips to get your soil working for you

Hello vibrant gardeners!

What you do in the fall, will make or break your spring and summer flower dreams. So, get up from your lawn chair and get to work!

If you’re garden isn’t thriving, it’s because you’re spending too much time and money feeding the plants and not the soil. It all starts and ends with healthy soil. So, let’s get your garden off to a good start by giving it what it needs to be happy, healthy and prolific. Healthy SOIL!

Soil is the mastermind of your garden and is a living part of your garden’s ecosystem. Not much else really matters. Don’t even waste your time planting if you’re not going to give your utmost attention to your soil. Your soil is full of minerals, organic matter, air spaces, water and microorganisms. Here are ten tips to get your soil working for YOU!

1. Fall is a critical time to clean up the garden.
This way you’ll have less pests spending the winter huddling under piles of debris and less chance of disease spreading from old plants into the ground.

Pick up fallen branches, pots and rubble you’ve been eyeing all summer saying to yourself, “I’ll pick that up when I’m good and ready or, maybe in the fall.” Fall is here. Pick it up so snails, slugs, insects and fungal spores go visit your neighbor’s yard instead.

2. Pull up dying annuals, weeds and vegetables and add this to your compost pile.

3. Walk around your yard and look for diseased plants.
Check for a white powdery mildew, orange rust or black spot. Pull out diseased plants or if you must keep them, prune them back hard, aiming to give them better air circulation and more sunlight. Toss all parts into the garbage, not your compost pile which may not be hot enough to handle those evil spores. Rake the area around infected plants and toss infected debris into the rubbish as well.

4. Rake lawns and toss the leaves into your compost pile or into your flowerbeds.
Or, mow them up and scatter them on your lawn. An excellent free nitrogen source! Please, please, please, stop putting them in plastic bags and sending them to our overcrowded landfills!

5. Once your yard is raked and cleaned up, add a 2-inch layer of compost to your flowerbeds, and then add a 2 inch layer of mulch on top of that. This way, the millions of soil organisms in the compost will keep amending your soil and the mulch (straw, leaves, bark or wood chips) will keep the roots warm all winter while you don’t do a thing but sit indoors staring out your window, sipping hot chocolate, dreaming about growing next summer’s heirloom tomato plants.

Don’t have a compost pile? Call your local landscape supply or town dump. I just bought 1/3 cubic yard of organic compost for six bucks at my local landscape supply. Six bucks. That’s a steal, baby!

Get those kids off of screens and out there in the fresh air helping you. Explain to them that ‘food’ comes from the soil, not Costco or Spongebob’s Krusty Krab shack!

6. Plant a cover crop.
Planting ‘cover crops’ (also called Green Manure) is the easiest way to add nutrients to your soil while at the same time, making your garden look prolific and lush instead of fallow and futile during the winter months. You can buy a mixed bag of seeds or buy specific seeds individually.

Some good options for the fall are Hairy Vetch (which I like to call ‘Kvetch’).

Kvetch or Vetch is one of the most effective soil builders. Crimsom Clover, fava beans, White clover, Austrian Winter Pea, Winter Rye, field peas, Wheat, Winter Barley and Oats are all productive cover crops to plant in the fall once the daytime temperature falls below 75 degrees. You can purchase a variety of cover crops from Seeds Of Change.com, or check with your local nursery.

7. In colder climates, dig up tender summer bulbs and store them in a bag in the garage for the winter.
In warmer climates, you can divide spring and summer blooming perennials now. In colder climates (zones 3,4,5) wait till early spring. Everywhere, plant spring flowering bulbs and garlic. (To learn more about your climate, look at the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map.)

8. Add new grass seed to bare patches of lawn.
Or, get rid of that whiny lawn and plant groundcovers now or plant a native “eco-lawn” from Wildflowerfarm.com. Read American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn by Ted Steinberg, and educate yourself and your neighborhood on how wasteful and polluting (water, fertilizer and pesticides) big lawns are for our planet.

9. Rinse garden tools in a solution of one part bleach to three parts water.
Then, coat them lightly with oil so they don’t rust. You can also wipe them in a bucket of oiled sand and then place them in the shed. Don’t leave them outdoors next to your putrefying garden gloves. Okay… Wash and dry putrefying gloves and put in shed.

10. Go GREEN with your gardening tools!
According to a recent Swedish Environmental study, spending an hour mowing your lawn can spew the same amount of oily pollution into the air as a 100 mile car trip. Running a leaf blower for half an hour generates as much pollution as driving a car 110 miles. All together gas powered lawn care equipment contributes 10 to 12 percent of the nation’s air pollution, claims the Environmental Protection Agency. Consider buying a push mower and getting rid of your gas lawn mower come spring. Give away that noxious, loud leaf blower and get some outdoor exercise raking the leaves, in the beautiful fall weather.

Good luck Sweet Kumquats,
Dirt Diva