Having a great garden takes maintenance all year long. Getting your spring garden started off right has everything to do with how you put your garden to bed the fall before.
Without a doubt, one of the best seasons for preparing your landscape for success is often a missed opportunity. For a lot of people, the fall season is dreaded because of the large amount of leaves that usually have to be raked. But, with clear fresh air and no bugs, the fall season is the best time to get ready for your future garden seasons, from compost piles to harvesting the final fruits after the first frost.
Joe takes us through just a few of the projects to finish up your fall garden to get ready for the winter. However, with a little planning you can have everything ready for the spring gardening season and know what to do in the future for years to come.
Later, Chef Nathan Lyon shows us a great way to make a simple chicken stock that can be used for many recipes during these cold winter months.
Additional Links:
Putting the Garden to Bed – Fall To-Do List
For our fall over-seeding of grass seed, we use Pennington Smart Seed, Fescue Blend.
Chef Nathan’s Chicken Stock Recipe
Episode 302: The Dirt on Healthy Soil
About GGWTV
Growing A Greener World is a national gardening series on Public Television that features organic gardening, green living and farm to table cooking. Each episode focuses on compelling and inspirational people making a difference through gardening. This gardening series covers everything from edible gardening and sustainable agriculture to seasonal cooking and preserving the harvest.
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Videos link to Vimeo, but the channel / user it takes me to, GGWTV, has no videos. Can’t watch this in my living room. 🙁 Any chance you guys are in the proces of uploading the vids or moving to another service like Youtube?
Hi Christopher. From what I know the videos are all served through Vimeo but viewed from our site, vs. a Vimeo channel. We in fact have just made a long transition from another server to Vimeo for all our episodes and video segments. Unfortunately we don’t have any current plans to host them on YouTube. However, that’s not to say we may do this later. But at least for now, the only way I know that all episodes are available to watch online is through our site.
Joe, you mentioned on the fall garden cleanup show that you can divide some perennials.
Can you please provide a list of these? Or have a link to this info?
Thanks
PS—love the show!
Hi John. You know, this is something I meant to do and not leave people hanging. Thanks for the reminder. I will get this done as soon as possible (now that it’s almost fall again) and get this posted. I’ve made a mental note to come page to this post and let you know when I do.
Joe thanks for all the great programs. I too love the raised beds. Did you line the bottom with chicken wire to keep moles out? I’m trying to find a way to protect my worms. Thanks again for the wonderful show.
Hi Ron. I did not line the bottom of my beds. Over the years I’ve been gardening in raised beds, I’ve yet to have a problem with moles or voles and that was with just 12″ high beds. These are 18″ high so even more unlikely that I would have a problem now. But, I think it’s a great idea for extra protection and can’t hurt anything to do this, more so for groundhogs and gophers. But now that my beds are full of soil, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it never becomes an issue. If it does, I’ll be sure to report on that.
Ref Episode 426:
Joe – Can you please provide the construction details for the raised beds you featured in this episode. They look like stacked 6×6 timbers. Material? dimension of beds? How fastened together? Are they treated? I liked the height for my aging back and keep the rabbits at bay.
Love your shows, never miss it on Saturday here in Iowa (IPTV).
Mark.
Hi Mark. yes, the details for building the beds, etc. are in links on this page of the show notes for the episode you are asking about. Here’s the link: https://www.growingagreenerworld.com/raised-bed-garden/.
It also includes the episode where you can watch it again. Of particular interest to you will be the first link in the notes (scroll down). It is the pdf document of the plans on how to construct (and secure) the raised beds. The details are all there. In summary though, I used 6×6 untreated cedar timbers. Stacked 3 high. The beds are 12′ by 4′. We drilled holes in the first course of timbers and drove 24″ rebar into the ground and drilled 12″ lock tight screws into the sides on all layers. On layers 2 and 3, we pounded 12 galvanized spikes into the lower layer to secure them together. They are very sturdy this way. Two engineers from Fiskars designed this bed layout and construction. We have built this bed style in gardens 14 large community gardens in the U.S and Canada over the past 6 years. All are doing great and look as good today as the first day. It’s a pricey investment if you take this route but only a one-time expense so well worth it in the long run.