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Winter is coming up, and this is the perfect time to start preparing your beds for Spring. Doing a little work now, many months in advance, can save you a lot of time in the Spring when you begin planting.
The goal of every gardener is to grow healthy and strong plants. And one good way to help your cause is to top dress your soil with compost. The sooner you can top dress your garden bed with compost, the more time your soil will have to increase its life and fertility in the soil. When Springs comes, you would have wished you had done this sooner.
Here is a picture of one of my garden beds a few months ago in my alleyway.
However, now that we are in the Fall, it doesn’t looks so great…
So rather than spend time in the Spring trying to pull all the weeds and grass from every garden bed, and till my beds, I am instead going to top dress my bed with compost, and cover it with cardboard, before winter. This way, I will utilize Time to work for me throughout the winter.
You can buy your own compost, but here I have been able to create my own compost using my composting chicken coop, and my composting worms. Here you can see what a finished worm compost product looks like.
Here I have another bin, that is an enclosed worm composting bin, ready to harvest from underneath.
You can see how dark, and healthy, and full of life, my compost is.
Notice also in this video how light and fluffy my compost is in this video.
Now you could easily buy compost from your garden store, or from a composting company. Either way, once you have your compost, simply top dress your garden bed with it.
And then the last step is to just cover it with cardboard, which will kill the grass and weeds underneath. This will also provide moisture protection, and will help any earthworms in your compost and soil to work your soil, and aerate it.
You could also add wood chips on top of the cardboard, and further provide moisture protection, weed protection, and warmth, for your soil during the winter. It also will look nicer.
This idea was inspired from Geoff Lawton’s “Instant Garden” video.
