How to Manage your Vegetable Garden
Gardening is a magical endeavor and a beautiful learning experience. It teaches you how vegetables grow as well as how to eat seasonally. It teaches you that a bounty of nourishment can grow right in your own backyard. It teaches you about variety. There are some super beautiful and tasty varieties of tomatoes, lettuce, and greens that you can and should experiment with.
When it comes to my fruits and veggies, I like them as fresh and organic as possible. One way to ensure this is to have access to the way they are being planted and treated. I knew when I moved into my new home that I wanted to have my own garden but I just didn’t know where to start. As you saw in my past blog post, I made a raised bed garden. I now have this amazing garden that gave us tons of veggies this summer.
But as Summer is leaving us and Fall is approaching, I like you, are probably wondering what to do with all this extra veggies. I have made enough salsa to freeze. Did you know you could freeze tomatoes? What to do with the soil? Can you continue to plant things in the Fall? Well, ironically you can. I had no idea until I started doing some research. There are a ton of veggies that can withstand the cold temps in Fall.
Here are a few of them:
Spinach
Arugula
Heirloom Lettuce
Mustard Greens
Broccoli
Brussels Sprouts (only if in a climate that has really cool temperatures, our climate it’s rare to have a success story)
Cauliflower
Beets
Carrots
Swiss Chard
Cabbage
Radish
Kohlrabi
Turnips
Bok Choy
Kale
Then the soil..What do you do with it once winter comes? What do you do to keep it good for the following summer? Apparently the soil every year, if you take care of it, gets more and more full of rich nutrients. So I consulted in a friend, that for years has had an amazing and flourishing garden. First you need to till the soil by hand or if you have big beds, you rent a tiller. Then you need to get some sort of good nutrients in there to cover it for the winter.
My friend has a local company come in and literally dump manuer on the raised beds. I am just going to go get some bags of manuer, since my beds are not that big. Then cover it with a tarp to keep animals away. Whala....you have preserved your garden for next year.
Fall veggies and rich soil awaits !!!
-Erin