Fall; time to start Gardening?

The common thought is fall is here and fresh vegetables from our garden has ended. But is this really true?

Niki's book may just change your mind. Living in a far colder climate than most of us, she has been very successful in year round gardening. And I believe it challenges us all to re-evaluate our "gardening as usual".

I have done some experimenting over the past two years studying her book and have come to a couple of thoughts to share.

One is that you have to make this a part of your everyday life style to make it work. Time becomes an issue but winter often creates the most time. I have yet to be very successful with the outdoor but I have had some success with using the Garden Kart, rolling it indoors and using the grow lights.

This becomes an entirely new world though in that adjusting the grow lights properly, watching the heat and "tricking" your plants into thinking it is summer is now what you are up to.

Winter Garden

Let's be honest, most of us are a little burned out with the garden by fall. However we need to remember that what we do in the fall greatly effects us next spring.

You've probably removed most of the plants and put them in the compost bin. Hopefully you've been maintaining your composting so you have some to dump on top of the garden at this point. It is also the time to add manure so it has time to go through the biological breakdown. This process actually burns up a lot of nitrogen so you need to do it now to allow for that time. Click here for a good explanation of manure in the winter.


The fruits that we've enjoyed all through the summer are a very small part of the organic loop we are a part of. This loop is made up of living organisms which we have inadvertently farmed without even knowing it. farmers on the prairie didn't have the microscope to see the living biological but they did see the results.

By plowing in the fall the organic matter began the organic composting. The horses and milk cows gave fresh manure to put on in the fall. All of these created that biological loop.

We want to do the same thing only let's speed the process up by putting already composted material and aged manure into the ground.