Calhoun County Gardening – Winterizing Garden Spaces: Preparing Pots, Raised Beds, and Soil for a Healthy Spring

Calhoun County, AL –October is a wonderful month to organize your gardening areas. The cooler temperatures help gardeners with a boost of energy! The priority in October is to monitor the frost dates for your location. This is a good month to clean out summer annuals that have dried, inside your pots. I use a garden hose & a scrub brush and clean all my pots. I put them in the sun to dry before storing those pots in a shed. Some of my perennials are in permanent pots and tolerate blackberry freezes. I place pine straw in those perennial pots to help give a little support to dormant plants. In the Spring I remove the pine straw from the perennial pots. Raised bed gardening boxes need to be sowed in wintergreen seeds, such as turnips, collards, and mustard or covered with a tarp. My organic soil is very rich, I protect all my soil areas from drying out with winter seeds growing, or tarps, landscape mats, pine straw, bark chips. All my in-ground soil I either sow seeds or add a tarp. October cooler temperature is a great time to design Spring fencing, trellis, or vertical frames. Creating new garden boxes and filling them with compost is an easier task in October. I am enjoying my October chores.

Betty Clark is a contributing writer. She has been an organic gardener since 1998. The signature flower she grows is Dahlias. She has a straw bale garden, raised bed garden, and in-ground garden. Both her surnames are agricultural farming families (8 generations). Her hobbies include ancestry research, antiques, continued education classes, and workshops. She also has a background in marketing & promotions including expos. To contact Betty Clark with gardening questions: [email protected]