Do you love your garden?
Most people would say YES! We LOVE our garden!
We LOVE getting out there in the spring, breaking in our backs for the year, getting our hands dirty and sprinkling on those first seeds, dreaming of the harvest to come.
We LOVE tending to those pretty rows, watching and tracking the growth and production. We have pretty little garden journals that help us along the way, remembering where we planted and how much…what the results were, good and bad.
We LOVE pulling those first snap peas, young lettuce, and sweet carrots, serving them at the dinner table with as much pride and care as if they were grown for royalty.
And, oh…if you’re like me…we LOOOOOVE the months of canning that go along with a successful garden season.
But when the harvest is done and the plants are pulled…when frost has desecrated anything that had remained, and the canners are back in storage, how much love do you show your garden at that point? Be honest. And don’t you worry none, it’s not uncommon if you’re wondering what in the world I’m talking about.
Not everyone is aware that the most important part of gardening does not come before or during the season, but after.
After all, our garden has done nothing but give, give, give for MONTHS. Should we not show our appreciation for all of that giving? I say YES! Why? Because we LOVE our garden, right?!
Now, this particular article is a follow-up to my Hugelkultur How-To Start to Finish article I wrote previously. Don’t despair, you can follow the same guidelines for whatever type of garden you have {simply skip to step 2}. I just wanted to make sure my hugel friends knew that their job was not yet done. {Enter menacing laugh here}.
{Don’t worry, hugel friends, I’m not picking on you but, rather, everyone who has a garden. We all have work to do}.
Step 1:
No matter what you do or who you are, if you have built a hugel bed, there is going to be sinking, settling, and holes. All you have to do is fill them in- with manure, compost, or soil. Fill it up.
Step 2:
Any garden bed could benefit from a nice, fresh, rich layer of compost and a side dressing of some good ole manure or other fertilizer. Hugel beds, especially in their first year, break down a lot. You will definitely want to add more soil, especially if you’re finding that you didn’t add enough the first time when you built it. There is also a ton of nitrogren draw down due to all of the wood {which we offset by using a layer of manure upon building the bed}, but we don’t know how much of that nitrogen and other goodies were depleted. Enter the need for compost and fertilizer.
If you need a good visual comparison, I’ve got one for you: a laboring mom spends countless tiring hours bringing her baby into the world. She’s exhausted, energy spent, hungry {well, I was anyway}, and in great need of replenishing her empty tank {for lack of better words}. Your garden is no different.
Your garden spends months laboring and bearing fruit for you, expelling every last bit of energy it has in doing so. So basically, we need to give our garden a well-deserved, job-well-done snack.
It’s called compost. And it’s delicious…to your garden.
Step 3:
Finally, let’s put a blanket on our bed. Leaves are definitely top choice for this- they break down quickly, you can usually find them in abundance, and you can manage a nice, thick layer in no time. Straw is another option, although it won’t break down as quickly. Essentially, we don’t want to leave our gardens laying naked out in the cold. Have some modesty…cover up.
**It’s worth noting that I do not till. At all. My personal approach to gardening is low-impact permaculture gardening which involves minimal disturbance of the soil. This is partly why I chose to build self-tilling hugelkultur beds. As the woody materials break down and compost inside, it turns the soil within itself. My job is to add new soil/compost when needed. The hugel bed does the rest. For further reading on permaculture, hugelkultur, and other low-impact methods of gardening, visit permies.com. There you will find what I discovered- a whole, fresh new world and perspective on gardening. Or check out my Hugelkultur How-To article to get started today!**
How do you put your garden to bed?
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Strut Your Stuff Saturday Linkup Week 169
