When to start preparing your tomato garden for winter Place them in a dry, safe location where they won’t freeze. Make sure applications are properly labeled and tightly sealed. Follow manufacturer’s instructions for winterizing power tools. Scrub surfaces with disinfectant and a 10% bleach solution. Rinse off excess soil with a garden hose. Clean Garden ToolsĪssemble your wheelbarrow, spades,, trowels, and garden pruners. There’s no need to finely till right now. Retest soil in the spring to determine its adjusted pH after burning.Ī spade or a tiller/cultivator will help aerate the garden and encourage elimination of microorganisms over winter. Turning the soil with a spade also works. If you don't have farm equipment, you may wish to use a middle buster or plow attachment, as most tillers will not penetrate the soil deeply enough to break the hard pan beneath the topsoil.
This step will greatly improve the quality of the soil for your upcoming crop as it will allow the ash (and associated nutrients) to be restored. Breaking the hardened soil allows moisture from the winter rains to be deeply absorbed. A good suggestion is to break the ground deeply before you burn. The ash helps replace all of the trace minerals in the soil, allowing them to migrate from the roots to the leaves in any plant so when the leaves are burned, the trace metals are in the ash.
Have a working garden hose on hand to contain burning. Be sure to obtain necessary local permits for burning. Burning adds wood ash to your garden and also destroys weed seeds, fungi, bacteria, and other microorganisms that overwinter in the soil. You might also consider piling discarded tomato debris in your tomato patch, along with gathered autumn leaves, straw, yard clippings, and other garden remnants.
(More on removing tomato plants from the garden.) 4. Remember that organisms can survive in weeds as well as tomato plants, so any growth surrounding tomato plants should be removed, too. If you compost affected tomato plants or surrounding debris that have been exposed to fungi or bacteria, you risk infecting next season’s tomato plants. Most of the time, interior heat in compost piles does not reach a high enough temperature to kill pathogens. Fungi, bacteria, insects, and larvae that affect tomatoes – including septoria leaf spot, early blight, late blight, fusarium wilt, verticillium wilt, and bacterial wilt – overwinter in the garden.īy removing tomato plant debris (rather than composting it, working it into the soil, or leaving it until spring) you reduce build up of diseases and pest infestation. It may be tempting to simply till this organic matter into your garden to break down or add it to your compost pile. Burn (see below) or discard plant materials, including roots.
Pull up spent tomato plants and weeds, collect dropped or “mummified” fruit, and rake the garden to remove plant remnants.
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