Weren't those tomatoes you grew this summer good? How about the corn or carrots? Sweet and crunchy. The grocery store stuff can't come close. And even better, it was all from your very own garden.

While this year's crop was great, next year's garden can be even better with a little planning and preparation as the weather cools into fall. While it might be tempting to just hang the tools in the shed, fall is the perfect time to get a jump on some of the garden preparation tasks that you never have time for in the spring when you are busy planting.

Fall is also the best time to start a new vegetable garden. You have the time now to do a good job preparing the new seedbed. In the spring, the weather can be cold late into the season and the soil too wet to work properly. As a result, good bed preparation can be hurried by the urge to plant.

First, before you even pick up a shovel, walk around the garden with a notebook and jot down things that worked or didn't work in this year's garden, especially crops that did really well and those that didn't. Draw up a plan of your beds and note what was planted in them this year. Making notes on your successes and failures will help you plan future gardens and make proper crop rotations to keep down bugs and disease build-ups. Note questions you have that you can research over the winter. Lay out where you want your beds and walkways next year, so you don't walk in areas you want to plant in and compact the soil.

Consider doing a soil test to determine what the nutrient levels and pH are in your soils. This will help you plan what fertilizers to add in the spring and if you need to adjust the pH. The pH is a measure of the soil's acidity or alkalinity. High or low levels of either can affect certain plants' ability to take up nutrients and grow. Additionally, overly high levels of nutrients (common in many urban gardens) can cause toxicity problems with plants and soil organisms.

Clean up spent plants and other debris left from your summer crops. Cleaning up debris eliminates hiding places for bugs and their eggs or larvae and reduces potential weed problems next year. Spent plants that were not affected by bugs or disease and seed-free weeds can be added to a compost pile, or shredded, put back on the garden, and worked into the soil. Throw plants affected by disease and bugs, or seedy weeds,into the trash.

If you are starting a new garden in a new space, remove sod and compost it by placing the green sides together in a pile and letting it break down over the winter. Till up the space and water it well and let the weeds germinate. You can then remove them and thus reduce weed problems next year.

Whether you are working a new or an old garden plot, fall is the best time to add organic material to the garden. Compost, shredded leaves and old garden plants, aged or fresh manures, and green trimmings from other parts of the garden all make excellent soil additives. When they are tilled in, they will break down over the winter to be ready for plants to use in the spring (or, even easier, you can lay them on top of the soil and let nature do the work). If it is still warm, weed seed in the manures may even have a chance to germinate so you can eliminate them now instead of dealing with them in the spring. This is the only time of year it is safe to add fresh animal manures to the garden. Over the winter, the potentially harmful bacteria that occur in manures will be destroyed.

Once you have cleared out the debris and tilled in organic material, consider planting cover or green manure crops in your newly designated planting beds. They are planted thickly and turned under in the spring. Over the winter, they help reduce soil erosion and shade out cool-weather weeds that sprout over the winter and early spring when you aren't out there to pull them. When cover crops are turned under, they add even more organic material to the garden. Some legume cover crops, such as field peas or hairy vetch, also add nitrogen back into the soil. Check out "Compost Pile" for Web sites on cover crops.

While cover crops can be planted anytime during the growing season, fall plantings need to go in while the soil is still warm so they will germinate. In the coastal and warmer parts of the Northwest, they can be planted into October and November. In the eastern and cooler parts of the region, most cover crops should be in by the end of September to take advantage of the warm ground before it gets cold in October.

In the warmer parts of the region, the cover crops will survive the winter and green up in the spring, helping to control early spring weeds while growing even more organic material for the soil. In colder areas, the crops may die with the cold temperatures, but, even when dead, they still protect the soil from erosion and weeds through the winter. Green manure crops are turned under about a month before you plan to plant in the spring to give them a chance to decompose. And, of course, organic mulches placed in the fall can provide the same kind of benefits for your future garden.

Fall is also a good time to build new raised beds. By doing it now, they will be ready for planting in the early spring before the rest of the garden is warm enough to plant. Beds can be built of untreated lumber, the new composite woods, concrete blocks, and piled rocks‹or as a simple raised mound. An ideal width is about four feet so that the center of the bed can be reached from either side without walking on and compacting the bed surface. They can be of any length that fits your space.

It may seem like a lot of work now, especially after a busy garden season, but the time you spend getting your garden ready for spring now will pay big dividends in the spring.

Compost is made from ordinary garden waste such as fresh green garden trimmings, lawn clippings, weeds (without seeds), kitchen vegetable trimmings, and dried brown leaves, pine needles, and dried weeds and grass.

A basic compost pile needs to be about three feet by three feet by three feet to provide enough area for the microbes and bacteria to work efficiently. Place the compost pile in an out-of-the-way but shady corner close to where you generate your compost ingredients.

A bin can be made of any material that will hold up a pile and is porous to let air through. It can be as simple as free wooden pallets, a circle of sturdy wire, or plastic mesh, or as complicated as barrels mounted on a frame that can be rotated periodically. Commercial bins are also available.

Chop up all the material by running it through a chipper-shredder or mowing over it with the lawnmower. Don't use seedy weeds; meat or dairy products; or cat, dog, or pig manure in the pile. The weed seeds can survive the heat, and the other stuff will draw unwanted animals or harbor disease.

Mix two parts brown material (such as leaves or pine needles) with one part green (such as grass clippings) to assure a mixture that bacteria will love. Soak the pile with water to the consistency of a wrung-out sponge. You need not use additives to increase the productivity of the pile.

Within a few hours, bacterial action will begin to heat up the pile. Within two days, the temperature should rise to 140 to 160 degrees, which is hot enough to kill most weed seeds and insects. The bacteria are active for about a week, and then the pile will begin to cool down.

If you want compost in a hurry, the pile will need to be turned about once a week for six weeks. Fold the outside layers of the pile into the center of the new pile and remoisten it as you turn it. If you don't need or want the compost right away, you can just let the pile be and eventually it will break down.

Soil testing

Soil tests should be done on a new garden or every few years in established gardens. Home kits are available at garden centers, but are not as precise as professional tests. The report you get back from the testing laboratory will tell you the current condition of the soil, its deficiencies, and what needs to be added to bring the soil up to proper condition. Contact individual laboratories on the list in the link below for prices and procedures for taking the soil samples. Be sure to tell them it is for a home garden.

SoilTestLabs.pdf

University of Massachusetts at Amherst Soil Testing Laboratory:

brochlink1.htm

Cover Crops

In the warmer climate of western Washington and Oregon, most cover crops stay green all winter and fall crops can be planted into late October. For a list of cover crops not only for fall planting but also for spring and summer planting, check out:

eb1824.html.

The colder climate of eastern Washington often winter kills many cover crops. Even when this happens, the crop can still help protect the soil from erosion,block weeds, and contribute to building soil organic matter. For a list of cover crops adapted to colder climates, check out:

HG-521.pdf.

Grant to Develop IPMTraining for Master Gardeners

Southeastern Master Gardeners will have the answers for pest questions next year, thanks to new training modules funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Master Gardener coordinators in five states ‹ Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina ‹ will develop a new series of online courses in integrated pest management, or IPM. Development of the courses is funded by a $45,100 USDA Southern Regional IPM grant.

Teams in each of the five participating states will "meet" using teleconferencing technology. Each team will develop a specific portion of the training. Materials should be completed in time for the first training in October 2010. A similar program will be introduced to Washington State Master Gardeners in the fall of 2009.

For more information, contact Ellen Bauske, University of Georgia, ebauske@uga.edu.

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