EcoHearth: Come Home to the Earth

Growing your own food is an easy and fun way to live a more green existence. Vegetable gardening allows you to forgo chemicals and use time-proven methods for producing the most organic food possible. Through composting and mulching you can recycle portions of your and your neighbors' household waste. You then have the opportunity to enjoy, preserve and even share your bounty; believe me, you will have surplus! One of the joys of gardening is learning about Mother Nature’s generosity.

Here’s how to use the season to get yourself and your garden ready for warmer days:

• Winter is the perfect time to add organic top dressings to your garden; they will be incorporated into the soil by winter’s rain and snow.
• Take advantage of winter downtime to clean, repair and organize both your tools and yard. Take an inventory of seeds, and indoor and outdoor plants, then decide where and what you want to plant, as well as what you want to remove upon warmer weather.
• Begin a garden journal to organize for the growing season’s busier months. You can plan crop rotations, mulching and fertilizing, plantings, note what to seeds to order, organize your seeds and plants, and sketch and plan both your garden and other backyard projects. Some people like to take before-and-after pictures of their gardens and include them in their journals. They are also good places to keep recipes for garden-based dishes, and for canning and preserving.
• Late winter is the right time to start indoor seedlings; plant summer blooming bulbs, tubers and more outside; feed roses, shrubs and fruit trees, and spray with dormant spray (which fights fungal infections and keeps destructive insects at bay); plant potatoes; begin to rejuvenate annual flower beds; continue planting cool-season vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, kale, lettuce and onions (if your winter isn't prohibitively cold); and plant bareroot fruit trees and roses, pruning them when the weather permits.

Use late-winter doldrums for lots of happy dreaming about sunny days, good eats (perhaps canned from the previous year's garden) and taking this major step toward going green.

For further reading:
What To Plant: Plan Your Early Spring Garden
Planning a Garden
The Many Merits of Mulching
Composting 101: What You Need to Know to Start Now
Canning Basics: How to Can Tomatoes and Vegetables

Updated 1/30/10; originally posted 2/19/09.

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