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Growing Tomatoes: Preparing your Compost for the New Year

By Leslie Pirrie

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 17Nov2009 Word count: 491 Viewed: 71 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

This is the time of year when those crisper mornings come bringing damp air and silver clouds. When all the trees have dropped their golden leaves and the wind has blown them all over the garden.

Now I always thought it was a good idea to gather them altogether and make compost, however, the latest thought is to rake them onto your borders to keep the soil covered for the winter allowing the thinner layers of leaves to be broken down and worked into the soil by nature, mind you it's the blackbirds rummaging through it looking for bugs that I love to see. If only they wouldn't throw it back all over the garden in the process.

Anyhow we need to prepare our soil for the next tomato crops, so when we have the lovely sunshine it is good opportunity to get out to the plot and start turning over the soil. It is the best time to do it now as otherwise the soil becomes sodden with the winter rain and the soil will become compact.

Turning the soil over helps to expose bugs, which if you have a robin as an assistant can be a very tasty treat for them. It can be hard work but rewarding, digging all of that lovely compost in that you have been working on all year. By doing this now it will give the worms the opportunity to really get to work on the natural fertilizers replenishing the nutrients in the soil and improving the structure.

This type of preparation exposes pests that over winter in the soil so they have less of a foothold by the following spring, a crisp frost can play havoc with eggs laid in the soil. I am all for saving myself work and so I cover my newly turned weeded and composted beds with a weed suppressant material to save myself some weeding time in the spring, I know some people think that it is a bit lazy but it works for me.

My green house has seen the last of the late toms, I think I was fortunate with the weather into October but now the last of the plants need to be disposed of, either into the compost heap if not diseased or burned if blighted. You can put these diseased plants out for commercial recycling if you have that facility operating in your area, or if you are keen about recycling you can take your garden waste along to your local recycling centre. The heat generated by the industrial composters destroys any viruses and diseases which most garden composters are not always able to do. I lost a whole six months composting to this when I started out, my friend George told me about how contaminated soil affects the next year's crops, as you can imagine I was quite miffed.

Hey ho always learning, good luck with the winter tasks.

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