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Making the most of the nice weather while it lasts includes preparing gardens for the cold winter months ahead. According to one local horticulture expert, there are some easy ways to do that.

Ashley Eskin studied soil science at the particular University of Saskatchewan and has been blogging plus creating YouTube videos to encourage others in their gardening journey.

She said the first thing to do in order to get ready for winter is to think about disease and pest prevention.

“So looking at what issues you came across this last year, whether it be cucumber beetles, flea beetles, powdery mildew, you name it, and then looking into the correct way to manage the particular debris from that particular problem, ” she told CTV Information.

“Gardeners usually just say, ‘Well, I had cucumber beetles this particular year, I won’t have them next’, but the reality is, is that they’re kind of in your little micro environment of your garden. And so if you can control them in your own space, you’ll be able to control them in the future. But if you just let it go it will exasperate over time, it’s just gonna get worse. ”

Eskin explained that it’s important to avoid composting anything with powdery mildew on it because this will stay within the soil.

“Another thing to look into would be from the perspective associated with if you had flea beetles or in case you experienced thrips, or aphids, or even cucumber beetles, looking at biologicals that will actually eat the larvae in your soil. ”

WINTER FERTILIZATION

She also recommend that gardeners consider a two-time application of fertilizer.

“So whether they may using organics or synthetics, whether could possibly be one flower, ornamental perennial or vegetable gardeners, you can actually split your own application of nutrients and there’s huge benefits, ” she said.

“If we take half associated with what we would normally apply in the spring, we split it in half and we apply it within the fall, what ends up happening is we end up recharging our soil throughout the winter, and all of us don’t end up with as much loss. ”

Eskin stated a split application can be better for the particular environment plus save money with regard to gardeners.

“In the spring we all will dump on a ton of fertilizer, and a lot of that fertilizer can be washed away through runoff and watering and a person name it plus the plant can’t simply use this all upward at once, ” she mentioned.

SOIL CARE FOR WINTER SEASON

Another consideration regarding Saskatchewan gardeners is to care for their own soil.

“One point people could consider is simply planting peas in bulk, ” she said.

“You may get simply dried peas, or chickpeas or lentils from the particular grocery store in the big bags. And you can actually broadcast that across your soil, water it in and get them in order to grow the little bit, this will naturally put nitrogen back into our own soil. ”

The girl said another method is ‘cover cropping. ’

“Whether its clovers or barley grasses, that will sort of factor. It will help really with the ground structure and just getting that ground working again. ”

WINTER CROPS

Eskin said that there are crops that landscapers in Saskatchewan can grow into the late fall.

“There’s still lots of sun well in to the fall in the early winter to actually produce stuff. As long as you stay along with root vegetables and leafy greens, you will be okay, I wouldn’t encourage anyone to go directly into flowers or necessarily fruiting plants because the season just isn’t long enough.

“You want to stay with things that are either root veggies in the ground, or even you want to do greens that can take a little bit of frost, ” she said.

“Collard greens plus kale are really good examples of this, they will get frost, they will actually become covered within snow, and you can still harvest from them plus they will be just fine. ”

The lady said she was capable to develop collard greens, char and kale without a cover this past year and harvested them in mid-October.

There are some DIY tips in order to extending the particular growing season, according to Eskin.

“You just simply cut the bottom off of a milk jugs, put that will over top of the plant plus make like a little mini greenhouse, ” she explained.

However , that’s not the only way based on Eskin.

“You can do things like bricks or rocks or even containers of water where you put boiling water straight into a pop jug and just put this inside of the low tunnel to keep all of them warm overnight. ”