I. WINTER IS FINALLY HERE... Why & what to do with your garden in January

( Formerly titled: 'Dude, It's REALLY cold out... we should burn something... productively! ) It might be cold, but NOW is a great time to start preparing your garden for Spring... STEP 1: CLEARING THE AREA I step outside this morning & watch my breath hang heavy in the air as Barley races passed me excitedly hoping we are going on an adventure. “We’re not going far, Barley...” I tell him as he sniffs a few bushes as I head to the garage (I’m in Leslie, AR, at a friend’s place.) I grab a pair of work gloves, a lighter & my trusted ‘forker’ (a hoe-fork) & leave the garage, heading straight for the garden beds. The garden looks sleepy. The last of the overgrowth from last season lays in disarray, lazily bending towards the earth & creating grassy tunnels & patches. I look up to the clouds, the sun trying to send us warmth from behind them, but it seems most of the warmth is whisked away by the cold winds before it has time to find me. Luckily, I have a productive & warm task ahead of me... I look up to the sky again, this time I notice which way the wind is coming from. It is a northern wind today, not too strong but consistent. I head to the south end of the garden & look upwards again, this time I give thanks for this beautiful day & take a few moments to send out love in all directions. I finish my moment of silence & bend forward with my lighter, flicking it once against the dry grasses, then again a foot away, then again & again. Soon, the dry grasses are ablaze & spreading slowly I purposely started burning on the south end of the garden BECAUSE the winds were coming from the north... burning TOWARDS the wind will help the fire to burn slower & safer... allowing me to work on other things in the garden as the overgrowth burns around me. As the fire slowly engulfs the dry grass, I use my ‘forker’ to loosen soil in the center of the garden, while keeping an eye on the fires behind me. I loosen up the soil around a thorny greenbriar then put on my gloves & yank it out of the soil. After an hour of burning & loosening the soil, the garden bed is much clearer & I’m ready for step 2. STEP 2: SPRING WEED CONTROL Once the fire is completely out & I have removed as much overgrowth & unwanted plants as I can, I’m ready for the next step. There are many ways to help control weeds, I typically use a very passive method... I just cover up the ground with some type of thick mat or covering, blocking out the life giving sunlight from any weeds that try to poke through the soil in spring. You can use all sorts of stuff to help control weeds in this manner: a THICK layer of straw, overlapping newspapers or cardboard or even a plastic tarp (with rocks, bricks or branches to help it from blowing away). I use a combination of cardboard & plastic tarp until I have the entire garden covered. I use some bricks & stones to hold it down, I don’t want any sunlight sneaking under my ‘weed mat’ & helping any type of ‘weed’ growing where I plan to grow this spring. 25 minutes later, I’m done with my ‘weed control’ & Barley is looking at me from a sunny patch across the yard... still hoping that we will soon be going on an adventure somewhere in the surrounding woods. STEP 3: FIXING & ADJUSTING EXISTING GARDEN BOXES Now that my garden is cleared of weeds & protected from the growing in Spring, one more simple thing I can do is to adjust the old wooden garden boxes & the surrounding fence that keeps out the critters that like nibbling on tasty veggies (that they seem to think were planted JUST FOR THEM!) I adjust some of the posts, re-attach the fence where needed, bend the fence where needed & make sure that it is touching the ground everywhere... leaving NO ENTRY POINTS for critters! This is much easier to do NOW while there is no weeds or other growth around. FOR RAISED GARDEN BED BOXES: If you are using a raised bed garden box, you may want to replace old boards now too. (Best to do this before step 2, actually.) If you don’t already have some type of metal screen or mesh to help KEEP OUT VARMINTS inside your box, now would be a good time to do that. Use some type of 1/2” holed metal mesh to ‘filter’ out & STOP critters from burrowing into your garden box (chicken wire is too big! They will go right through it!) You may need to remove the old dirt, so that you can ‘line’ your raised bed garden box with the metal screen mesh. This may be annoying, but nothing is more annoying than having your nice raised bed getting burrowed through & your vegetables getting eaten before you harvest them! Staple your mesh screen on well & put the dirt back in your box. When done with all this, make sure to also do the ‘weed control’ from step 2. None of this is very hard work & it should all be able to be completed in a few hours or less, depending on the size of your garden & how much help you have. (Barley didn’t help me much... but he sure was cute the whole time! Hahahaha!) Good luck & have fun! Ethan