Hi! This is Dan Drost, Utah State University Extension Vegetable Specialist. I hope 2018 was a good gardening year for you. Some of the things that I recommend you do now is to review the successes that you’ve had.
Some of those things that will fleet from our memory if we don’t pay attention to them. Write them down. Things that worked. Varieties that were pretty outstanding. Fertility programs, watering regimes, all of those things that were successful in 2018. We want to record that.
Second, try to ID those recurring problems. Sometimes things just creep up on a year to year basis and if you can identify them then you can work toward solving them. Also, consider taking a class this winter. Something on gardening. Many of our counties have gardening programs that they run and that’s a good place to get more information on how to be successful.
The fourth thing that you want to focus on is clean up your garden. As things start to die off those dead residues harbor diseases and insects that could be problems for next year. So let’s work at trying to get those things composted or work the soil and incorporate that material so that it decomposes over the winter.
Finally, let’s get a soil sample taken. That way you know what you need nutritionally for next year and you can start out on the right foot. And then one other thing you may want to do is prep part of the garden so that you can early plant. Some of the things we want to get in pretty early next spring include things like spinach, early lettuce, your onions, those types of things.
And if you don’t have that garden soil turned over and prepared for that right now it’s going to be a hard thing to do next spring. If you’re interested in more information it’s available at various sources including the Utah State University website.
