Preparing our winter garden

We have finished our summer garden and decided we would move the ladies over to help eat any left overs, till, and manure it for next year. Now we have an open chicken run with compost and worm castings galore to turn into a new garden for the winter!

Of course we have to prepare the ground first before we start the planting process, so we dug up the new garden area to break up some of the clay and dirt chunks. The area near the gate top was super hard because it was the newest part of the run (from when we got everything newly fenced in). So we broke up the hard soil as best we could at the top. The area where the chickens were for the entire year was so beautifully dark, loose, and full of worms. Just the way we wanted it!

Next, we laid our compostable weed barrier and then covered it with shredded hardwood mulch. It isn’t wood chips, but you gotta use what you can get.

Now all we have to do is plant our next round of vegetables. We are thinking about doing a big batch of brussel sprouts, cabbage, lettuces, spinach, broccoli, garlic, and maybe some more kale.