Gardening can help to build food storage. Canning and dehydrating your own garden items will help you to expand your food storage items with home grown items. The health of your garden will greatly affect the amount and the quality of your garden harvest.
Without the proper preparation in the fall your garden may suffer the following growing season. After you have harvested your garden it is crucial to begin to create a proper soil environment for the next year. Manure and composting are very important for creating a nutrient rich soil that will help your garden to thrive.
If you have a large garden area you may want to begin by tilling and feeding the soil in areas as the harvest allows. If your garden is the smaller variety, it may be easier to do this all at once. But, keep in mind that various types of manure and compost will work better for different types of crops and vegetables or fruits.
Manure is very efficient fertilizer and can help create a healthy soil. Cow manure is one of the most popular manures to use because it can be purchased in bags at most garden and hardware stores. Horse manure is a close second that can purchased from local ranches. Unless you are more advanced in your soil and fertilizer knowledge, abstain from using foul fertilizer that must be aged for quite some time before it is useful. Keep in mind that wet fertilizer will have a pungent odor, but is much easier to work with.
A green crop can be created by reworking items that have not had time to seed back into the soil. This can be done easily and will help to improve soil quality where it is lacking. It will help to break up solid or clay ridden soil, add nitrogen back into the soil and keep the soil moist. If this is done before the weather is overly chilly, the process will work throughout the soil in the winter, exposing a revitalized soil next spring. You can also use manure in this process to allow for a warmer compost. Other garden foods that have become overripe before you were able to use them for food storage can be added to the mixture as well.
If you have issues with a particular crop it is always helpful to speak with a local green house. They can offer support and knowledge of the local soil. Also, they may be able to tell you if you need something special in your area for a particular crop. For instance, in the western U.S. it is difficult to get blueberries to grow in our soil. It is simply not acidic enough. A seasoned green house owner helped me to create a blueberry-friendly soil environment in a porch pot that works well. Your specific type of soil and soil needs will vary on the crops that you grow and the region that you live in. This may effect how you prepare your soil for the spring.
