Why You Need to Add Compost to Your Garden Beds in the Autumn
For thriving vegetable gardens with bigger harvests and healthy, vibrant soil, adding compost to your garden beds in the fall is not just a good practice—it’s the best one. While many gardeners wait until spring, autumn is the ideal time to enrich your soil for the following year.
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The Optimal Time: Should You Add Compost in Fall or Spring?
Did you know that the best time to add compost to your garden is during the fall? Many gardeners wait until spring, just before transplanting or direct sowing, thinking it’s the right time. While adding compost in spring isn’t wrong, it’s not the most effective timing.
Compost behaves like a slow-release nutrient source for your soil, but it takes time to break down and integrate fully. Adding compost in the fall will primate your garden beds with nutrient-rich soil by spring, giving your plants a head start. As compost decomposes over the winter, nutrients become readily available for plants, leading to more robust, more vigorous growth.
Soil is alive, and living things are hungry. Leaving soil bare over the autumn and winter months starves the microbes your future vegetables need to grow and thrive.
Related: How to Improve Garden Soil Over the Autumn & Winter Months
How to Add Compost in a Fall Garden
How you add compost depends on your gardening method. For no-till gardens, spread a 1-2 inch layer of compost over your garden beds in the fall and leave it undisturbed. This method preserves the soil’s structure and the beneficial microorganisms that live there.
For conventional gardening, you may prefer to till the compost into the soil. In this case, apply at least an inch of compost—up to four inches for poor or compacted soils—before tilling it in. Mulching afterward with materials like straw or wood chips can further enhance soil health over the winter.
There’s no need to dig into your soil, as doing so disrupts the millions of helpful microbes, bacteria, mycorrhizal fungi, and other components that maintain its structure and health.
Related: No-Till Gardening {Everything You Need To Know}
Should You Also Add Compost in Spring?
If you’ve added compost in the fall, your soil is likely well-prepared for the growing season. However, you can still add some compost in spring, particularly inside planting holes or around the base of heavy feeders like tomatoes and peppers. This targeted approach provides extra nutrients where they’re most needed.
How Much Compost Do I Add In The Fall?
You do not need to add more than an inch or two of compost in the fall to your garden beds. If you rototill your beds, you should try to add more, up to 4 inches of compost.
The Best Compost for Your Garden
The best compost is one you make yourself, ideally from various sources. For example, high-nitrogen chicken litter, sheep manure, kitchen scraps, and mushroom compost can all be combined to create a rich, nutrient-dense compost. Mature compost, which has been allowed to break down fully, is ideal for adding to garden beds in the fall.
If you keep even a small flock of backyard chickens and use the deep litter method of coop management, you will find that you have a plethora of compost.
Final Thoughts: Embracing Fall Composting for a Thriving Garden
When deciding whether to add compost to your garden in the fall or spring, remember that fall is the ideal time to improve your soil for the next growing season. Fall composting enriches your soil, improves its structure, and sets the stage for a productive garden. By adding compost in the autumn, you ensure your garden beds are fertile, healthy, and ready to support robust plant growth when spring arrives.
Incorporating fall composting into your gardening routine is a simple yet powerful way to promote sustainable gardening practices. This will lead to healthier plants and more bountiful harvests year after year.
Related: 13 Effective and Cheap Methods to Improve Poor Garden Soil
