This post contains my favorite tools and activities to support the garden soil during winter, providing a boost for spring planting and better pest control through the season.
When your planning your homesteading projects you want to consider what types of tools you’ll need for the job. Depending on your type of lifestyle, you may have a pre-built garden bed and hand tools are appropriate. If you are building everything from scratch you may need more.
For our little suburban homestead garden my husband bought treated wood, posts, screws, and brackets to build the garden bed to fit the area we had designated in the backyard.
If your living in an apartment or small condo, a pre-built raised garden bed is a good start. This one is metal because living in small spaces you want to use materials that will last. Wooden beds are pretty, and great if you have wood around to recycle into a garden bed. But for small indoor or HOA spaces wood bed are prone to wood rot, warping, and mold.
When you start your small garden to begin the homestead journey consider your situation, and the best materials for portability, maintenance, space, and time.
For these indoor spaces hand tools are really all you need for aerating the soil, planting or transplanting seedlings.
Large Garden Bed Tools
When caring for large garden beds its best to invest in tools that will save your neck, back, and muscles. And will make the gardening process more sustainable and less stressful, especially when you have kids sports, school and work to think of as well. Again this is a therapeutic activity, and a stepping stone to a more connected lifestyle, so having the right tools makes the process more enjoyable.
For my garden, a small tiller has been a favorite tool for years. I’ve used this one for about 4 years and its been perfect for my garden. It makes aerating and turning the soil much easier and helps with dispersing the mulch in the garden bed.
Garden Feeder/ Sprayers
I like the pump sprayers, because I can use my preferred organic plant food, my homemade fertilizer, or homemade insect repellent on specific areas of the garden. The feeders that connect to the hose are great if you need to use liquid plant food and feed the whole garden, but if you are using neem oil as part of your insect repellents, you don’t want to use it with these feeders, the oil will clog the sprayer and you’ll end up replacing them.
If your considering neem oil, I usually add it to my mulch and stir it into the soil with the tiller.
Preparing the Garden during Winter
Tilling, mulching, and adding nutrients to the soil is a winter chore for my family. Although this is done multiple times per year, during the colder months when plants are dormant adding nutrients to the soil allows for better absorption and reaches deeper into the soil with the heavy rain and frost. As soon as warmer weather arrives, the pants have plenty of nutrients to start sprouting.
This is also the time when insects are less active, so adding the insect repellent during winter prevent eggs from hatching and prevents nests forming beneath the surface becoming a problem in the spring when they start eating the harvest.
Enjoy your winter season!!!
Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are ‘affiliate links’. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission.
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