Fall Gardening in Alaska

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Miracle-Gro for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

If you live in a zone 4-1 climate, fall gardening is all about preparing for next year. You prune, get the last of your herbs cut and in the freezer, you feed and mulch, you plant bulbs for next year for those early days of spring. You also start planning for next year. 

Gardenieres has a bunch of great videos to help you get started on that planning, and also to give you ideas for fall. Gardening enthusiasts, they also talk about fall and winter gardens for places that won't be buried in 2 feet of snow in a month.

This doesn't mean that gardening is done for me. Not by a long shot. 

Teena Spindler, in this video is talking about planting herbs in a container, planning it for outdoors. A lot of herbs grow simply great indoors, and that style pot can be used with proper lighting and good a potting mix. 

Miracle-Gro® Potting Mix works well for indoor plants as well as outdoor container gardening. Generally during the winter, we have two sets of herbs growing, one at the house, and my husband keeps an herb garden at work as well. So we get to have the taste of fresh herbs that grow well indoors throughout the winter in our cooking, and also get the benefit of how they scent the air when it's just too cold to open a window. While herbs grow easily, you'd be surprised how often I wind up asking him to bring home a handful of something!  He grows them primarily to keep his office from getting too stuffy and because they are so easy to grow. 

We plant bulbs, we feed everything, and we mulch, but when it's getting to be winter, we skip the nice wood chip mulching for something much easier to set down, and plan our beds for next spring at the same time. Cardboard boxes. We save boxes  throughout the summer, and cut them apart to plan our spring beds. (remove all tape and staples) They work really well. We put down a layer of compost, then top it with a double layer of cardboard. In the spring, after snow has soaked and melted into the cardboard, it will come apart easily, but it also keeps the early spring grass and weeds from coming up. Then we mix in Miracle-Gro Garden Soil for Flowers and Vegetables and plant the seeds that need to be planted in spring. We will also feed our berries at the same, which really seems to help output. If you have lots of strawberries like we do, I really recommend planting spinach in the spring. It comes up easily from seed, and spinach and strawberry salads are fantastic!

This is one of my favorite vidoes on the Gardenieres website. It's about sustainable edible gardening. 

Sustainable Gardening

Check out Miracle-Gro Facebook page for lots of ideas and conversations about gardening. It's a great place to ask questions as well.