4 Easy Soil Covers That Protect Garden Soil When Not In Use

In this video, I discuss the importance of soil cover and why protecting garden soil is so important for the health of your garden. A tragic mistake many gardeners make is leaving garden soil exposed for long periods of time. This damages the soil microbiome, which has far reaching implications. Here are 4 easy soil covers that protect garden soil when not in use.

While it is important to protect garden soil year round, this problem is most common in winter. That is because many gardeners do not grow a garden in winter and leave garden soil unprotected, exposing it to the harmful elements. Now that fall is here, I wanted to make this video as a warning to all gardeners, and I show you how to protect garden soil in 4 easy ways.

I use the following products* to grow a vegetable garden:

TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 Garden Soil Protection Intro
0:58 Why Is Soil Health So Important?
2:48 Unprotected Soil Is Killing Your Garden
6:13 Soil Protection Tip #1
7:26 Soil Protection Tip #2
10:56 Soil Protection Tip #3
12:11 Soil Protection Tip #4
12:57 Compost Is NOT A Soil Cover!
14:13 Is Snow A Soil Cover?
16:26 Adventures With Dale

If you have any questions about how to cover soil in a garden, want to know about the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share some DIY and "how to" garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please ask in the Comments below!

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ABOUT MY GARDEN
Location: Southeastern NC, Brunswick County (Wilmington area)
34.1°N Latitude
Zone 8B

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© The Millennial Gardener

#gardening #garden #gardeningtips #soilhealth #gardensoil

[TheMillennialGardener]

If this video was helpful, please "Like" it and share it to help increase its reach! Thanks for watching🙂TIMESTAMPS here:
0:00 Garden Soil Protection Intro
0:58 Why Is Soil Health So Important?
2:48 Unprotected Soil Is Killing Your Garden
6:13 Soil Protection Tip #1
7:26 Soil Protection Tip #2
10:56 Soil Protection Tip #3
12:11 Soil Protection Tip #4
12:57 Compost Is NOT A Soil Cover!
14:13 Is Snow A Soil Cover?
16:26 Adventures With Dale

[beckyschlegel]

I cover with my last mowing of my grass, then cover with cardboard. Most of it is broken down by spring, and if not, I just put my spring compost over, and then plant, and cover with my first mowing. It works really well.

[terrinegron]

I love the comparison of a healthy gut versus healthy soil for our veggies. This is exactly why I practice “no dig gardening”. IE: keeping the roots below the soil which degrade & bring nutrients to the soil ongoing. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[gregdoh]

I made that mistake the first 5 years I gardened. Loosening the soil up in the spring was always a chore. For the past 10 years I've been adding mulch or growing a cover crop, and it makes a difference!

[miltonwelch]

At 71, I've known and forgotten a lot of things. Listening to you refreshes old knowledge as well as teaches new knowledge. Thanks Millennial!

[AmericanPatriot-]

I was just thinking this the other day and I had already covered my soil, whether it was in pots with soil, no plant, or anything unused. Thank you for
confirming that I was doing the right thing. Good, I'm on the right track.

[Ginger_McElfresh_Art]

I have heard to plant cover crops in your raised beds, then cut them off at soil level and compost the tops, leaving the roots intact, and no dig/till. I plan on trying this fall!

[Karlacook]

What's growing on!? This video came right on time. I am starting to grow corn in fall as in September, the beginning of fall. Definitely added to my watchbl later list to fully take notes!

[honeybadgers]

I will make sure to cover my ground for this winter. Now, I know why my vegetable garden starts slow. Thanks for the great tip. Mr Dale has a button says “WALK” and he knows how to use it!! lol… What a smart boy🦮

[baneverything]

My garden soil stays covered under about an inch of chopped leaves and green grass clippings at all times. From time to time I sprinkle some sandy/silty soil from a wash over this and I use it to make mounds mixed with leaves and grass clippings to grow tubers, squash & melons. I`ve already planted fall/winter tubers & greens and yesterday I sprinkled more chopped leaves and green grass clippings lightly all over the garden.

The plants are about an inch tall and to plant I just threw various seeds of radish, carrots, mustard, turnips, rutabagas & lettuce everywhere and spray with the hose every morning. I have a more carefully planted garden made from forest soil in cardboard boxes in a different area with more winter sun that was a gravel parking area I`m slowly reclaiming.

I add thick layers of grass clippings, cardboard boxes, pine straw and mowed leaves plus rotting forest branches and a little sandy soil under the canopy of my fig trees too. I`m always building soil to prevent root knot nematodes.

[teenagardner]

Great content as always with this channel. Dale has my heart. This fall I'm experimenting with combined cover crops in my raised beds. I'm covering my large pots with straw and leaves. Another great benefit of covering your garden areas is avoiding all the tree seeds in spring propergating throughout the garden.

[knowledgeandmultiskilled]

Nutrients can always be added to a garden, and this is something I have been learning about. Frankly never in a million years would I have been able to guess on my own how to provide nutrients to a garden, so thank goodness, for the internet. :)

Preserving food is something else I have been learning about. Not getting enough sun to grow is a problem, so what I recommend people to do is learn how to preserve their food assuming that more than a enough can be grown.

[annienovak]

I actually grew buckwheat cover crop as a test in my raised bed and it was very easy to simply pull out before it goes to seed and leave as a mulch.

[lindag]

I love using my dropped fig leaves for autumn mulch.

[MichaelJosephJr]

At the end of the season I top off beds with my compost then add about 2-4 inches of my shredded leaves. Then I cover with tarps but I poke some holes in the tarps to allow some drippage. I want the leaves to breakdown completely over the winter. If we get a winter thaw I uncover and water then cover again. Works very well for me.

[smb-zfbd]

For pete's sake, rake up leaves and put them on the soil if nothing else. I have a cutter and can put inches of leaves as a kind of winter mulch. then I add kitchen scraps under this bed all winter. In Spring there's lots of material to work with.

[LabCookr]

I'm about an hour north of Wilmington nc and clover is a perfect cover crop for NC, it blooms in spring and brings all the bees but is cooked off by our sun and heat by late may early June

[highereducationpostcard]

Your videos are great - thank you! We’re in Swansea, in South Wales, UK. A friend of mine puts down cardboard (with packing tape, staples, labels etc removed) over his soil in the autumn and lets the rain and cold decompose it over the winter: so you get protection and also add some structure to the soil. Also, Dale is an excellent dog!

[LindaDale-zh]

You explain things in a way that's easy to digest!

[tigrlily]

Hoping you are all well after the storm.