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How to Winterize Your Vegetable Garden

How to Clean & Preserve Garden Tools

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Kathy Jentz
Editor/Publisher/Gardener, Washington Gardener Magazine
www.washingtongardener.com  
301-588-6894

Kathy Jentz is Editor, Publisher and Founder of Washington Gardener Magazine. Kathy is a life-long gardener from a family of farmers and dedicated gardeners. Currently, she is President of the Silver Spring Garden Club and on the board of several other clubs and organizations. You can read Kathy's work in the Washington Examiner and Washington Woman in addition to regular guest spots on Channel 9, Channel 4 and WAMU radio.

Washington Gardener magazine, the gardening publication published specifically for the local metro area — zones 6-7 — Washington DC and its suburbs. We sent out our premiere issue in March/April 2005 and we are now about to be celebrating our fifth anniversary.

The content of the magazine gives real examples that you can use immediately in your own garden. It will save you time and show you how to stretch your garden resources. It will inspire you with new ideas and new ways of looking at things. With all of that, we don’t forget to include a heavy dose of whimsy, a sense of humor, and a portion of wonder. We have some great stories in the works — from Unique Plant Combinations to Starting a Water Garden to Growing Vegetables in Tight Spaces — we can’t wait to share them with our readers!

If you are a DC area gardener, you’ll love Washington Gardener magazine!

The magazine is written entirely by local area gardeners. They have real-world experience with the same problems you experience in your own gardens. They’ll be sharing their thoughts on what to plant in deep shade, how to cover bare spots, which annuals work best throughout the humid DC summers, and much more.

How to Clean & Preserve Garden Tools

In this video, Kathy Jentz, Editor/Publisher of Washington Gardener Magazine, shows you how to put your vegetable garden to bed for the winter and get a head start on next year's growing season. This video is designed for the gardener, but includes a variety of tips and techniques that would be useful to more experience gardeners as well. This video series includes an overview of the basics including: saving seeds, harvest your last edibles of the season, mulching and cover crops, and creating new growing beds with the lasagna/layer gardening technique.

This series: 23,953 views

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Grass

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Sharpen

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Kathy Jentz: Hi, I am Kathy Jentz showing you how to winterize your vegetable garden. We are now going to show you how to clean, sharpen and store your tools away for the winter.

So, first we will start with our large tools getting them cleaned up. We have a bucket of clean water here we are just going to fill up a little bit and wet down the tools. We are just getting off the big chunks of mud and anything that will cause rust on the tools. Alright, so we have that fairly cleaned off, we are just going to let it sit out in the sun to dry off. So your next step will be to sharpen your tools. It's really nice to have a sharp blade especially on your digging tools, your trowels and your shovels. It only takes a second just usually two or three swipes per side, you have got a nice sharp angle there for when you are cutting into the hard soil of the next spring and late winter. So, you can do the same with your pruners. Give it a nice sharp edge right there and with your weeding tools. So these rasps are available at any hardware store or garden center, they are just a few dollars and they are a great investment for your garden.

So, now to store your tools away for the winter, we are going to fill a bucket with coarse sand and a little bit of motor oil and what we are doing is creating a nice storage place for your long handle tools and your short ones to go into. I am going to dump the rest of the sand in the bucket now and just a regular grade motor oil. It can be used -- motor oil works fine so just maybe a half cup and you are going really want to mix it in there.

So, what this does is it keeps your tools this winter clean, rust free and you can actually use this mixture year round for storing your tools. Every time you pull them in or out they will get a nice little sharpening from the sand and they will stay nice and lubricated from the oil. So, I would like to especially use my digging shovel and store that in as well as my weeding tools. So, that's how to clean, sharpen and store your tools for the winter. Next, we will show you how to turn off your water sources.

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