 Hi, during these trying times of the pandemic, the City of Columbia Parks and Recreation Department realizes that choices can be limited in enhancing one's physical, social, and mental well-being. The Parks and Recreation staff have been involved in developing a number of videos in which citizens can participate in and enjoy in the privacy of their own home. These videos consist of arts and crafts, gardening, physical activity, and sports instruction, with many more to come as we work through this pandemic. Our videos will be available to you on a number of our social media outlets. We hope you enjoy and thank you very much. My name is Jacqueline Williams and I work for Parks and Recreation and I oversee all of the city's gardens. So today I am here to talk about how to winterize your garden. I'll tell you what, we are fortunate enough in South Carolina to be able to garden year-round. So some of us have done that and I will tell you some tips to continue with your gardening a year-round. And if you have chosen not to garden year-round, I'm going to tell you some tips that you can do to get your garden bed ready for the spring. So let's get started. So you know, fall is a very important time to get your bed ready. We are at the Drew Wellness Center and I'm going to show you some things to do. Pull any plants from the summer, peppers, that sort of thing. And that has already been done in this bed. So the next thing I'm going to do, you need to pull all of your weeds. The weeds, right here, they harbor disease and pests. So you want to make sure you pull as many weeds as possible. And this is going to take a little time. So I have some, actually, I have some stool. I have something that you can sit on. There are a couple of things that you can do if you're pulling weeds. This right here, this bed is helpful because it's already high, so that's helpful. But you can put it on the edge and you can put your knee on there and that provides a cushion. And you can pull the weeds. You can get a hand rake. Look, the soil is so rich, you can even use your hand. And just get all those weeds up. Now if you did not have any problems with disease, you can take these weeds and your spent flowers and you can put them in your compost bin. But if you did have some issues, you want to get rid of them all together. You probably want to bag them and put them to the curb. Don't keep them in your yard. But if they are, you didn't have any issues, you can put them to the side and compost them. You're not going to take everything out. So you're going to leave this in because this is a cool weather crop, so this stays in. Another thing that you're going to leave in is this mum over here. This mum will come back. It's a perennial. It will come back. But what you will do is you will prune it. So you want to also prune all of your plants that are going to stay in the bed. So I'm just going to, you get the idea. I would cut it all the way back. So after you get all of your weeds out and your spent flowers, you're going to build up your soil. So this is how you build your soil. You're going to add some compost. You're going to add the carbons and your nitrogen. So you want to collect leaves. Leaves are the best thing that you can add to your garden bed. And I'll tell you what, people tend to want to till their garden bed. But I want to tell you, do not till your garden bed because you will mess up the soil structure. So what you need to do instead is put all of your carbons on top of your soil. You have your leaves and your straw and your sticks and your pine cones. And I usually collect leaves all year round in a container like this and then I just dump their leaves into my raised bed. So you also will need to collect your kitchen scraps. And I just layer these items in my garden. I put the kitchen scraps and then I layer it with leaves and then I put some compost on top of all of it. I usually collect my kitchen scraps in a container like this so that I leave under the sink. So this is what I collect my leaves in and this is what I collect my kitchen scraps in. So I would do this to my entire bed. I'm just doing it in one section just to show you. And I would put some landscaping pins down with this fabric right here. And I would cover it up. I would spread it out of course and cover that up. So you can also use compost from the store. So you can make your own or you can use this mushroom compost that you can get at any home store. So again I do not till my garden bed. Now you can till if you are gardening for the first time and your garden bed is full of clay you can use the tiller. But otherwise if your soil is already loose then you do not need to till because the worms have already done all the work for you and you don't want to make them unhappy. They have already done all the hard work for you. Another important thing to do when you winterize your garden is you want to bring in your tropical plants. So this is a tree, it's a desert rose that I got from Florida so I can leave this out in the summer but I need to bring it in in the winter. So if you have, this is small enough for me to bring inside. So I would try to transition it by bringing it into the garage first and then I would bring it into the house into a warm location and if your pots are big and you are not able to bring your plants in for the winter you can cover them outside and I found a use for my fitted sheets because they brought me nuts if anybody knows how to fold these. I just go outside and I take all of my outdoor plants and I cover them with a fitted sheet just like this. Isn't that fitting? And you want to go out and uncover it during the day and then if the temperatures go down to freezing you want to go out and cover them at night. So that's a way to protect your plants outside if you are not able to bring them in for the winter. It is important that if you have to leave your plants outdoors that you water your plants thoroughly. The water will insulate the roots. It is not good for the plant to be dry so watering it will actually save your plant. So make sure you do that if there is a freeze and you are unable to take your plants inside. Another important thing to do at the end of the season you need to wash all of your pots and your supplies, your tools and one way that you can do that is I get a bucket, I fill it with hot water and I put a little bleach inside the bucket and I place the pots inside and let them soak. You want to let them soak for about 30 minutes or so and then when they come out make sure you wear some gloves you can just scrape them clean. And this is important because you may have some pests or disease that were in the pots that you do not want to carry over to the next season. So it is very important that you clean your pots and you clean your tools. Like I said with the bleach solution vinegar will not work. It has to be something like a bleach and if you don't want to use a bleach then you can use boiling water because that will also sterilize your supplies and your pots. You can also just take a little pad and scrub them clean. That works as well. So again it's very important that you make sure that all of your tools and your pots are cleaned out, sterilized and put away properly at the end of the season. After you clean your pots it is best to store terracotta pots and the ceramic pots inside. You can either put them in your garage, a basement, under your house. If you leave them outside since the terracotta pots are porous the water and the rain will get into it and they will contract and they will crack. So although they look sturdy it's not good to leave these outside. You can leave plastic pots outside. The sun sometimes damages them or fades them but we will fade them and won't damage them but these two types of pots is better to take inside after you clean them. If you have a big terracotta pot and you're unable to take it inside you can do a few things. You can turn them upside down and just put them all together upside down and this is so water does not collect in the pots and just kind of group them together. Another thing you want to do is keep a journal of your garden. You can make a map, draw a map so you can know where things were planted so that you will know where to plant them next year. If you want to think about some crop rotation you will know where your crops were planted the previous year. You can write what worked best practices so it's just like a journal for your garden. So this is a very important practice. Okay another important tip get a soil sample. This is very important. This will tell you what your soil needs. So contact your local extension office. We have Clemson Extension off of Sandhill Road so you just want to take a sample of your soil and on the back it even tells you how to take that sample. I think it's about $7 and you send it in and you will get a whole printout about your soil and you will know what to add to your soil to grow the best vegetables possible. So again very important. Soil is the best time to get your, well there's really, you need to always get one but this is a good time to get your soil sample because you will have all winter to get your soil right for the spring. So very important. I just want to show you some tools that make gardening a little easier. I have this stool here. I just did it on the ground and I have a lot of, I'm going to take this a lot of weeding to do and it just makes it comfortable. Rock back and forth. I also have this wagon that also acts as a stool and you can get these items from any home good store. You can put your beverage here, carry your supplies, you can pull your items and then you can store them immediately. I like these tools, let's see, for example this rake because you do not want to step in your garden, you do not want to compact the soil. So after you pull up your weeds, you can take this rake here and you can rake everything together in a pile and dispose of it properly and if you have some hard clay which I don't have here but you can take the shovel and you just turn over your soil. Look at that soil, that's really nice, I tell you what, you can grow some good vegetables in that and it is always good to have your hand tools and so you have, just a weed, you can pull your weeds with these and there's a shovel and a little hand rake so these are also very helpful when you're gardening. Another thing that you want to make sure that you sterilize, your seed starters, I start my seeds in these and I like this tray because it can hold the water at the bottom but at the end of the season you do want to make sure that you sterilize these. I would probably just spray some type of bleach solution on these and just rinse it instead of soaking this, I think that will be sufficient. I love you. Have to leave your plants outside, there are a couple of things, a couple of other things you can do, the bigger the pot the better, a small pot will freeze faster so it's best to plant in big pots like this if you have to leave your some of your plants outdoors. What I do for plants that I cannot keep taken side, I move them close to the house because it holds heat and I put some lights, the little Christmas lights on my plant and that will also heat up my plant and keep it alive during the winter. I love gardening, I hope that these tips you will find them helpful. Another thing, know your planting zone, things that happen in the one planting zone does not happen in another planting zone so that's very important, happy gardening.