Prepare soil now for spring planting

Preparing the ground now for planting lets you get your first seeds into that ground earlier in spring. Although wet soil often delays spring soil preparation, in fall the soil is usually just right for digging -- moist, but not sodden. Fall tillage is less work because your goal is to leave the soil in rough clods, rather than to create a fine seedbed. Freezing and thawing in winter breaks those clods so simple raking crumbles them into a smooth seedbed.

An even easier way to avoid delay in spring planting is by not tilling at all. We till soils for aeration, but that's needed because we compact soils by walking on them. Lay out your garden in permanent beds and paths and you never have to walk where you plant, so the soil never needs tilling.

Whether or not you till your soil, now is also a good time to get a jump on weeds. Waiting until spring gives annual weeds plenty of time to ripen and disperse their seeds, and perennial weeds time to get a strong foothold. Either hoe weeds to death or pull them out, roots and all.

Garden edges need special attention to prevent creeping weeds, such as quackgrass and ground ivy, from sneaking in.

Fall is also a good season to make and use compost. All at once, so much compostable material is available: tomato vines, rotted fruits and vegetables, trimmings and pits from canning and freezing, tree leaves and grass clippings.

A compost pile built this fall should be thoroughly broken down and ready for use within a year. Use compost to blanket untilled beds. If you till, spread compost over the surface after you till.

An inch or two of compost each year supplies much of the nutrition that plants need, but your garden might also need more concentrated fertilizers and, perhaps, lime.

Fall is also a good time to apply lime and fertilizer, especially organic fertilizers, which are less likely than synthetic fertilizers to leach out of the soil by spring.

Soybean meal is an organic fertilizer that is rich in nitrogen (7 percent) and inexpensive. Usually, one feeding, at the rate of 6 cups per hundred square feet, is all that's needed for the year.

Don't worry about having nothing to do in spring. With soil readied, you can channel your primal urges to get out into the garden in spring into such activities as pruning, mowing, tidying up -- and sowing seeds, of course.