Winterizing and Filling Your Raised Bed: Kill Slugs Too!

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Fall is a great time to winterize your vegetable garden raised beds (so to speak) and fill them up for next spring. You do the work now, to have ready to go planting beds come spring. Winterizing your beds is also a great way to cut down on slugs and snails. Kill them in the fall, so they aren't around in the spring.

Remove all the debris from this year's vegetables. Bag it and throw it away. That is the best way to remove over-wintering disease spores. The bed in the video is just filled with cheap topsoil, leaves and grass and a layer of newspaper. You are putting your bed to sleep for about 4 months. The goal is to fill up your bed, cut down on disease, reduce the snail and slug population and get the work done early.

When spring arrives you will add compost, manure and other organic matter to the top of the bed and then, come spring, you will turn it all under. Your beds will be ready for your spring cool weather vegetables. Winterize is not an exact process. It is a concept. The video gives you the basic idea of winterizing and a way to kill some slugs and snails.