Once the first frost arrives, many of our gardening practices go dormant. However, there’s lots for gardeners to do in the fall and winter months, from tucking perennials in for the season to starting transplants for spring. You could tackle your fall garden to-do list in the backyard, but why suffer with frostbitten fingers if you don’t have to? When you turn your garage into the ultimate garden workshop, you can garden comfortably in winter and all year round. Planet Jordan offers the following tips to help you get started.
4 Ways to Use Your Garage for Winter Gardening
Tool Cleanup and Storage
Proper care will keep your favorite garden tools in good shape for years to come. Clean and dry tools, lubricate moving parts, and oil wooden handles and blades before hanging tools up for winter. Pots and trays should be cleaned, sanitized, and stacked indoors so they’re ready for spring.
Composting
Composting is a great way to turn kitchen scraps and dead plants into rich fertilizer for next year’s garden. Not only is compost eco-friendly and 100 percent free, compost won’t burn plants like other fertilizers so there’s no need to worry when applying it to the garden. However, outdoor compost will go quiet during cold weather. To speed up the composting process (or just free up space in the backyard!), tuck a compost bin into the corner of your garage. You can inoculate a small indoor compost bin with bokashi to compost quickly or transfer the contents of a countertop compost bin into a larger tumbler in the garage.
Winter Plant Storage
Some plants aren’t hardy enough to survive the winter outdoors. While some, like rosemary and thyme, can come indoors to live as houseplants through the winter, others need to stay warmer than outdoors but cooler than your house. The garage offers the perfect solution for overwintering bulbs, tubers, and tender perennials until the weather is right for replanting.
Starting Seedlings
Starting your own seedlings is a great way to save money and satisfy the early spring gardening itch. When it’s still too cold to grow outdoors, set up shelves and lights to start seedlings in your garage. Vegetable plants and some herbs are easy to start yourself, but don’t be too hard on yourself if it takes a few tries to get it right — growing sturdy plants takes practice!
Setting Up the Garage for Winter Gardening
Before you can get busy in the garage, you need to make it a comfortable place to work! Whether you’re converting the whole garage or just a corner, these are the essentials to turn your garage into the ultimate garden workspace.
Survey Comparable Homes
Turning your garage into a garden workshop could change the math as far as your home’s value, either negatively or positively. Determine what your home is worth, and research local home listings to see what other people are doing to their homes. You don’t want your garage plan to adversely affect your home’s value. Instead, you want to incorporate design that’s not only functional but that makes the space a value add.
Heating
If your garage isn’t heated, use an electric space heater or radiant ceiling panels to make your workspace more comfortable. You may also want to insulate walls and seal drafts if you plan on spending a lot of time in the garage.
A Potting Bench
Every gardener needs a great potting bench. On top of being a handy workstation and storage area, potting benches are a way to show off your personal garden style! A DIY potting bench is a fun weekend project, or you can buy a premade potting bench with everything you need to get your garden growing.
Cushioned Flooring
Concrete floors offer little cushion for afternoons at the potting bench, but anti-fatigue mats and interlocking foam floor tiles make even the hardest of floors comfortable.
Wall Storage
Your garden workshop will look more organized if you keep storage off the floor and on the walls. Pegboard and slatwall panels are the perfect solution for your garage storage needs, with options for hanging large and small tools as well mounting shelves for bulkier items.
There’s always something to do in the garden, even when it’s cold outside! Instead of forgetting about your garden until the spring thaws, look for ways to stay gardening all year round. While it might not match the excitement of spotting the first spring bloom or eating a tomato fresh off the vine, a cozy garage workspace is just the thing to keep your thumb green when it’s too cold to get outdoors.
Image via Unsplash
