Today's Q&A is about how to prepare your garden for next season.

Jonathan emailed me in response to my weekly email that I send out on Friday mornings.

If you're not signed up for that, check out the link in the show notes.

And he was telling me that this year was his first year as a gardener,

and he told me some things that went wrong or didn't go as

he expected, diseases, things like that. And then he said that he learned a lot this year,

which I love that. And he's getting ready to prepare for next season. And I just have to tell

you, I have heard from a lot of first-time gardeners both in email and in Instagram who have the same

type of attitude and I love it. They did a first-time garden this year. They had some successes,

they had some failures, but they're ready to improve next year. And that's exactly where I'm

hoping first-time gardeners are at the end of the season. But his question comes

because he did have some things that were some frustrations for him, and he wanted to know

what he could do before next season's garden. He specifically asked if there was anything more

he needed to do besides adding compost. And obviously he understood that adding compost at the end

of the year is a really good thing to do. And honestly, I really don't suggest a whole lot more than

that under most circumstances. I did recommend that he might consider a soil test, even though he's gardening in a raised bed and at my

experience my raised beds typically are a little bit more stable when it comes to the pH

and the nutrients it wouldn't hurt to get an idea of what his nutrition profile looks like

on those beds and make sure that the pH is in range. Because if you listen to my podcast episode

earlier this year about the three raised bed soil mixes that I tested, one of them had a really

high pH and all I used was bagged soil. So I did suggest that as something that he might want to do

in the off season. And another reason is because

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