Winter gardening (grass, earthworms, spring, peppers)

[mitopcat]

So, next spring I have my area picked out for a garden. This is not my first garden but its my first garden with more resources (compost, ash from burning wood). I'd like to know of people out there who has started a garden and what they did during the winter months.

Right now I have a compost going. I've been throwing organic material in it (coffee/filters, dead leaves, grass, paper, ect). I'm going to see if I can keep that going with throwing hot coals in it.

Let me know what else I can do over the winter months to help with the gardening in the spring.

[FW transplant]

Winter is a good time to prepare the soil for spring planting. I'm sorry, but I didn't understand if you're throwing the organic material into the garden area, or in a compost pile. Also, do you need to kill grass prior to preparing the garden?

I've placed newspaper over the area I want to plant and topped it with mulch to keep the paper down. In the spring, an amazing number of earthworms made the area their home and were gracious enough to enhance my soil under the paper. The newspaper also helped to kill the grass during the winter.

[Maine Writer]

Make sure your soil needs ash. Is your compost pile far enough away from everything burnable so that if you catch it on fire with the hot coals nothing will be damaged? I've never heard of this.

[foxywench]

ive never heard of putting hot ash/coals on a compost heap :/

[kinkytoes]

The major thing I recently did is starting my eggplant and peppers inside.