I know. After a crazy busy spring and long summer of gardening, followed by a flurry of preservation (canning, freezing, and drying) in the early fall, it can be tempting to shut the garden gate and cross your fingers that all will be well come next spring.
Lots of people garden this way but does it actually save us work and benefit our beds in the long run? Uhhh, No and No! You can catch your breath a little and spread the following simple steps out over a few weeks. The pay off will be your garden beds won’t be taken over by weeds, become an incubator for disease & pests, lose essential soil nutrients, injure your perennials, miss the window to plant garlic, and you won’t be faced with a garden in shambles when the rush of spring comes. So where do we start?
#1 OUT WITH THE OLD
Opinions vary as to how much spent vegetation to remove in the fall. Some like to leave a portion of old vegetation in order to feed and shelter beneficial insects and other wildlife. I respect that but prefer to remove most of the annual plants at the end of the season to minimize spread of disease and hosting nonbeneficial insects and wildlife. In addition, it makes other gardening tasks, like spreading mulch, much easier. A notable exception to clearing out everything is leaving legume roots (like beans and peas) in place to release stored nitrogen back into the soil.
When clearing vegetation, be evaluating which portions would be a nice addition to your compost pile, and which portions need to be thrown away due to mildew, blight, etc. It’s kind of a pain separating them sometimes but if you’re tempted to throw all of it on the compost pile those “nasty things” will probably revisit your garden next year. Why? Because most compost piles don’t get hot enough to adequately destroy pathogens.
While you’re at it, gather up all of the temporary stakes, trellises, tomato cages, and row cover and stash them out of the weather to prolong their life. Ahhh, now you’ve got a clean template to work with!
#2 A WORD ABOUT WEEDS
Some weed seeds remain viable for 40 years or more. Everytime we turn our backs on our gardens, and let the weeds have a party, we are multiplying the amount of work we have to do for years to come! Weeding is not my definition of fun, so take one more crack at eliminating those bad boys to lessen your work in the future. Some compost them but I like to reduce the odds of seeds or roots surviving the composting process and just dispose of them.
PAPA DAN-ISM: “Everytime we turn our backs on our gardens, and let the weeds have a party, we are multiplying the amount of work we have to do for years to come!”
#3 PLANT GARLIC
Don’t forget to get some garlic in the ground mid to late fall. Select a garden bed that did not grow alliums (onions, chives, leeks, etc.) this year. Plant individual cloves, flat side down/pointed side up, 5-6 inches apart and 3-4 inches deep. I like to put some bone meal or all purpose organic fertilizer in each hole and cover with compost. You will then see activity in early spring but your final harvest will be during the summer.
#4 GIVE YOUR PERENNIALS SOME LOVE
With just a little pampering and a winter that isn’t too harsh your perennials (like many herbs, asparagus, kale and strawberries) will bounce back quickly in the spring. Some may even be harvestable all winter long! Prune back your over achieving perennials that have gotten large. Finally, they will welcome some kind of mulch with insulative properties like straw, grass clippings, or leaves.
#5 GIVE YOUR SOIL A BOOST AND A BLANKET
Your depleted soil needs a boost of nutrients by adding compost. Compost and mulch are significantly different from one another but are often thought to be the same thing. Compost is biologically active material that is broken down from a variety of organic materials. It is full of microbes and nutrients that your plants need to thrive. Adding it in the fall enables it to further break down, permeate the soil, and encourage worm activity. This is a great time to use the compost you’ve been making all summer or you can always purchase organic compost. Always look for OMRI certified compost to be sure that it meets organic requirements.
Mulch, on the other hand, is any material, organic or inorganic that covers your soil. Its primary role is to protect, insulate, suppress weeds and help retain moisture, not enhance the structure of your soil or “feed” your plants. Examples of organic mulch include wood chips, grass clippings, leaves and straw spread 2-4″ deep. Inorganic mulch could be plastic, gravel, cardboard and even old carpeting.
Another form of organic mulch is called a “cover crop” generally planted about a month before the first hard frost. While keeping weeds at bay they can put nutrients back into the soil and in early spring be mowed down and left as a green manure. Examples of cover crops are winter rye, buckwheat, clover, fava beans and oats.
#6 MAKE REPAIRS AND/OR ADD A NEW GARDEN BED
Has the second law of thermodynamics discovered your garden yet? Mine too! There seems to always be something that needs fixing, sharpening or might benefit from an upgrade. Speaking of upgrades, how about adding a new garden bed? Fall is a great time to lay cardboard over an area of ground you want to use for gardening and pile some soil and compost on it. That way it will have all winter to smother old vegetation and settle in. Or maybe building a raised bed is in your future. Toss leaves, sawdust, and other organic material into it along with some soil and let it naturally decompose & mix together over the winter.
#7 WINTERIZE YOUR WATERING SYSTEM
Some systems are as simple as turning off the spigot, draining the hose and then rolling it up for the season. Still other watering systems, like drip irrigation, need to be blown out with an air compressor at a low PSI setting (like 20). There are nifty connectors that attach to air compressor hoses that are inexpensive but provide a tight fit to get the maximum water out. It may sound a little weird but it is such a satisfying feeling seeing all the excess water blow out of your lines. The last step, if you have fixed irrigation lines, is to cover them up with a layer of mulch for added insulation and to give them a break from UV rays.
#8 TAKE NOTES AND DREAM ABOUT NEXT YEAR
How’s your memory? I think we overestimate how good it is sometimes. It’s better to write down what varieties of plants did the best, planting locations, variables you had to deal with and lessons learned. Smarter not harder is the goal and each season is full of lessons. You win some and you learn some as the saying goes.
So what will you do differently next season? What new varieties will you try? How will you help your garden go to the next level of productivity? What garden design or technique do you want to try? It is fun to mentally garden while you’re waiting for the weather to improve and the seed catalogs to arrive. As you implement these steps I have no doubt next season’s garden is going to be your best one yet!
