Soil testing, removing plant material and adding organic mulches, compost and cover crops are all smart gardening techniques for fall cleanup. Use shredded leaves raked from your lawn to cover vegetable gardens or beds.
Remove spent plants and debris.
Any diseased plants must be removed and disposed of in the trash, never added to the compost. Also remove any dead plants which will invite disease and insects. Chop beans and peas off at ground level, leaving their nitrogen-fixing roots in the soil to feed next year's crops.
Remove Summer Edibles, Diseased Plants and Weeds
Strip plants of any remaining fruits and seeds and remove them from garden beds. You can add the plants to a compost pile, if you have one, or toss them in the green wastebin. (Fall is a great time to start composting.)
To fight back against diseases, remove all plant material from the garden, with the exception of winter vegetables or cover crops. In the fruit and vegetable garden, it is especially important to carefully dig up and remove decomposing roots to prevent the release of disease-causing microbes into the soil.
When you're preparing your garden beds for a new season, don't rip your plants out of the ground, roots and all. If you do, you'll be robbing your soil microbes of a good meal and degrading your long-term soil fertility.
Q: When is the best time to cut back in the fall? A: “When they start to look too ratty for you and before the fresh new growth begins,” says Sarah. For plants that are frost-sensitive, wait until after the plants have gone through several hard frosts to ensure they're dormant before cutting back.
Plant a cover crop or add mulch
Most soil should not be left uncovered. Keeping the soil covered is key to soil health.
Leave Leaves for Wildlife
Fallen leaves also provide wildlife, especially pollinators, with some winter cover. Bees, moths, butterflies, snails, spiders, and dozens of arthropods and pollinators overwinter in dead plant material for protection from cold weather and predators.
There are few true perennial vegetable plants that come back year after year. Some of these are a little unusual, but they can be interesting and delicious additions to your harvest each season. If you're tired of replanting every year, a perennial vegetable crop or two might make a nice addition to your garden.
It's important to cut back foliage in the fall to protect flowering plants from disease and give them a clean start for regrowth as winter starts to turn into spring. However, there are some plants you can keep around through the winter since they benefit wildlife and still offer visual interest for your home.
Although September marks the beginning of fall, there are still a few fast growing vegetables that can be planted this month and be harvested before the first frost in most gardening zones. Remember to keep your soil warm by removing all mulch and maybe try using a plastic sheet to trap heat into the soil.
As the organic matter in mulch breaks down it releases minerals and nitrogen, which enriches the soil throughout the fall and winter, and leads to healthier shoots and blooms in spring. Fall mulching also gives soil-improving earthworms and microbes added warmth and good food for the winter.
When winterizing your garden, instead of aerating and raking the soil where your roots veggies are, just put down a nice protective layer of mulch or leaf mold. This will help keep moisture and nutrients locked in the soil.
Yes, leaving fallen leaves to decompose does return valuable nutrients to the soil, provides habitat for lots of important and valuable insect species over winter, and acts as a natural mulch.
Layer fallen, shredded tree leaves, compost and fertilizer in the garden bed and turn under the soil. You could also dig trenches in the garden, pile in the leaves and compost and cover with soil. These organic soil amendments will decompose over winter and leave the soil more fertile when spring rolls around.
Mulch to Insulate Soil
One of the most important tasks in preparing a raised bed garden for winter is insulation. Above-ground gardens can be more vulnerable to the cold than in-ground gardens. Keep your soil covered with several inches of mulch. Spread the winter mulch after the ground is frozen.
Leaving the garden intact for the winter means you'll get a jump start on controlling pests in the spring. Skipping a fall gardening clean up is one important way to help these beneficial insects. Ladybug larvae, such as this one, are voracious predators of many garden pests, including the aphids in this photo.
There are a variety of perennials that should be cut back in the fall. Prune foliage down to just a few inches from the ground and make sure to clear away any debris from the garden to help prevent disease and rot in the early spring.
Whether you're new to gardening, or a seasoned pro, building better soil is the single most important thing you can do to improve your gardening success. And fall is the best time to do it! To learn more, read Building Healthy Soil.
Breaking up the root ball with hands or a knife prior to setting the plant into the hole helps to encourage root growth into the surrounding soil. Failure to do so usually causes the plant to continue to be root-bound (most plants are to some degree when they are purchased in containers).