10 Gardening Tips for Fall

Fall is coming. This is a great time to get your garden ready for fall and winter.

Presently, it's 6-8 weeks before the first frost date in most parts of the country.

This gives you plenty of time to plant cold weather crops if your climate supports that, or time to put your garden to bed for winter. 

10 Gardening Tips for Fall

1. Analyze what's going on in your garden. Does it need to be cleaned up with spent flowers and dead vegetable plants removed? Is the soil in good condition? If not, add compost and/or a good organice fertilizer. Does it have any kind of infestation of vegetable-damaging insects or slugs? If so, clean up the site and take care of the creepy crawlers.

2. If you use some kind of edging around your garden, check to see if it needs to be repaired or replaced. If you don't use garden edging, maybe this is a good time to add a stone border or something else durable and attractive that suits your yard decor.

3. Till the soil well. Pull oout those pesky weeds by the roots.

4. Water the garden well to let the soil settle.

5. If you have perennials in your garden that need dividing and/or transplanting, this is a good time to do that.

6. Personally, I love a mix of flowers and vegetables. Plant some cold-weather veggies like kale, mustard, spinach, carrots, and turnip greens along with some blooming flowers that love the cold like pansies and mums.

7. Now is the time to design a watering system for your garden. Cool weather is a good time to lay water lines for drip irrigation so that next summer watering isn't such a chore.

8. Prune shrubbery and trees. If you have fruit trees, pruning in the winter means vigorous growth in the spring.

9. Now is also a good time for you to tend to your gardening tools. Clean them well and dry them. Sharpen the edge of anything that cuts with a file. Sand off any rust spots. When they're all clean, fill a bucket with sand and a bit of oil and mix well. Insert the business end of the implement in this bucket of oily sand to protect them from rust. By the way, this is something you should do each time you use them.

10. Last, layer mulch over the entire garden. That's like laying a blanket over a bed to stay warm in cold winter nights.

TAKEAWAY TRUTH

If you're looking for a good vegetable gardening book, you can't go wrong with Vegetable Gardening from the Ground Up by Master Gardener Stephanie Suesan Smith.

Joan participates in Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, affiliate advertising designed to provide a way for websites to earn advertising fees by linking to products on Amazon. She may receive a small commision at no extra cost to you.

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