As the peak summer harvest season passes, it’s time to prepare a vegetable garden for fall. In late summer, gardeners are busy with watering and harvesting. However, it’s also important to look ahead in order to enjoy late-season harvests and set the garden up properly for the following year.
Let’s review the key tasks for preparing a veggie garden for fall, including wrapping up summer harvests, planting fall crops, and beginning to prep the garden for winter dormancy.
Concluding Summer Harvests
In many vegetable gardens, late July through early September is a time for daily harvesting. Late summer harvests typically include spring-planted crops like tomatoes, onions, summer squash, and peppers.
To extend harvests, keep watering, weeding, and picking ripe veggies. When over-ripe fruits are left on a plant, the plant will redirect energy toward seed production. So, it’s important to remain consistent with harvesting to encourage plants to keep producing late in the season.
If your garden produces more than you can eat at once, you can preserve your precious produce with canning, freezing, or dehydrating. You may also choose to donate veggies to a local food pantry. To find a local organization that accepts fresh food donations, enter your zip code into the pantry-finder tool at AmpleHarvest.org.
Planting Cold-Hardy Crops for Fall Harvests
August and September are great months for planting cold-hardy veggies. These include:
- Leafy greens, such as lettuce, kale, spinach, arugula, and collards
- Root veggies, such as carrots, turnips, and radishes
- Broccoli
- Peas
Many cold hardy veggies can be direct sown (planted as seeds directly in the ground) and quickly mature in time for harvesting in October or November. Of course, local climate is a major factor for fall gardening, so it’s important to know your local hardiness zone. Choose plants and varieties that are recommended for growing in the fall in your region.
Winter Protection for Garden Beds: Cover Crops or Mulch
Garden beds require protection during winter. If soil is left bare, it will erode, wash away, lose nutrients, and become weedy.
Prepping garden beds for winter is typically a late fall task, but can be done whenever a bed’s growing season is complete. Two options for protecting the bed’s soil are cover crops and mulching.
A cover crop is a crop that’s planted to protect and enrich soil, rather than to create a harvest. Cover cropping is an agricultural technique, but it’s also effective for home gardens. To implement this approach, sow a cover crop in late summer or early fall. After thoroughly clearing and weeding the bed, sow the cover crop seeds in dense formations to thoroughly cover the area.
Ideal cover crops include rye grass, buckwheat, winter peas, and annual clover. These plants grow fast and dense, survive frosts, and release nutrients into the soil while preventing erosion and weed growth. They can then be easily removed when it’s time to plant next year’s veggies.
Another option is to protect the soil with mulch. Start by snipping off and removing old plants, then thoroughly weeding the bed. Then, apply a few inches of straw, crushed leaves, or dry grass clippings. You can also add a layer of compost to provide additional nutrient inputs to the soil.
You may wish to leave old veggie plants in place to feed the soil and provide habitat for beneficial insects. This is a viable option, but may lead to the spread of disease or pests. Rooted dead plants also make it harder to apply mulch to a bed. A better option for helping out pollinators and other beneficial insects is to set aside a portion of your garden for perennial native plants that provide year-round habitat.
Late Summer Maintenance and Cleanup
Whether or not you’re aiming for more harvests through the fall, late summer is the time to begin clearing away old material and prepping a garden for winter.
Late summer upkeep tasks for your veggie garden may include:
- Removing tomato cages and other fixtures for cleaning and winter storage
- Composting dead plants
- Harvesting and storing seeds for next year
Dry summer weather is also ideal for completing renovation or construction tasks, such as building new raised beds or completing hardscaping projects.
Making the Most Out of Each Season in Your Garden
Late summer is a busy time in the garden. However, along with watering and harvesting, it’s important to look ahead. Planning for fall ensures a longer harvest season, healthy garden beds, and an easy transition to next year’s plantings.
Did you know that fall is a great time of year for planting trees and shrubs? If you’re thinking about adding a tree to your property this autumn, now is the time to make a plan. Get started with our guide to fall planting of trees and shrubs.
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