Fall Gardening Preparation Techniques

Doing a little planning and prepping from now can help rev up your garden for the spring season. Autumn on its own is the best time to manage soils, clean up beds, prepare sod and minimize any issue during the fall season. It is also the best the time to pull out tender summer bloomers and plant spring blooming bulbs. So, maintain and prepare your garden to make sure you get a beautiful and bountiful garden the next season. Read on for some of our Fall Gardening Preparation Techniques:

1.   Clean up rotting and finished plants

Aside from the fact that old plants can look untidy, they can also harbor pest, diseases and fungus. According to research by Colorado State University’s cooperative extension, they found out that insects that feed on your crop during the summer tend to lay eggs on your plant. So, to stop pest from getting a head start in your garden during fall, it is advisable that you remove spent plants from the soil surface or bury them in garden trenches. Burying hem will not only help get rid of any issue, but it also adds organic matter to your soil.

2.   Remove invasive weeds 

This type of weed may have taken hold over the growing season, but now is the perfect time for you deal with those renegades. Dig them up and burn them because most invasive weeds remain viable, so it's better you burn them and not shift them to another part of your garden. The best way to prevent those plants from sprouting again is to obliterate invasive plants.

3.   Plant cover crops

Fall is the best time of the year to sow cover crops as this type of crops help prevent soil erosion, increase levels of organic matter, add nutrients and break up compacted areas in garden beds. Also, it might be hard to plant cover crops, so it is advisable that you contact your local extension agent or seed provider for the best fall cover crop that fits your region.

4.   Harvest and regenerate your compost

Now that the heat of summer is over don’t be tempted to ignore your compost heap because nature’s microbes will just be settling in for their winter’s nap. Apart from the fact that the materials composited over the summer will be finished and ready to go you also make for another batch when you clean out finished compost. You can build your fall compost heap with different straw, autumn leaves or sawdust to keep those microbes working a little bit longer.

5.   Replenish mulch

Summer is not the only time to mulch; you can also mulch in fall and enjoy the same benefits. Some of these benefits include reducing water loss, inhibiting weeds, and protecting the soil from erosion. There are many other benefits of fall mulching, and some of them include thawing of the earth that can adversely affect garden plants as the soil transitions. You can regulate the temperatures and moisture of your soil before winter by adding a thick layer of mulch to the soil surface. You can also buffer against hard frosts and prolong your crop in the cold periods by adding an adhesive layer of mulch around root vegetables left in the garden.