Fall cleanup time to wind down or gear up?

Getting ready for harvest and Fall cleanup

It is a bittersweet time. All the work you put in growing your leafbabies is paying off and soon, you will be clearing out the garden beds to prepare them for the long cold nights. What is your process for getting ready for harvest and fall cleanup?

We are getting ready for harvest and fall cleanup right now.

It’s still beautiful weather out now and the summer veggies are producing tomatos and peppers and basil and thyme and zucchini and and and… Sigh… But with watering restrictions, we’ve had to hand water everything. Last week we tweeted that carting buckets was a great workout.

And soon it will be time to plant the autumn leafbabies… After that… Sub zero wasteland for four or five months. Okay maybe that’s a teeny tiny exaggeration for northern NJ in USDA zone 6B.  But it sort of feels like that.

In the meantime we’re already planning our indoor cold weather planting, fall cleanup activities and already thinking about next spring season. What is your process?

We would love to know what you do

Honestly, we’re not professionals. We just really love gardening and learning. Comment over in the forum. What tools and products do you use? Do you dress your garden beds for winter? Do you fertilize? Where do you stand on pesticides, peat moss and mulch? Do you have trees? How do you treat them for dormancy?

Here are some things we do

Take inventory

Ugh! Seriously!? Yea we get it. What could be more boring than going through your seed bank, journal and pictures. What a drag. We use the fall cleanup time take a look at all our seed packets (while we’re making new ones) to check and make sure nobody’s nibbling on them and make note of what produced well, what needed more help and mark the leafbaby seeds that had pests this season so we skip them next season.

This Cool looking orange and black bug is actually moth that can fly like a hornet (but doesn’t sting) and can do a lot of damage to your squash plants

Plan the indoor garden

Not so much a fall cleanup activity as it is a pre-planning activity. Do you take time off from gardening in the winter? We don’t. It’s understandable if you want to take a break, especially during the fall and winter holidays when life is hectic… So no judgment.  For us, we just can’t stop. A big deal for us is working out which special (small) producers will get transplanted and brought into the house, along with the ornamental and tropical specimens that really won’t survive the cold. The indoor jungle garden seems to get a little bigger year over year, so making space and planning light needs is an important step.

After the frost

It varies for us what happens based on the weather. Having had epic snowstorms and hurricanes around that time of year, we can’t say it’s a standard process, but along with raking and mulching fallen leaves, we do a lot of extra work.  We try to pull out all the dead leafbabies or cut back the dormant perennials, rake back the mulch and weed barriers, give the beds a good turn and fertilize. Fall cleanup would be a good time to check for and terminate pests too, but since we try our best to stay away from pesticides, and stick with rotating crops, the only thing we do is look for and catalog interesting critters for next season.

Getting ready for harvest  and fall cleanup is a busy time

Almost as much as spring, getting ready for harvest, and fall cleanup is a lot of work. But done well you can get and early jump on next season.