What you need to know – Home Forbes

Fall is the best time to close out your vegetable garden when focusing on summer crops. However, you may want to keep the spruce until spring if you want to extend your plot’s harvest potential by planting cool-season crops.

While you can’t grow frost-sensitive tomatoes, summer squash, or crisp cucumbers, there are a wide selection of cold-hardy root vegetables, brassicas, and leafy greens that thrive in the shoulder season. These species will not die when temperatures drop, their flavor will be even milder as light frosts arrive, and they will be less likely to be bothered by common garden pests.

Always check your local plant hardiness zone to prevent your crops from failing when colder temperatures arrive.

If you close your vegetable garden in the fall, you want to get rid of weeds. Leaving these aggressive invaders in the soil means they will compete with your newly planted vegetables for soil nutrients, light and water come spring.

Where possible, opt for hand pulling or using a mechanical weeding tool to remove these unwanted intruders – roots and all. It may require more elbow grease, but you won’t need to apply harmful herbicides. Chemical weedkillers are not suitable for organic vegetable gardens and often damage desirable crops and beneficial insects.

After you’ve harvested the last of the late summer or early fall vegetables, it’s time to remove the rest of those annuals. Letting foliage and stems decompose can add nutrients to the soil, but you risk exposing your plot to the pathogens that many vegetables are prone to.

Remove the entire plant (including roots) and inspect for signs of disease or pests. You can shred healthy plant material and add it to your home compost pile. However, doing this with infected plants is not a good idea. Temperatures need to reach around 140°F to kill most pathogens. This type of hot composting is possible in municipal facilities, but if you start a compost bin or pile at home, it probably won’t reach these temperatures.

It is best to bag up and discard, bury or burn infested plants to contain the spread of pathogens or pests. Guidelines for removing diseased plants vary, so always check local regulations.

If you have bean or pea plants, consider leaving them in your garden. Legumes are popular companion plants. They provide a beneficial supply of nitrogen and reduce the need for fertilizer in spring. Cut the stems back to the ground, but let the roots work their magic.

While lightly turning your soil can help eliminate weeds, aerate compacted soils, and add organic matter to encourage plant growth, don’t go overboard. Deep mechanical tilling can break down soil particles too much, disrupting microbial health. This can lead to problems with soil compaction, nutrient absorption and erosion.

Doing a soil test every few years allows you to make improvements when necessary to produce the healthiest vegetable crops. A routine nutrient analysis typically checks phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, calcium, organic matter and pH levels.

The average cost of a soil test is $75. Free or low-cost laboratory testing is widely available through local cooperative extension offices. This is a more accurate testing method than a home test kit.

After receiving test results, if your soil is lacking the desired nutrients, add amendments to allow them to decompose before planting new vegetables in the spring.

Even if your soil does not need to be tested or the results all seem good, it is beneficial to add a few inches of compost, well-rotted manure or other organic matter, such as leaf litter, in the vegetable garden cleared in the fall. These amendments help the soil effectively absorb and retain moisture, reduce the need for fertilizer, and minimize polluting stormwater runoff. Improving soil aeration in this way also helps your vegetables develop a strong, healthy root system.

Covering your vegetable garden with a layer of mulch in the fall has many advantages. It helps control weed growth, provides an insulating layer to protect the roots of all perennials, cool season or cover crops from severe frosts and keeps soil evenly moist.

Alternatives to inorganic mulch, such as landscape fabric or plastic sheeting, are inexpensive and easy to remove once spring arrives. However, durable organic mulches that decompose gradually, such as compost and well-rotted manure, have the added benefit of acting as beneficial soil amendments.

Before removing summer crops from your vegetable garden, consider creating a quick sketch or taking photos showing what you planted and where, as well as noting the success of the harvest.

Judicious crop rotation can reduce problems with diseases, pests and soil nutrient deficiencies. You want to avoid planting vegetables from the same family in the same location for at least three years.

You can also evaluate the position of your plants to increase your yields. For example, if you had a poor tomato crop, consider a sunnier, more sheltered spot in the plot next season. You can also select hardier varieties to cope with cooler summer temperatures or disease-resistant cultivars if a particular pathogen has wiped out your crop.

If your plot has limited space, don’t worry if you still want fresh peppers or eggplants during the summer. You can grow these vegetables successfully in containers, reserving garden soil for plant species from different families.

Another vegetable garden idea to promote healthy soil, prevent winter weed growth and add interest to your enclosed plot is to plant a cover crop. This living mulch is sometimes called “green manure”. Some cover crops suitable for planting in late fall include cereal rye, winter wheat, tilled radish, crimson clover and hairy vetch.

Turn cover crops before they exceed a few inches in height in spring, otherwise they can be difficult to manage. After reincorporating the cover crop into the soil, wait at least two weeks before planting new vegetables to give the material time to decompose.