11/14/2023
The Dilemma: To Clean or Not to Clean Your Gardens in the Fall
Gardeners all over are divided on the topic of Fall Garden Cleanup and whether you should or shouldn’t clean up your gardens in the fall.
If you’re worried about having places for beneficial insects to hibernate, here are some things to think about. Consider your surrounding area, are there meadows within close proximity to your home? Are there wooded areas? Are there roadsides where grasses and w**ds are left to grow? Is there a brush pile in your yard? If you answer yes to any of these questions, native bees, pollinators and other critters will be fine.
If you have problems with insect pests or diseases in your gardens, it’s best to get the mess cleaned up. Also, if you have mice or voles in the gardens, don’t encourage them by creating a winter habitat for them.
There’s really no right or wrong answer here. You decide what works for you and just go with it.
How to Cleanup Flower Gardens
1. Pick up all the decor pieces and garden art from your garden. Brush the pieces off or hose them down, dry them and store them for winter.
2. Make a quick sweep through the flower beds and pull all the annual plants and w**ds. I don’t recommend composting w**ds, but the annuals can be tossed into the compost bin. If you want to collect seeds from your annuals, don’t forget to do that first. After pulling the annuals, give them a good shake over the ground to see if you can get any volunteers next year. This works really well with snapdragons, alyssum and sometimes marigolds.
3. And lastly, on the flower beds, use a w**d eater to cut back all the perennials or other gardening tools. Be sure to leave some seed heads for the birds.
4. As an extra step, in the perennial garden, go through and replace any missing or faded plant tags, or ones you might have chopped up with the w**d eater (speaking from experience).
5. Go through and lightly rake flower beds. If you have a problem with rotting perennials or rotting bulbs, it’s especially important to get as much leaf debris off your flower beds.
6. Consider creating a small pile of hollow stems and dead plant material somewhere in your garden or yard as a winter home for beneficial insects.
Fall Garden Clean Up – Vegetable Gardens
1. Pull all the vegetable plants after the first frost, or when the plants stop producing.
2. Chop them up, and then throw the ground up mess back on top of the soil.
3. You can also use mulched leaves and grass clippings on top of the beds as well.
4. In the spring, the composted leaves, plants and grass clippings can be tilled into the soil and then raked out smooth.
5. Just a note here, if you had a significant pest or disease problem in your vegetable gardens, It’s a good idea to clean the veggie beds well and just leave bare soil (or sow a cover crop) for the winter. Also, don’t toss diseased plant debris in your compost pile.
Fall Garden Clean Up – Container Gardens
You can just dump your container contents into a big plastic wheelbarrow that has a hole in the bottom for drainage, chop it up as best you can and leave it to compost over winter and then reuse the soil the following spring. Here are a few other things you can do with your containers:
1. Pull out any perennials and plant them in the ground. This works with vinca vine and ivy, but be sure they have a good leaf cover.
2. Take some cuttings from plants like coleus to start some new babies indoors. Coleus can be rooted very easily in water.
3. If you have Caladium, Dahlias, Tuberous Begonias, Canna Lilies, Calla Lilies, Gladiolas, etc., in colder climates these plants will not overwinter outdoors and have to be replanted every spring. However, the tubers or bulbs can be dug and stored over winter indoors and planted again next spring. It’s a great way to stretch your gardening budget. Also, next year’s plants will be larger and will grow bigger and better every year.
Protect New Shrubs and Trees
First of all, if you have newly planted trees or shrubs in your landscape, be sure they go into winter adequately watered.
Protect shrubs from winter damage caused from hungry critters by creating a cage to encircle the bottom portion of the shrub. A couple of rabbits can decimate shrubs during the winter. To protect young trees and small fruit trees from critters, use plastic tree guard protectors. It works best to bury the protector around the tree, so that rodents can’t get to the bottom of tree trunks.
Do you have evergreen shrubs or trees, such as arborvitae and/or dwarf Alberta spruce trees, that are sensitive to winter burn? If so, be sure to wrap them loosely before the first hard frost.
Fall Is The Best Time To Prepare New Garden Beds
Stake out any areas where you want to create a new garden bed.
1. Mow the grass or w**ds down as low as possible.
2. Cover the area with cardboard or a good layer of newspaper.
3. Cover the cardboard or newspapers with grass and leaf litter.
4. If the forecast doesn’t show rain in the next few days, soak the area really well with the hose.
In early spring, with just some simple prep, you’ll have an area that’s ready to plant. The soil has been fortified from the paper, dead leaves and grass clippings over the winter months. Till the area to mix the organic matter into the soil. Then, with a little raking, you will have a blank slate in which to create your garden bed, whether it be for flowers, veggies or any other kind of garden.
