Autumn Abundance: Cleaning Up and Enjoying Your Fall Garden

October is a beautiful month to clean up your veggie garden while at the same time continue eating from it.  Leave the broccoli plants until a hard freeze kills the plant.  Frost makes the small heads that continue to be produced after the main head is harvested taste sweeter than summer broccoli.  This is certainly true for Brussels Sprouts that can wait to be enjoyed until after the first couple of frosts.  If you planted late season lettuce or spinach, you’ll notice they taste better with the cooler fall temperatures as well.  

Some plants can go right into the compost bin when their production is finished.  These include beans, corn, summer squash, overgrown lettuce, other brassica (cabbage) family members and leafy weeds.  If you have weeds with seed heads, remove the heads before composting.  Here’s an idea for plants with disease issues such as tomatoes, peppers, cucumber and melons: keep a separate compost pile for diseased plants and use this compost for planting trees and shrubs or as a top dressing for perennial beds.  You’ll keep the disease and insect problems out of your precious veggie garden and utilize the nutrients in the plants while keeping them out of the landfill.  

Fall is a wonderful time to prepare your beds for the next growing season.  Do one last weeding.  Once all the foliage is removed, add 1-2 inches of compost and/or manure plus a layer of leaves either chopped or whole for success in spring planting. It is good gardening practice to never leave soil uncovered.  Fall leaves are a great and free resource for covering the garden beds.

Use your garden map from this year to plan next year’s garden.  Rotating crops by family will help with disease and insect issues.  Here are the major crop families:

Legumes: beans and peas (add nitrogen back to the soil)
Brassicas: broccoli, cabbage, radishes (plant in soil after legumes, if possible)
Nightshade: tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, potatoes (heavy feeders that need rich soil, don’t plant tomatoes after potatoes)
Umbellifers: carrots, parsnips, fennel, parsley and dill
Cucurbits: zucchini, summer and winter squash, cukes, pumpkins, melons and gourds (heavy feeders that grow best in rich soil)

As always, don’t try to get everything in your garden “just right”. Do your best, sing to your plants and rejoice in what you do get done. Happy fall eating, garden friends!  What a delicious and colorful time of year!