Fall Garden Cleanup

The nights are becoming cold, leaves are crisp and colorful, and it's time to start on fall garden cleanup!

A few fall garden chores are very important for healthy plant growth the following summer. Others, however, are optional. They really depend on your ideas about gardening and on local gardening standards.

Cleaning away diseased and damaged plant material at the end of the growing season is an essential fall chore. The fungi and bacteria that cause so many problems can overwinter on contaminated stems and roots. Removing these havens for disease will reduce the chance of seeing blight, mildew, gray mold fungus, root rot, and wilt in next year’s garden.

How much plant material should you remove? That depends on conditions in your particular garden. Obviously, any diseased material has to be cleared away. If a particular kind of disease has been a problem, it’s also a good idea to remove the remains of any plant that is ordinarily susceptible to that problem, even if it looked healthy all season. Some gardeners like to remove all plant material that has died back after a frost as a further precaution.

All healthy plant material can be composted, including twigs. Unhealthy material should only be composted if you manage your compost pile with strict controls and can be sure that the compost pile will reach a temperature of at least 120 F and remain at that temperature for two to three weeks. A “hot” compost pile will kill disease organisms and insect larvae.

If your composting practices are more casual, don’t put unhealthy material in the pile. Burn it, if burning is allowed in your neighborhood, or send it to a landfill.

Left undisturbed, fallen leaves will gradually decompose and enrich the soil beneath. This is a natural cycle in a forest, and parts of your garden may benefit from a little benign neglect. Doing nothing can sometimes be the best practice for a healthy garden.

However, most gardens are not a natural forest environment. When a thick layer of leaves carpets the soil, they break down and form a crust, called a leaf pack. Sometimes, the surface of the leaf pack becomes so hard and dense that water can’t get through it. Anything growing beneath a heavy leaf pack is in danger of being smothered. Grass is particularly vulnerable; you really must remove fallen leaves from your lawn.

Community standards also dictate how you will manage fallen leaves. There may be local ordinances that require you to rake all leaves off your garden beds. You may have to remove them to make your neighbors happy.

Don’t trash those leaves! Put them on your compost pile, and look forward to next year’s healthful compost.

Perennial plants are left in the ground all winter, so good care in the fall will improve your chances for healthy growth in the spring. Some gardeners cut back all their perennial plants in the fall to a height of three to six inches. Others only remove the stems and foliage of damaged plants. Most gardeners choose an approach somewhere between these extremes.

It’s essential to remove any plant growth that showed a serious problem in the previous year. It’s a good idea to remove foliage and stems of any plant that often has problems in your general area. Peonies and roses, for example, are vulnerable to black spot, somust gardeners remove the foliage even if it was healthy all summer. Iris should also be cut back, because the eggs of iris borers overwinter on iris leaves and attack the rhizomes in the spring. Phlox is often troubled by powdery mildew, and if that is a problem in your area, cut back phlox stems also.

When you cut back perennials, it is a good idea to mark their location with a stake. That way, you’ll know where they are in the spring! This is also a good time to make a sketch or map of your garden, indicating which perennials you have and where each one is located. That will make garden planning more fun all winter as well as reminding you of plant locations in early spring.

Cutting back other perennials is optional. Many gardeners admire the look of plant stalks covered with snow or ice. Others like to watch the birds that gather to eat dried seeds from perennials like Echinacea.

In areas with cold winters and little snow cover, perennials will benefit from a protective winter mulch.

Many experts recommend removing all plant material – roots, leaves, and stems – from the vegetable garden every fall, because vegetables are vulnerable to so many diseases and pests. Others feel that removing diseased or particularly vulnerable plants is enough.

Cleaning up vines after pumpkins, squash, and fall beans have been harvested helps eliminate squash bugs and cucumber beetles, two very common pests. When these insects have no late fall food source, they are more likely to be killed by cold weather.

Removing the entire tomato plant after harvest, including the roots, helps control foliar diseases such as early blight.

Removing dead foliage also removes a warm, comfortable home for small animals like mice. Rodents are not welcome in your vegetable garden if you want to eat the crop yourself!

After you have removed all diseased plants, till the garden. If you wish to add soil amendments, you can till them into the soil at the same time. Tilling is especially important because most disease microorganisms are destroyed once the plant material is mixed into the soil and begins to rot.

It’s not necessary to smooth the surface of the garden after fall tilling. In fact, the freeze-and-thaw cycle will help improve the texture of the soil.

Remember to make a chart of the layout of your vegetable garden, so that you can rotate crops next spring. This is one of the best ways to keep diseases and pests under control.

Disease microorganisms can also overwinter on the surface of stakes, tomato cages, trellises, and other garden items. Storing these items outdoors, where freezing nd thawing can kill the spores, is helpful. In the spring, clean them with a 10 percent bleach solution or other disinfectant before using them in the garden.

An annual garden can be treated like a vegetable garden: remove all diseased material and till the rest under.

Collect seeds from your annual flowers before you pull them out! Some hybrids will not “come true” from seed, but species annuals and biennials will. If you save seeds, you may never have to buy many of your favorite annuals again! Store the seed over the winter and plant it in the spring. Some hearty “volunteers”, like larkspur or rose campion, will happily return year after year if you scatter seed each fall.

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