How To Prepare For Fall In The Garden And Compost Heap

Happy fall, the shortest season of the year! Or at least it seems to be. Autumn is my favorite season, but it never lasts long enough to do all the things on my to-do list.

Summer's heat has gone. We'll have more hot days, but the fierceness is absent. Chilly mornings will give way to warm afternoons but it won't be unbearable to be outside.

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Soon - maybe even next week, according to our weather forecast - we'll have overnight temperatures in the 40's. The tomato plants will stop flowering and it will be time to bring in some very ripe tomatoes so I can save the seeds.

Then I'll take some cuttings from the tomato plants to over-winter indoors and plant again in spring.

And I'll try to hasten the ripening of the green tomatoes still on the plants. You can read my tips on that here - and what you can do with the green tomatoes that are still left when the first frost looms.

But I intend to clean up the tomato beds before the frost kills them, because I'd much rather deal with them before the foliage is black and slimy from the frost. Ick.

The sweet potatoes will be ready to harvest as soon as the vines die back. I've stuck my fingers in the soil just to be sure there really are sweet potato tubers in there, and I pulled a monster tuber that we had with dinner last night. I can hardly wait till they're ready to harvest.

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The only other thing still growing in my vegetable beds is a single, huge, winter squash plant. I'm watching the stems of the dozen squashes on the vine for the first signs of drying out so I'll know when they're ready to pick.

I'm going to harvest some rosemary and thyme this week. I noticed the other day that the herb bed needs to be topped up with soil; it was the first raised bed I built several years ago and the soil has settled. Adding soil and compost to the top of the bed will also help to insulate the roots of the herbs in that bed, which also holds my comfrey and lavender plants. I'll use a wheelbarrow-load of finished compost from the horse barn for this. It's a wheelbarrow-load of beautiful black gold!

Cleaning up the garden in the fall helps eliminate any insect pests that are planning to hibernate over the winter and attack your garden next year. At the same time though, watch for egg sacks of "good" bugs and leave any frog habitats you might have provided. I know, it's a bit of a balancing act.

After harvesting the tomato, squash and sweet potato plants I'll have a small mountain of plant material to deal with. I'll cut the tomato and squash plants at ground level and leave the roots to decompose in the soil over the winter. Then all the stems and leaves are chopped into pieces about 3-4" long with my garden shears and layered in a new compost pile.

Compost decomposes more slowly in the fall and winter than in the summer, and smaller pieces decompose more quickly than larger pieces. My goal for a winter compost pile is to be finished in the spring and ready to use in my garden to either top off beds that have settled or to fill a new bed, so the small pieces of plant material will work better for me.

This year I have a new, empty raised bed that hubby built for me last summer that needs to be filled up and planted in next spring. Since I need a great deal of compost and soil to fill the bed, I'm going to compost right in the bed using the lasagna method.

Basically, you layer compost materials as though you're making a pan of lasagna: a layer of kitchen scraps, a layer of fallen leaves, a layer of plant material, a layer of wood chips, another layer of plant material, and so on. You just alternate "browns" and "greens" as though you're making a common compost pile. You can read all the details in the book Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza. (affiliate link)

"Browns" are sources of carbon and "greens" are sources of nitrogen. You'll find a list of common browns and greens here.

Lasagna layers work well if you have a large space to fill AND a lot of compost ingredients to use. Autumn is a perfect time to build a lasagna bed because of the abundance of fallen leaves (browns) and plants you're cleaning up in your garden (greens).

Hubby will mow the lawn one more time and I'll use the grass clippings for another layer. I'll clean out the horses' barn for another, and use the contents of the pile of chicken manure and shavings in the barnyard. The scraps from my canning sessions and this month's kitchen scraps were stuck in the freezer in gallon-size bags so I could add them all at once.

There are compost materials all around you and this is the time to put them to use! Use your imagination and use what you have, because compost ingredients are basically just trash. Clean up your garden. Rake your leaves and mow your lawn - or ask your neighbors if you can have their leaves and grass clippings (make sure they weren't treated with chemicals though). See if you can source compost materials from friends and family. Layer it all in a raised bed or in a large compost pile, wet it down well and let it work over the winter.

Don't worry if you don't have an empty raised bed to fill with your compost ingredients; just add them in thin layers to form a pile right on the ground. Top off the pile with a layer of carbon such as straw or wood chips to help hold in the heat.

Preparing the Garden for Fall in a Nutshell:

• Clean up your annual plants before frost hits to avoid dealing with slimy, black foliage.
• Put away your garden tools and hoses in a garage or shed.
• Cut up plant material into small pieces; chop fallen leaves with the lawnmower.
• Layer the plant material (a "green" compost ingredient) with fallen leaves, straw and other "brown" compost materials. Use thin layers.
• Find a list of green and brown compost ingredients here.
• Let it rot until spring!

You'll find tips on managing your winter compost pile here. Should you turn it? Should you cover it?

Now your garden is ready for winter and your compost pile will be ready for spring.

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