Get your garden ready for winter with these fall garden cleanup tips. Learn how to clear spent plants, protect perennials, mulch your soil, and keep pests and diseases from overwintering. Discover which vegetables can survive frost, how to store herbs, and why fall composting sets you up for success.
With a little preparation now, you’ll enjoy a healthier, more productive garden when spring arrives.
Fall Garden Cleanup: How to Put Your Garden to Bed for Winter
Autumn is my favorite season in the garden - the golden light, the cooler days, and that crisp feeling in the air.
After the blazing heat of summer - when I’ll be honest, I sometimes dread even going outside just to water the garden - fall feels like a gift.
My late-summer gardening often slows down to the bare basics, but when cooler weather arrives, I love being back outside, tending plants, harvesting, and preparing for winter and next spring.
Fall is the time to “put your garden to bed.” By doing a little work now, you’ll protect your plants and soil so that when spring comes, you’ll be ready to hit the ground running.
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Clear Out Spent Plants
First, tackle the annuals. Once they’ve finished their life cycle, pull them up. Perennials, on the other hand, need protection for winter (we’ll get to those in a bit).
Why clean up now? For one thing, it helps reduce pests and diseases that would otherwise overwinter in your garden. Some experts suggest leaving garden debris until spring to shelter beneficial insects - and there’s truth in that. But remember, bad bugs and diseases overwinter in debris too.
Personally, I prefer to clean up my garden in the fall.
Two pests that love to stick around are squash vine borers and squash bugs. Vine borers pupate in little cocoons in the soil, and squash bugs hide in debris. Turning the soil and removing old plants can disrupt their life cycle and cut down on next year’s problems.
If you suspect certain plants carry disease - such as blight in tomatoes - don’t compost them. Instead, toss them in the trash or burn them.
Save Seeds & Harvest Fall Crops
Before you pull everything up, look around for what you can still harvest. If you planted a fall garden, gather those vegetables before you close down that section of your beds.
Don’t overlook the chance to collect mature seeds from open-pollinated plants like beans, peppers, or flowers. Store them away in labeled envelopes for next year.
Other things to harvest now:
- Pumpkins and winter squash
- Sweet potatoes
- Green tomatoes (pick them before frost and ripen them indoors)
- Herbs such as basil, mint, and rosemary
Large-leaved herbs like comfrey and mullein dry beautifully on a hanging “octopus” clothes dryer.
This is also when it helps to know which vegetables can survive frost. For example:
Beets, carrots, cauliflower, peas, radishes can survive a light frost. Broccoli, cabbage, kale and turnips can survive a hard frost (down to about 28°F). Many of these crops actually taste sweeter after frost.
Quick tip: If a surprise light frost sneaks into the forecast, cover tender plants like tomatoes and peppers with old sheets, frost cloth, or buckets. Just remember to uncover them in the morning. While this isn't a guarantee, covering frost tender plants can extend your garden season for another few days or weeks.
Mulch & Protect the Soil
Bare soil is an invitation to erosion and weeds, so give your garden a winter blanket. You can plant a cover crop like rye or clover to add nutrients back into the soil, or simply spread mulch on top of the soil.
Leaves, straw, or compost all make excellent mulch. Just remember - hay is full of seeds, and those seeds will sprout next spring. Stick with straw if you’re buying bales, but check it first and make sure it isn’t full of seed heads. Oat and wheat straw is what’s left after the grain heads have been harvested, while grass hay is most likely to contain seeds.
Whatever type of mulch you use on your garden, it won’t just protect against erosion, it will conserve moisture, suppress weeds from popping up, and feed the soil life that’s working quietly all winter long.
Care for Perennials
Garlic, strawberries, rhubarb, and asparagus all appreciate a blanket of mulch through the cold months. I like to sprinkle a little compost around them before mulching so they’re ready to burst into growth in spring.
I also cut my comfrey back to the ground before the first frost. Since the leaves will die back anyway, I dry the best ones for winter use and add the rest to compost or as a mulch layer on my beds. Comfrey is a wonderful soil-builder.
If you’re overwintering herbs in pots, here’s a trick: dig holes in an empty raised bed, set the pots inside, pull the soil up around the pots, and cover the plants with mulch. The surrounding soil insulates the roots much better than if the pots were left on the patio.
I also take a photo of the bed and label the pots in the picture, so in spring I can remember what’s what. (Those pots look alike in late winter when there are just a few dead-looking twigs in them!)
Tools & Infrastructure
Cleanup also means gathering up tools and supplies and protecting them from winter weather. Clean dirt from shovels, hoes, and pruners, then wipe blades with a little oil to prevent rust.
Drain and coil hoses so they won’t freeze and crack.
Gather up tomato cages, trellises, and empty pots before winter storms damage them. While you’re at it, check fences and raised beds - a wobbly board is easier to fix now than in the busy planting season.
Compost & Soil Building
Keep your compost pile going all winter. Add healthy plant debris and fall leaves, layering with kitchen scraps. By spring, you’ll have a head start on rich compost.
I’ll never forget the first compost pile I ever saw, almost 40 years ago. Snow had fallen, but steam was rising from the pile as the materials inside heated up and broke down. That sight sparked my fascination with composting.
If composting feels overwhelming, my beginner-friendly book The Down-to-Earth Guide to Composting breaks it down into simple, practical steps.
A Fresh Start for Next Year
Think of fall cleanup not as the end of the garden, but the beginning of next year’s garden. Every step you take now makes spring easier, less stressful, and more fun. It’s like putting your garden to bed for a long winter nap - and when it wakes up, it’ll be refreshed and ready to grow.
Related Posts:
When to Plant a Fall Vegetable Garden
How to Grow Garlic
What to Do With Green Tomatoes in the Fall
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Kathi Rodgers is the gardener and writer behind Oak Hill Homestead (est. 2006) and the host of HOMEGROWN: Your Backyard Garden Podcast. With over 30 years of gardening experience in a variety of climates and soils, she helps new and aspiring gardeners grow healthy, organic food right in their own backyards.
A passionate advocate for simple, self-reliant living, Kathi is the author of multiple ebooks, a published magazine contributor, and shares practical advice with readers who want real-life solutions they can trust.
Kathi lives in Oklahoma, where she grows more cherry tomatoes than she can count and keeps a watchful eye on tornado season. A proud grandma and great-grandma, she believes that wisdom - like a bountiful garden harvest - should be shared.
