4 Fall Maintenance Tasks for Your Garden

The summer is drawing to an end and before you know it, the cold weather will be here, so it’s time to start getting your home ready. It’s important that you prepare the exterior of your home to deal with the bad weather, but have you thought about your garden? The cold weather can be very harsh on your garden and if you don’t prepare it properly, you may have a lot of trouble bringing it back to life next year when spring rolls around. But you should be fine as long as you follow this checklist before the cold weather sets in.

Clean Up Rotting Plants

Rotting plants don’t make your garden look great, but that’s not the only reason that you need to get rid of them. If you leave them over the winter, insects will feed on them and lay eggs in the soil. That means that when spring arrives, your soil will be filled with pests and anything that you plant in there won’t stand a chance of growing properly. You need to pull out any old plants and check them for diseases. If they are disease-free, you can bury them back in the soil where they will break down and provide nutrition. But if they are showing signs of disease, get rid of them because you don’t want them contaminating your soil.

Cut Back Trees

If you have trees in your garden, now is the time to cut them back. When the weather gets bad, there may be strong winds and if you have overgrown trees, loose branches could come away and damage your house. So, you need to call in some professionals and get them to cut the tree back for you. It’s important that you look for a qualified level 5 arborist and don’t just go for a cheap tree lopping service. Cutting back a tree is a lot more complicated than it looks and if you want to protect your home and the tree itself, you need to get somebody that is qualified, even if it costs you a bit more.

Prepare Your Soil

A lot of people leave their soil preparation until the spring but you can get a headstart if you do it during the fall. It’s the perfect time to dig in your soil amendments like manure, compost, and bone meal. If you add them in the fall rather than the spring, you give them more time to break down so when you come to plant in spring, your soil is in perfect condition.

Plant Cover Crops

If you want to keep your soil in good condition, you need to plant cover crops like rye, vetch, and clover. These help to increase the organic matter in your garden bed, break up any compacted clumps of soil, and reduce soil erosion. If you plant these crops now, after you have prepared the soil, you can ensure that it is still in perfect condition when spring arrives. This is for large gardens. For smaller gardens, cover with a thick layer of mulch.

As long as you do these maintenance tasks in the fall, your garden will survive during the winter.