Fall Garden Clean - Up

It’s almost time to begin your fall garden clean-up. Before long that spectacular summer garden will be gone and the time will be here for that fall garden clean - up. With the cool brisk days of autumn close, cleaning the garden for next years planting will be easier when you have had that fall head start. Begin by removing your dead or dying flowers a little at a time. By doing this slowly it will help to keep you garden neat, tidy, and having a presentable appearance before the frost sets in. Instead of letting your garden become overgrown and ugly, as the season starts to change, keep your leaves raked and your trees and shrubs pruned back.

Cleaning away old plants and plant matter will also help to prevent organisms such as fungi, bacteria, viruses and insect eggs from wintering in during the winter months spoiling your soil for next years spring garden. If some of your plants became infected over the summer months, remember you will need to remove the old mulch as well; it too may be infected with disease spores and insect eggs. if you have plants that did not do as well as you expected, or multiplied to more than you want, now is a good time to either discard them or thin them out and replant them somewhere else in the garden.

If you have a fall garden be it flowers or vegetables, after the last harvest or blossom, pull up the entire plant and discard (this is an excellent way to harvest seeds for next year). Make sure you remove any weeds at this time also; they too drop seeds and will sprout up at first spring.

Once your garden is all cleaned out, now is a good time to feed your soil, by adding fertilizer, compost, mulch and compost manure and some organic topsoil, then tilling it under and lastly covering it with pine straw or pine bark on top preparing it for next spring. Now that you have cleaned your garden for the winter, it can take a rest and so can you, because before you know it, it will be spring and time to start all over.

Eudora DeWynter offers tips on Fall Garden Clean Up on her blog athttp:www.gardentoolguru.com

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