Preparing Your Vegetable Garden for Fall: How to do it like a Pro

Are you wondering what to do with your vegetable garden after summer? Don’t let it rest just yet! Preparing your vegetable garden for fall is the best thing you can do to enjoy garden-fresh produce during fall and winter.

Gardening in fall is especially relevant for states with hot summers. You can finally plant vegetables that love the cold weather like beets, broccoli, and cabbages.

Here are the steps you need to do to prepare your vegetable garden like a pro.

Materials:

• PH Soil Meter
• Garden rake
• Spade

Instructions:

#1. Assess your garden

Before getting down on your knees, look around your garden to assess the damage. Carefully observing what needs to be done before starting allows you to save time on repetitive and impractical tasks.

Can you manage to fix your garden alone? How much time do you need? Do you need professional help or just an extra hand? What materials do you need to buy?

#2. Plan

Based on your assessment, create a plan on how you’d like your vegetable garden to turn out. List all the materials you need and all the activities you will do. If you have a wide garden, you can even sketch your garden plan.

#.3 Clean Up

Remove every dead plant from your summer garden. Uproot the weeds hiding under your plants. Separate the fine remains from the diseased ones. Compost the unharmed plants and burn or discard those that have diseases. If you’re unsure, then discard to be safe.

#4. Harvest

If you still have unharvested fruits and vegetables from your summer’s garden, now is the time to get them. Fruits that are left to drop and rot on the soil will attract pests.

#5. Test the soil

Testing the soil is often neglected but it is necessary if you want to have a bountiful harvest. The success of organic vegetable farming lies in keeping the soil healthy. The only way to find out if your soil is healthy is to conduct a soil test using a PH Soil Meter.

The soil meter is used to measure the acidity or alkalinity of your soil. Most vegetables prefer a soil with pH level between 6.3 and 6.9. If your soil reads below that, it means that it is too acidic. You can fix that by adding lime to the soil. If it reads too high, you must add elemental sulfur.

#6. Plant

After removing dried plants and fixing your soil’s pH level, it’s time to plant! Till the soil to make nutrients enter the newly planted vegetables easier. After securing the vegetables, water it adequately. It is best to plant early morning or late in the afternoon to avoid your plant from being scorched by the sun’s heat.

The following are examples of vegetables that thrive well during fall according to The Spruce

• Beets
• Bok Choy
• Broccoli
• Bush Beans
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Kale
• Lettuce
• Peas
• Radishes
• Spinach
• Swiss Chard
• Turnips

Sum Up

The fall is a great season to make your vegetable garden lively. There are several vegetables that thrive in cool weather. With successful gardening in fall, you’ll have an abundant supply of organic vegetables during winter.

To prepare your garden for fall, you need to assess your garden, plan your ideal garden, and clean up. After that, harvest remaining produce, test the soil and then plant.

Did you enjoy this tutorial? Let me know what you think in the comment section! If you liked this article, feel free to share it!

Author Bio: I am Ann Sanders, a Founder of A Green Hand; a blog dedicated to offering a platform for gardening and healthy living enthusiasts to exchange ideas so that we can all play a role in making our world a better place. Follow me on Twitter and Facebook