Your Autumn Garden Checklist
by LaManda Joy

Fall gardening may sound like an oxymoron… the days are getting shorter and the air a bit brisker and you may be ready for a break from your bounteous summer garden. But, there’s plenty you can do now to prepare for next year’s garden and extend the season for your cool season crops like lettuce, chard, kale and peas.

SAVE SEEDS

If you’re particularly enamored of that gorgeous heirloom tomato you grew this season, consider saving some seeds for next year. Not only will you save money by having the seeds on hand, but you’ll also be able to tell your friends about “your” tomato. One of my friends has “her” Black Krim she’s grown in her yard for eight years.

She’s proud of that tomato! To learn more about seed saving

PLANT GARLIC AND ONIONS

Garlic and onions are planted like bulbs in the fall for a crop in the spring. For each clove of garlic or onion set you plant, you get a full head of garlic or a big onion. Plus, garlic and onions are a lovely addition to the spring garden. Garlic and onions need to be planted before it gets too cold. We usually do it around the fi rst of November. Amazingly, there are hundreds of types of garlic in the world. Several dozen varieties are available to the home gardener and ALL of them taste better than anything you can buy at the grocery store. If you’d like to try this fun garden addition, visit seedsavers.org for some great heirloom varieties.

BUILD A COLD FRAME

A cold frame is essentially a box with no bottom and a clear top. A cold frame is used to keep your lettuce, chard, kale and other cool season crops going a month or so longer than they would without protection. We put our cold frames over some of our more tender herbs to protect them over the season. We dumpster dive for old windows and use them for the top. For great instructions on how to build a simple cold frame, try www.ehow.com and search: make cold frame.

MULCH MULCH MULCH!

Soil is your garden’s most important asset. All those fall leaves are nutrients that can be converted to “garden gold” over the winter.

Collect fallen leaves and mound them on your garden area. Cover with a burlap bag or some broken down cardboard boxes and top with stones or bricks (to prevent the leaves from blowing away). Next spring, you’ll have partially decomposed plant material to enrich the soil. Composting made easy!

TAKE NOTE

Spend half an hour this fall taking notes about what worked in your summer garden, what didn’t, and what you would like to try next year. You may think you’ll remember year-to-year, but you won’t.

Documenting your “best practices” now will help kick-start your garden in the spring and will provide helpful advice to neighboring gardeners!

LaManda Joy is an expert gardener and is known in her neighborhood for her award-winning “Yarden”—a backyard edible garden oasis. She is also the founder of The Peterson Garden Project, a reclaimed Victory Garden from the 1940s, which now is a community hub and garden plot on Chicago’s north side. LaManda wants everyone to grow their own food… seriously.