How to tend to your garden in Autumn

By master gardener Cathy Taggett and Ron Snyder, owners of The Circle of Trees

The coming of fall represents the end of the growing season but there are many gardening tasks that still can be done and will mean much less work and a livelier garden in the spring.

Prepare soil in the garden beds

This is a great time to build up your garden beds. You can start by adding compost, slow release dolomite lime and leaves, for example. If you cover the unplanted beds with a thick layer of mulch or cardboard, you will have weed free, wonderful soil in the spring that is ready to go. If your goal is to set aside a growing area for more than a season so the soil can rest, cover it with a layer of cardboard and non-cedar wood chips.

This the perfect time to buy or build a composter. If you have an abundance of leaves on your lawn and no composter, start a compost pile.

Clean up

Gather fallen fruit under your fruit trees to prevent pests and avoid spreading disease and insect infestation. This is also the time to clean up invasive weeds and harvest seeds you want to save before the first frost. Cut back asparagus fronds and other perennials when they die back, but wait until winter dormancy to prune fruit trees. Dig shallots and harvest squash and root vegetables. Dig up and store dahlia tubers before first frost, and don’t forget to tie up your raspberries.

This is a good time to clean and store garden tools, too. Change the pol in all gas engines that drive your mowers, chain saws and rototillers. Either drain the gas or use a fuel stabilizer. This is especially important for 2-Cycle engines.

Plant

Plant spring flower bulbs now. You can also plant asparagus, garlic, peas, shallots, spring onions, fava beans, spinach and lettuce. Our climate is mild enough that you can have food growing in your garden all year with a little effort. A cover crop or “green manure” can be grown as an alternative to mulch, which will improve soil nutrients and soil tilth. Examples of green manure include winter rye and field peas or a mix, such as Johnny’s Fall Green Manure Mix from Johnny’s Selected Seeds.

We plant a lot of garlic in our garden. It is an easy crop that grows in average soil. Garlic is resistant to pests and it stores well. We only buy fresh seed garlic, preferably organic, and then separate the bulbs into cloves. We fertilize the garlic bed with a balanced organic fertilizer, then cover the garlic beds with sheets of cardboard. Once the cardboard is in place on the bed, we cut a hole in the cardboard for each individual clove. We plant the cloves about 6-8 inches apart for the regular garlic and about 12 inches for the elephant garlic, which has huge cloves but a milder flavor. Plant the garlic cloves in the holes about an inch under the surface, pointy side up, and cover with soil. We use the same technique when planting tulip and daffodil bulbs, just a bit deeper in the soil.

Blaine Community Orchards for Resources and Education is an excellent resource for gardening instruction and information and more. Check the website nwcore.org for a list of free local classes taught by community members on a variety of topics ranging from gardening to canning to knife sharpening and more. A class called Putting Your Garden to Bed (or Not!) will be held from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, October 20 at the Blaine Library, 610 3rd Street. We welcome you to join us with your questions and experiences.