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Tips for Preparing Your Lawn and Garden for Fall
Fall is fast approaching, and you know what that means - winter is coming. (Are we still making Game of Thrones references?)
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For your garden and lawn to thrive throughout the year, you’ll need to take a few steps to get them ready for fall. During the colder months, plants may go dormant or die - depending, of course, on what you have planted and where you live. These tips will ensure that, come spring, your lawn and garden will be ready for growing and planting.
So without further ado, here are our top tips for fall prep in your yard! To make things easy to navigate, we’ve split these tips up into two categories - one for lawn tips, the other for garden tips:
Tips for Preparing Your Lawn and Garden for Fall
Preparing Your Lawn For Fall Reseed in Early Fall Mulch Leaves For FertilizerCut Your Grass Short Before The First Snowfall Keep Watering Until The First Frost
Preparing Your Lawn For Fall
Reseed in Early Fall
The best time to reseed your lawn is in early fall. There are fewer weeds that can choke off new shoots, and the soil is still warm enough to accommodate growth. You should reseed after aerating, as it will give your new grass an even better opportunity to grow strong and healthy.
Once you’ve aerated and reseeded, you should also fertilize. Doing all three of these things will give your lawn the best chance of looking its best come spring.
Mulch Leaves For Fertilizer
Here’s one of our top tips for fall yard clean-up: don’t just rake up leaves then toss them in the garbage. You can mulch them as fertilizer for your lawn! If you’re feeling very ambitious, you can even offer to rake up your neighbors’ leaves and use those as well. Mulched leaves provide excellent nutrients to your lawn, and mulching them is a great way of disposing of them. A win-win!
Cut Your Grass Short Before The First Snowfall
During the part of the season when grass is still growing (this varies by climate zone), you’ll want to let your grass grow out. But before the first snowfall hits, toward the end of fall, it’s best to cut your grass very short - as short as one inch. This is to stop snow mold from growing on your lawn.
Keep Watering Until The First Frost
Until it’s time to cut the grass short, you’ll want to keep watering it! Your lawn can look beautiful all through the fall season, and grasses will continue to need water until they become dormant. Don’t put away your sprinkler until after the first frost.
Preparing Your Garden For Fall
Become A Grateful Dead Fan
Grateful Dead fans, you see, are known as Deadheads, and you should be deadheading your plants. The pun might be a bit of a stretch, but the advice is solid.
What is deadheading? It’s the practice of grooming plants by cutting off spent heads so the plant will channel more energy into the healthy flowers. Regular pruning is always a good idea when it comes to plants, and deadheading is perfect to help perennials overwinter.
Treat Your Tender Bulbs With Tender Love And Care
There are all kinds of “tender bulb” plants that can’t survive winter outside - plants like caladiums, tuberous begonias, and dahlias. What most northern gardeners don’t realize is that these plants are actually perennials - they just can’t survive the cold. They go dormant in winter, but by storing them in a cool place once their tops are dead, and watering them about once a month, they can easily be replanted in the spring.
Plant Trees And Shrubs
Fall is the perfect time for planting large plants, like trees and shrubs. This takes a little bit of landscaping, of course, but the effort can be well worth it. Keep them watered often, and they’ll begin to grow an extensive root system, without the toll of having to grow leaves. By spring, you’ll have a hearty tree or shrub that’s ready to bloom and grow leaves.
Plant Spring-Flowering Bulbs
This is the right time to plant spring-flowering bulbs - a variety of tulips, daffodils, and other flowers will provide you with beautiful blooms in the springtime if you plant them in the fall. A gardener’s work is never done, but the rewards can be oh-so-sweet.
Clear Your Summer Garden
Fall is, of course, the time to clean up all of the plants that have finished their lifecycle - if you leave them lying around, they’ll be prone to rot, and that rot can spread to your other plants. Summer vegetables, plant debris, and weeds should all be cleared out in the fall.
Continue To Care For Your Cool Season Vegetables
Of course, you may not just have summer vegetables in your garden - cool season vegetables, like kale, will continue to grow through the fall. You’ll need to care for them, of course, watering them regularly. Some of these vegetables can actually taste better after a frost or two. Row covers can help protect these plants from the worst of the season.
Take Stock Of Your Spring And Summer Gardening Season
What worked in your garden this season? What didn’t? Write down some notes in a gardening journal - this will help you plan your garden for next year. Did you get a lot of wasps in the fall? If you’re wondering how to get rid of wasps, one tip is to plant spearmint - it acts as a natural deterrent. Consider it for next year’s garden!
The idea is this: you can change things up. Get rid of plants you didn’t like, and try new techniques for plants that didn’t have as much success as you’d like. There’s a lot of trial and error to gardening, so if you had a disappointing season, don’t lose hope - you’re learning!
Cleaning Up
Once the season is really over, it’s time to clean up. Put away your sprinkler system, your lawnmower, and any other tools that might be damaged in the winter. And with that, your lawn and garden are fully prepped!
We hope you got some great ideas for gardening and yard work you can do in the fall - one of the joys of these hobbies is that there’s always something to do and something new to learn. Happy gardening!
About the Author Laura Bennett
Hello, I’m Laura Bennett. I love nature especially when it comes to flowers and different kinds of plants. I started a very small garden behind my house and I named it Humid Garden. So, I created this blog to provide aspiring and inspiring thoughts about gardening for gardeners and anyone who has the intention of keeping a garden.
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