Tag Archives: fall garden

10 Tips to Prepare the Garden for Winter

November 4, 2025 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

The summer garden season is coming to a close. While we’re still working on certain projects like sowing bulb onions in cold frames and tending high tunnels of salad greens, we’re also resetting the garden for next spring. Even if you live in a warm, southern climate, there are still a few ways you can prepare your garden for winter. Here are ten tips to prepare your garden for winter and a great season next year.

1. Harvest or prepare to harvest warm-season crops before frost.

If you still have eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, or squash in your garden, watch the weather carefully. If a light frost is in the forecast, cover them with old sheets of row cover. When a hard frost is in the forecast, it’s time to pull in the harvest.

Our peppers are still thriving in the fall. We typically get an extra 1 to 2 weeks by covering them at night. Before the first killing frost, we uproot plants and place the roots in a bucket of water, storing them in a cool location, which can extend the harvest by 1 month.

Some tomatoes will ripen off the vine, and there are also many ways to use green tomatoes. Enjoy your eggplant and summer squash, or blanch and freeze them. Don’t forget to cure winter squash and pumpkins before putting them in storage.

Minnie Mizelle Collards in a greenhouse — Minnie Mizelle Collards

2. Prepare biennials for winter to save seed next season.

Biennial plants don’t produce seeds until their second year. If you want to save seed from your favorite biennial crops like cabbages, collards, beets, carrots, and hollyhocks, you’ll need to overwinter them.

Many biennial crops can survive temperatures into the 20°Fs. If you live in a mild climate, you may be able to overwinter them right in the field or in a tunnel. They benefit from some cover, even just frost cloth and low tunnels. Place a thick layer of mulch over their roots.

In colder climates, you’ll have to store the crops indoors in damp peat moss or similar material over the winter before transplanting them out in spring.

Learn more about saving seed from biennial crops.

3. Put away garden supplies.

All of your garden gear will last longer if you keep it out of the winter weather. Do a garden tidy day and take down any trellises, move tools under cover, and put away irrigation tape, hoses, and landscape fabric.

Victoria Rhubarb Plants in a bed — Victoria Rhubarb

4. Mark perennials.

It’s easy to forget where you planted perennials. Go around your garden and place stakes to mark perennials like echinacea, asparagus, and rhubarb so you don’t accidentally disturb them next spring.

5. Cover any bare soil.

Ground cover helps protect soil and beneficial microbes from erosion and freeze thaw cycles. It can also reduce weed pressure in early spring. Depending on your climate, you may be able to sow a winter cover crop. You can also mulch your soil with straw, leaf litter, grass clippings, brother natural materials.

6. Leave standing flowers for pollinators and birds.

Many pollinators and beneficial insects overwinter in dead plant material. Songbirds will also gather seeds from dead flower heads during the winter. Leaving the flower stalks of plants like rudbeckia, dara, echinacea, and sunflowers standing in the garden can help provide a home for insects like solitary bees and food for birds like chickadees.

7. Remove and burn or dispose of diseased or pest-ridden plant material.

While we love leaving some patches of dead flowers standing, you should always remove any plants that had issues with pests or diseases. This applies to crops that are disease-prone in your area, even if they were fine this season. Common examples include tomatoes with late blight, asparagus stalks with asparagus beetles, cucumbers with downy mildew, or hollyhock stalks with rust.

8. Build up your compost pile.

Compost piles can keep working through the winter even in surprisingly cold climates. The key to making compost in winter is having a large enough pile to generate and retain heat. Build up your compost pile this fall and early winter by sourcing various brown or carbon-rich and green or nitrogen-rich material. Great examples include grass clippings, fallen leaves, plain brown cardboard, coffee grounds, jack-o’-lanterns, sawdust, seaweed, and wood chips.

9. Get a soil test.

A soil test will pinpoint exactly what nutrients your garden needs. Many people opt for a soil test in the spring, but it’s fine to collect soil samples in the fall. It also means you’ll get your results back much quicker. Laboratories often take weeks to process samples in the spring when they’re overrun with orders. A fall soil sample will get you quick results so you can start building healthy soil during the winter and early spring, depending on your climate.

10. Create a garden map.

While you’re enjoying the fall weather, take a walk through your garden and sketch out this season’s layout. Keeping a record of what you planted where this season and some quick notes about how each crop performed can help you plan your layout for next season.

Gardening slows down in the fall, but it never comes to a complete halt. Preparing your garden for winter with these ten tips can help you get great production next season.

Garden Advice, Winter Gardening

Bulbs and Beyond: Fall Planting for Spring Production

September 10, 2024 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Fall is one of the most magical times in the garden. The morning air is cool and crisp, the weeds and pests are beginning to dwindle, and we’re finally enjoying harvests from our long season crops. I love spending autumn days in the garden so much that I often plant almost as much in the fall as in the spring. Thankfully, there are some excellent fall crops I can sneak in this time of year that provide a spring abundance.

What Crops Can I Plant This Fall?

The fall planting list is surprisingly long! If you’re willing to put in the work, there are several flowers, herbs, and vegetables that can all be fall-planted for incredible spring flowers and harvests.

Fall-Planted Flowers

Fall planting brings spring blooms! If you want early flowers, fall planting is a must. There are many different types of fall-planted flowers, so I divided them into two categories: those you plant from bulbs, corms, tubers, or roots, and those you start from seed. Flowers you can start from seed are often those varieties with a tendency to self-seed that would naturally drop seed each fall and spread.

Bulbs, Corms, Tubers, & Roots

Anemones (Anemone spp.)
Checkered Lily (Fritillaria meleagris)
Crocus (Iridaceae spp.)
Daffodils (Narcissus spp.)
Dutch Iris (Iris × hollandica)
German Iris (Iris × germanica)
Hyacinth (Hyacinthus spp.)
Oriental Lilies (Lilium orientalis)
Ornamental Alliums (Allium spp.)
Peonies (Paeonia officinalis)
Snowdrop (Galanthus spp.)
Tulips (Tulipa spp.)

Seeds

Bachelor’s Buttons (Centaurea cyanus)
Butterflyweed (Asclepias tuberosa)
Calendula (Calendula officinalis)
Coreopsis (Coreopsis spp.)
Dara (Daucus carota)
Echinacea (Echinacea spp.)
Hollyhocks (Alcea rosea)
Johnny Jump-Ups (Viola spp.)
Larkspur (Delphinium spp.)
Rudbeckia (Rudbeckia spp.)
Snapdragons (Antirrhinum spp.)
Sweet Peas (Lathyrus odoratus)

Fall-Planted Herbs

While flower bulbs often seem to be the focus for fall, there are a number of cold-tolerant or perennial herbs you can start this autumn.

Chives
Cilantro
Feverfew
Mint
Parsley
Thyme

Fall-Planted Vegetables

Hardy vegetables are one of my favorite fall crops. Overwintered vegetables will often start putting on good growth during occasional warm February and March days when we start getting more daylight. They’re ready to harvest long before any indoor seed or spring-started crop ever will be! I’ve divided the vegetables into groups so it’s easier to find the type of crops you’re interested in.

Alliums

Bulb Onions
Garlic
Perennial Onions
Shallots

Brassicas

Broccoli
Brussels Sprouts
Cabbage
Cauliflower

Beans

Fava/Broad Beans

Greens

Arugula
Claytonia
Collards
Kale
Lettuce
Mustard Greens
Spinach
Swiss Chard

Roots

Beets
Carrots
Daikon Radishes
Rutabagas
Potatoes
Turnips

When Can I Plant These Fall Crops?

The answer to this question depends on both the crop and your location. Those in New England will need to plant much earlier than those in the Deep South, but it also depends on what you’re growing.

For example, you should only plant tulips when soil temperatures have cooled. For those in northern areas, you may be able to put them in as early as September, but waiting until as late as December may be preferable for those in the south.

Learning about your hardiness zone and using a garden planner app may help you make the best decisions for planting dates.

Do These Fall Crops Need Protection?

Again, this depends on the crop and location. In warm, southern climates, all of these crops will need less protection than they do in northern zones. In fact, those in the deep south may have to continue weeding and watering as usual into the fall months.

However, in many areas, these crops, particularly the fall vegetables, benefit from some sort of protection. For root crops and alliums, this may mean a thick layer of straw or hay mulch around the base of the plant to provide some insulation. For greens and herbs, planting them in a hoop house or cold frame or installing low tunnels with wires and clear plastic is ideal.

Most of the flower bulbs, corms, roots, and tubers do best when they receive a layer of mulch after planting, but they should come with instructions. On the other hand, the flower seeds are usually fine without protection. Some seeds, like echinacea, actually require a period of cold and moisture to germinate properly.

Getting good production during the winter months can be challenging, even in the south. Shorter days mean less plant growth, even when the weather is warm. That said, you may still want to consider some of these fall crops. When sown in fall, these flowers, herbs, and vegetables will provide extra-early spring production. Get a jump on 2025 with these fantastic fall-planted crops.

Garden Advice

6 Tips for Planting a Fall Garden in Hot Weather

August 8, 2024 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been preparing beds and sowing many of our fall crops, such as lettuce, radishes, and cabbages, here at Southern Exposure. Unfortunately, temperatures in our zone 7a and gardens farther south rarely cooperate. The 90°+ days we’ve been experiencing are far from ideal for these cool-season plants. Unfortunately, we can’t always wait until the temperatures start to dip. We need these plants to mature before cold temperatures and the dwindling light of late fall and winter set in. That’s why this week, we’re sharing our favorite tips to help you start your fall garden in hot weather.

Use Your Refrigerator or Other Cool Spaces

One of the biggest struggles with high temperatures is getting sensitive seeds like lettuce to germinate. Most lettuce germinates best around 75°F but will germinate at temperatures as low as 40°F. Rather than direct sow them or sow them in flats outdoors, we start our fall lettuces indoors and place the flats into the refrigerator for 4 to 6 days. If you don’t have space in your fridge, you could try another area that stays cool, like a root cellar. Just keep an eye on them; they need light once they germinate!

Keep Soil Cool and Moist with Boards, Burlap, or Cardboard

While our previous method works well for crops like lettuce or broccoli sown in flats, some crops like carrots don’t thrive as transplants. For these crops, we direct seed them into moist soil and then immediately cover the soil with boards, thick cardboard, or burlap. This ensures the soil stays cool and moist while the seeds germinate. However, you must check them and remove the covering as soon as they germinate. They’ll be leggy, pale, and weak if left covered too long.

Use Row Cover

We use row cover at Southern Exposure during every season, but in August, it’s handy for providing cool-season crops with some relief from the heat. Light row cover or shade cloth offers some protection from the sun’s harsh rays, keeping your plants and the soil they’re growing in cooler. It also keeps insects off young plants.

Select Appropriate Varieties for the Fall Garden

Some varieties do better in this season than others. You’ll notice that many crops that are good for the fall garden, say so in their name. Some of our favorites like this include Black Spanish Round Fall Radish, Snowball Y Fall Cauliflower, and Winter Bloomsdale Spinach. However, for some, you’ll need to dig through the description. For those in the Deep South, it can be helpful to look for heat-resistant crops like Jericho Romaine Lettuce this time of year.

Find Your Exact Sowing Window

Depending on your zone, you may also be able to wait until later to plant certain crops. We recommend using our garden planner or a similar app for exact planting windows for your zip code.

You can also do things the old-fashioned way. To calculate your last possible sowing date, you must find your estimated first frost date and your variety’s estimated days to maturity.

If you’re direct sowing a crop, add 14 days to the days to maturity; if you’re transplanting, add 14 to 28 days. Take this number and count backward from your first frost date to get your last possible sowing date, ensuring your crop reaches maturity before frost.

Note that many crops will tolerate light frosts or can be protected with row cover or a hoop house. However, even in hoop houses that are kept warm, production dwindles in the fall as the days get shorter and shorter.

Maintenance is Essential for the Fall Garden

Maintenance is crucial during hot weather, which can stress plants. Keep up with consistent watering and weeding. Place mulch around plants as soon as possible to keep the soil cool and moist and to suppress weeds. You can use wood chips, straw, grass clippings, or old leaves.

Getting started on a fall garden can be challenging when temperatures are still high, but getting crops in on time is essential. Using these tried and true methods can help you succeed with a fall garden, no matter what the weather looks like outside.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange