Summer is over and the days are growing short and cold. It’s time to get your garden ready for the winter and prepped for the following spring.

Here are a few tips on winterizing your garden.

Get Out the Garden Journal
Record you’re gardening experiences now, before you forget. Walk thru the garden and make notes about the crops grown, pest problems, irrigation issues, crop layout, favorite varieties, etc. Get it down on paper and it will be there to help in future garden planning.

Clean it Up
A vegetable garden can get very messy over the course of a growing season. After the first good frost, that row of tomatoes turns into a gigantic pile of rotting plant material that is a perfect place for disease or insect pests to over winter. By removing the old or dead plant material you can reduce the incidence of disease and insect pests in your garden.
Till the weeds and compost or green bid the ones that have formed seed heads. Keep the seed out of the garden. If the weed is flowering it may produce viable seed even after being hoed or chopped down. Pull it out of the garden and compost it.
If you live a city with a green bin service, I suggest you green bin as much of your diseased plant material as possible. Get it out of the garden.

Prepare Perennials
The perennial crops in the garden, such as asparagus, need to be pruned back for the winter. Asparagus can be cut right back to the ground. Compost the old asparagus foliage to avoid the asparagus beetle. Old rhubarb leaves can be removed and sun chokes can be cut back to 3”.

Protect Winter Crops
Winter gardening is mostly about protecting the vegetables that were grown in late summer. Very little growth occurs in the fall and winter because of the short days, cold temperatures and weak sunlight. The goal is to put your winter veggies into cold storage where they are protected from the weather. This may take the form of a plastic hoop tunnel or a cold frame. This also protects your veggies from the autumn leaf drop that can bury a nice lettuce patch.
Strawberries can be mulched with some clean straw which helps prevent winter injury to the crown of the plant.

Containers / Pots
Large pots are excellent for growing heat loving crops like basil, or perennials that spread quickly, like mint or oregano. When winter comes, however, it is best to move the containers inside, where they won’t freeze. Large pots can break apart when the soil freezes. Any perennial crops in a container will be subjected to temperature extremes because there is no surrounding soil to buffer the temperature swings.
The containers can be placed in the garage or the shed over the cold winter months and then brought out again as spring approaches. Wrapping them in a blanket or burlap will also help protect the perennials, especially in windy or exposed locations.

Feed the Soil
The fall is a great time to work in some compost or other organic materials into the soil. Organic materials like compost need to be broken down by soil microbes before the nutrients can be made available to the plants. This takes time and is slow when soil temperatures are cold. A fall application of compost will be partially broken down and ready for plant uptake in the spring.
Alfalfa pellets are an excellent fall application to improve the soil. Alfalfa is high in organic matter and has significant amounts of nitrogen and potash, and the earthworms love it.

Plant Cover Crops
Cover crops such as fava bean, crimson clover or winter field peas can be planted in the unused spaces of the garden. These cover crops fix nitrogen, compete with weeds, reduce winter soil erosion, and help build the organic matter when they are tilled into the soil the following spring. Other cover crops that are excellent green manures include oats, fall rye and buckwheat. When tilling in a cover crop, allow three or four weeks between tilling and planting to allow time for the cover crop to decompose.

Plant for Next Season
Now is the time to plant your garlic. Broad beans can also be planted at this time of year if you live on the west coast, otherwise wait till next year.
Also on the west coast there may still be time to grow a few radishes and some spinach, if grown under cover, such as a plastic tunnel.

The final chores of the season can be a real pleasure. The crisp autumn air and crunch of leaves under foot signals the end of another growing season but also offers a sense of renewal. The fall clean up clears the canvas and makes room for another work of art in the garden. So get out in the garden and enjoy these last few days before the winter is upon us.