Purdue Extension Service

Vanderburgh County, Indiana

Fall Garden Cleanup

By Larry Caplan, Extension Horticulture Educator, Vanderburgh County, IN

For the Evansville Courier and Press, October 2, 2005

For many gardeners in the tri-state, the gardening season is beginning to wind down. Our summer vegetables are looking pretty ratty, with insect and disease problems overwhelming the plants. Our fall gardens should still be looking good, and will continue to produce as long as we care for them. We are still several weeks from our first expected frost of the year, so there's no reason to scrap the garden yet.

However, if your garden has gotten away from you, now is the time to begin cleaning it up. This will reduce pest problems for next year, as well as keeping the garden looking neat and tidy.

All dead and dying garden plants should be removed. If they are not too heavily infested with insects or fungal diseases, the plants can be chopped up and placed in the compost pile. Be sure to rake up all dead leaves and fallen fruit from the garden as well. This is the single most important practice to help reduce disease pressure for next year's garden. Also, raking up all rotting fruit will prevent volunteer tomatoes from springing up in the middle of your cucumbers next year.

Once the dead plants are gone, you can till your garden to prepare the seedbed for next year. For the last several years, our spring weather has been extremely wet, making it difficult to get the garden dug in the spring. By tilling it up now, all you need to do is simply poke your seeds or transplants into the ground next spring.

You might want to wait to till your garden until your trees are through dropping leaves. Tree leaves make an excellent soil amendment to help break up our heavy soils. The leaves can be shredded with your lawn mower, then spread over the surface of your garden. Add a small amount of garden fertilizer (such as 12-12-12) over the leaves, and till them in as deeply as you can go. By spring or summer, they'll be fairly well rotted and already benefiting the soil.

You can also build a compost pile for your leaves. This will provide you with a soil amendment that will begin to benefit your soil immediately. Compost collected this fall should be ready to use by spring, but you'll need to remember to turn it at least once a month through the fall and early winter.

Speaking of yard waste: there are many better options than burning your leaves. Burning leaves is not only illegal, but is a dangerous practice as well. Every year, I read about at least one or two people whose leaf fires get away from them and burn down their shed or fence. Also, the smoke from the burning leaves is highly dangerous to neighbors with respiratory problems. Gardening should be good for the environment, not a hazard!

If you don't have a garden, and if you don't want to build a compost pile, you can try to mulch your leaves into the lawn. Simply run over the leaves a couple of times with your lawn mower, which will shred and spread them. This works best for trees with small leaves or light foliage canopies, like honey locust. Trees with dense foliage, like maples and oaks, often have too many leaves, and shredding them could leave a thick layer of organic matter that may smother parts of the lawn. By shredding them on a regular basis, instead of waiting for them all to drop, you can reduce the chance of burying your lawn.

For more information on yard waste recycling or harvesting your fall vegetables, contact the Purdue Extension Service at (812) 435-5287.