Garden Planner Pro Blog
Fall Garden
Guides and how-tos from the Garden Planner Pro blog on fall garden.
36 posts
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Should You Cut Back Asparagus Ferns in the Fall?
Don't cut asparagus ferns while they're green. Once they've gone fully brown, cutting and clearing them helps with beetles and rust. When leaving them wins.
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7 Things to Do in the Garden Before the Ground Freezes
Drain the hose, lime the bed, guard the fruit trees. Seven early-November garden jobs that are easy now and impossible or expensive once the ground freezes.
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Your Carrots Split in the Ground. The Fall Rain Did It.
Carrots that come up cracked down the side after a wet week are almost always a water problem, and they're safe to eat. How to tell splits from forks and fly tunnels.
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Your Fall Kale Turned Purple. Put the Bone Meal Down.
Kale, cabbage and lettuce going purple in autumn is usually the cold, not a phosphorus shortage, and feeding won't fix it. When purple does mean a problem.
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Every Way to Protect Fall Crops From a Hard Freeze, Ranked
A hard freeze is coming for the kale, carrots and lettuce still in your beds. Every way to protect them, ranked from the trick that barely helps to the one that always works.
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Stop Pulling Out Your Spent Plants. Cut Them at the Soil Line Instead.
Pulling frosted tomatoes and beans rips up the soil you spent all summer building. Cut them at the soil line, leave the roots to rot in place, and know when not to.
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Your Garlic Sprouted Before Winter. Is It Ruined?
Green garlic shoots in October look like a mistake. They almost never are. What frost does to the leaves, when to mulch, and the one sign of a real problem.
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8 Things to Do With Fall Leaves Before You Bag a Single One
Fall leaves are the cheapest soil improver you'll ever get. Eight ways to use them this autumn, from mulching bare beds to building a new bed on the lawn.
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Brown Tunnels in Your Fall Radishes? A Maggot Did That, and It's Probably Already Gone
Rusty grooves and slimy tunnels in fall radishes and turnips are cabbage root maggots. How to tell them from wireworms and slugs, and what to do before winter.
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The Pests That Wrecked Your Summer Are Asleep in Your Garden Right Now
Squash bugs, borers and slugs do not leave in autumn. They overwinter a few feet from where they fed, and one October afternoon does more than a summer of spraying.
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Every Winter Mulch, Ranked by How Much Work It Saves You in April
Shredded leaves, straw, wood chips, cardboard, compost. What each one costs you now, how deep to lay it, and which ones make spring harder instead of easier.
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Those Pale Tunnels in Your Chard Leaves Aren't Disease
Tan blisters spreading across chard, beet and spinach leaves in autumn are usually leaf miners, and spraying them does nothing. Here is how to tell and what works.
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8 Things to Plant in October While the Soil Is Still Warm
October soil is warmer than October air, and eight crops are happy to root in it now and finish in spring. What to get in the ground before it cools.
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Your First Frost Date Is a Coin Flip (and Your Low Corner Loses First)
An average first frost date means roughly half of years are earlier. Why the number is wrong for your yard, where the cold actually settles, and what to watch instead.
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Don't Dump Your Pots Out This Fall. That Potting Mix Has Another Year in It.
Replacing container soil every year is mostly wasted money. What really changes in old potting mix, the ten-minute refresh, and the three pots you should empty.
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Your Fall Seedlings Vanished Overnight. Look for the Slime, Not the Bug.
Ragged holes in fall greens and no insect anywhere on the plant. How to tell slug damage from caterpillars, earwigs and birds, and what stops it this week.
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Crop Rotation Only Works If You Remember Last Year, and Almost Nobody Does
Rotation isn't hard to understand and it's nearly impossible to execute, because you plan in February and the evidence disappeared in November. Fix it in September instead.
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Those Gray Clumps on Your Kale Aren't Mold, and Washing Won't Fix Them
Cabbage aphids look like powdery mildew and behave like nothing else. How to tell them from the two things people mistake them for, and why soap sprays keep failing.
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6 Crops You Can Still Start in a Pot This Month, Ranked by How Fast They Feed You
September sowing on a balcony works, but the deadline isn't frost. It's daylight. Six container crops ranked by days to maturity, and how much to add for a fall sowing.
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8 Garlic Varieties Worth Ordering This Week (And the One That Isn't Garlic)
Seed garlic sells out through September for October planting. What hardneck and softneck actually change about flavor, storage and your winter, plus eight varieties worth the order.
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No Root Cellar? Your Potatoes and Onions Want Opposite Rooms
Potatoes want cold and damp, onions want cool and dry, squash wants neither. How to find three storage climates in an ordinary house, and what rots when you don't.
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The Tomato Plants You Pull This Week Decide How Next July Goes
Some of what you clear out of the garden this month carries next summer's disease back into the bed. Most of it does not. How to tell which is which.
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Next June's Strawberry Harvest Is Decided in September, Not Spring
Strawberries set next year's flower buds in early fall. What you do to the bed this month matters more than anything you do in April.
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Green Tomatoes on the Vine? The Frost Timeline You're Ignoring
Tomatoes stop ripening once nights drop below 50°F, weeks before your actual frost date. What to pick now, how to ripen it indoors, and what to do with the rest.
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Freshly Dug Sweet Potatoes Taste Like Cardboard. The Week After Is What Fixes That.
Sweet potatoes are not sweet the day you dig them. What happens in the warm week afterward is what makes them worth growing, and most gardeners skip it.
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The Weekend Box That Keeps Your Garden Growing After Frost Takes Everyone Else's
A cold frame is a bottomless box with a clear lid, and it buys hardy greens weeks of extra growing time. What to build it from, where to put it, and how not to cook the lettuce.
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Everyone Amends Their Soil in Spring. That's Months Too Late.
Lime takes months to move soil pH, so April is the wrong time to apply it. Test your beds in September, amend in October, and let winter do the work.
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Sow Spinach Now, Ignore It All Winter, Cut It in April
Spinach sown in late summer sits out the winter alive and starts growing again before you can dig. The timing, the mulch, and the varieties that survive it.
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That Pepper Plant Is a Perennial, and Composting It in October Is a Waste
Peppers are tender perennials, not annuals. How to cut yours back, bring it inside before frost, and get ripe fruit weeks earlier next summer.
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Take Cuttings From These Herbs Now or Buy Them All Again in May
The basil and rosemary you already own can make next year's plants for free, but only if you take the cuttings while it is still hot. How to do it, and which herbs to skip.
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Your Tomato Plant Is Still Setting Flowers, and Every One Is a Lie
A tomato flower opening in late August will not become a tomato. Here is the math, and what pinching the tops off does for the green fruit already on the vine.
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Save These Seeds This Week - And Whatever You Do, Skip the Squash
Beans, lettuce and peppers are making free seed in your garden right now. Squash and cucumbers are setting a trap. How to tell which is which before you save.
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Buy This in August or Your Fall Garden Ends on One October Night
Row cover is what stands between a fall garden that quits in October and one you harvest into December. Which weight to get, and why August is when to get it.
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Those White Butterflies Over Your Fall Kale Aren't Just Passing Through
August-planted brassicas get shredded worse than spring ones, and the cabbage worms doing it are nearly invisible. How to spot them and what actually stops them.
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Stop Leaving Your Garden Beds Bare Over Winter - Sow This Instead
The bed your beans just finished in doesn't have to sit empty until spring. Which cover crop to sow in August and September, and how to pick between them.
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How to Plan a Fall Vegetable Garden by Counting Backward From Frost
Late July is when fall planting gets decided. The days-to-maturity math that tells you what still has time to make it before your first frost.
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