Fall Garden Clean Up

Fall Garden Clean Up | Frugal Family Home

Last week was our last Tuesday Garden Party of the year. But I want to share my fall garden clean up. Cleaning up the garden in the fall can take a back seat to getting other things done. But it’s important to do.

My garden was looking pretty sad. The green beans were really beat up from the strong winds we had and most of the garden was looking droopy.

Garden Clean Up

Most of the time I just clean out a few things here and there as they die off. But this year we had warm weather all the way into October. Which made my clean up in the garden just a little delayed.

These tomatoes just didn't have time to ripen.

The tomatoes were looking really bad. Most of the vines were really brown. It was time to take all the green tomatoes off the vines to ripen indoors. I usually wrap my tomatoes individually in newspaper and then place them into a box to ripen.

How we are ripening our green tomatoes this year

But this year, I decided to try a paper sack to ripen them in. Because we had warm weather later than usual, a lot of the tomatoes had ripened on the vine. The few that were left are fairly small so the paper bag method seemed like a better way to go, for ripening them.

Seed Saving

These beans were just right for seed saving.

My green beans grew great this year. They were so hardy they started growing into the tomato cages that were in front of them. They grew so well, I decided to keep a bunch of seeds to plant for next year. I think I went a little overboard with the seed saving, but at least I will enough seeds for the next year or possibly three.

Last garden harvest.

I collected the last harvest of the garden, well almost the last. I found a few green peppers, along with the green tomatoes. The basil needed to go, so I harvested some of the leaves and seed pods, then added the rest to the compost. The basil plants were more like shrubs this year. I also harvested a few carrots too, since they were getting overcrowded.

The carrots were getting a little too crowded

Gardening Fail

This year the broccoli and kale didn't produce well at all.

I was hoping to get some broccoli, but this year again, we didn’t get any at all. This year the aphids were terrible and attacked them relentlessly. I’ll try one more year before I give up on homegrown broccoli. We had a little bit of Kale left but like the broccoli it was badly eating by aphids.

The lone little lettuce I found in the garden.

I found a small little lettuce that had popped up in the garden and I left it to grow a little bigger. We also left the green onions that had ended up in the shadow of the huge basil plant. I’m hoping they will grow a little more and we can harvest them.

The leeks are getting big.

The leeks were doing well too, so I left them to continue to grow. The carrots will be left in the garden to grow. I like to harvest a few here and there as we need them. It seems the colder it gets, the sweeter they get. So, I’m not really in a hurry to harvest them.

I'm hoping our artichoke survives the winter.

After struggling this summer to grow, the artichoke plant has really taken off. I’m hoping it will do fine over the winter and come back in the spring. A few years ago, we had a nice big artichoke plant, but it was killed when we had an early warm up and then a hard frost. I’m hoping to have one of my four artichoke plants survive this winter.

After Clean Up

How the garden looked after the clean up.

I had a huge amount of clover that had taken over in a couple of the beds. It was hard to get out, but the beds are cleaned up now. Even though the beds look bare it’s nice to have the garden all cleaned up for the winter.

Have you started your fall garden clean up?

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5 Comments

  1. It’s neat that even though much isn’t growing anymore, you still have some veggies growing in your garden in NOVEMBER! 🙂

  2. Shelly you can always cover with cloth and a thick plastic to do some fall growing and winter harvesting. I was going to do a fall/winter garden this year but I decided too late, so I will try next year. I did however get my garlic in the ground and I’m experimenting with onions to see if I can get some earlier next year. I ended up traveling a ton for business this year and half my garden is still waiting for me to pick it. I have to focus on it this weekend because we could get snow at any time.

    1. Sakura, thanks for the suggestion of covering the garden. I usually cover the garden in the spring. I didn’t get any new plants in for fall gardening this year. Maybe I’ll think ahead and be able to get some plants in next fall. I still have a few carrots, leeks and green onions growing. I need to get my garlic in soon.

      I hope you get all your picking done before you have snow.

  3. I don’t have a garden, but I did do a little cleaning up in our yard this week. I have a rose bush that grows right next to the front porch that was terribly overgrown and needing to be pruned. I thought this particular bush had died a couple of years ago, but when I went to throw it out, I noticed a green shoot coming up from the bottom, so I replanted it. It grew a little last year, and even bigger this year. I should have pruned it earlier, but didn’t want to hurt its regrowth. I hope next year it will bloom nicely for us.

    1. Erin, that is great that your rose bush has come back so well for you. I hope it blooms next year for you too.

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