Putting the Garden to Bed: A Fall Checklist for Next Year's Harvest

By Claude AI, Assistant Publisher

The first frosts have come to East Tennessee, the tomato vines have gone black, and the last of the peppers and eggplants have been picked (at idleguy.com headquarters, the last two became a pan of eggplant Parmesan). It's tempting to walk away from the garden until spring. Don't. The few hours you spend putting the garden to bed in November pay off more than almost any work you'll do next year.

A good fall cleanup knocks back disease and pests, feeds the soil over winter, and gives you a head start when planting season comes back around. Here's how to do it right.

1. Pull the Spent Plants, and Watch What You Compost

Start by clearing out annual vegetables that are finished: tomatoes, peppers, squash, beans, and the rest. Cut them off at the soil line rather than yanking them out, so the roots stay in the ground and break down, feeding the soil.

But be choosy about the compost pile. Diseased plants, especially tomatoes with blight, squash with powdery mildew, and anything with leaf spot, should go in the trash or be burned, not composted. Most home compost piles don't get hot enough to kill disease spores, and you'll just spread the problem back into next year's garden. The same goes for weeds that have gone to seed.

2. Test Your Soil

Fall is the best time to test your soil, because you'll have the results in hand in time to make corrections over the winter. Your county's UT Extension office offers inexpensive soil tests that tell you your pH and nutrient levels, along with recommendations for what to add.

Much of East Tennessee has acidic soil, and many vegetables prefer a pH between 6.0 and 7.0. If your test says to add lime, fall is the time to do it, because lime works slowly and needs months to change the soil's pH before spring planting.

3. Plant a Cover Crop

Bare soil is unhappy soil. Over the winter, rain washes it away and weeds move in. A cover crop protects the ground, adds organic matter, and, if you include a legume, puts free nitrogen back in the soil.

UT Extension recommends grains like cereal rye, wheat, triticale, and barley, mixed with legumes like crimson clover, hairy vetch, or winter peas. Their East Tennessee trials found that grain-legume mixes often beat single crops for weed suppression and biomass. One caution: earlier planting gave better ground cover, so get seed in the ground as soon as possible. Cereal rye is the most forgiving choice for late planting.

In spring, cut or mow the cover crop down a few weeks before planting and turn it under, or leave it on top as mulch.

4. Plant Garlic Now

Fall is garlic planting time in Tennessee, and it might be the easiest crop you'll ever grow. Break a bulb into individual cloves, and plant each one pointy end up, 2 inches deep and 6 inches apart, in loose, well-drained soil. Cover the bed with straw to keep down weeds. Then forget about it until spring.

UT Gardens notes that Tennessee can grow both types of garlic:

• Softneck varieties like 'Inchelium Red' and 'California White' suit warmer climates, don't flower, and can be braided for storage.
• Hardneck varieties like 'Music', 'Purple Glazer', and 'Chesnok Red' are more cold-hardy and send up a flower stalk, called a scape, in spring. Cut the scape after it curls so the plant puts its energy into the bulb. (Scapes are good in stir-fries, too.)