Once frost has knocked things back, the instinct is to tidy everything down to bare soil. Resist it. A little strategic laziness in fall protects your soil, helps pollinators, and gives you a much easier spring. Here is what to actually do when you put your garden to bed, wherever in Canada you grow.
Pull the crops that harbour problems
Do clear out anything that carries disease or pests over winter. Tomato, potato, and squash foliage in particular should come out, especially if it showed blight, mildew, or mould. Do not compost diseased material in a cool backyard pile that never gets hot enough to kill spores; bag it or burn it where allowed. Remove any mushy, rotting fruit and vegetables too, since they invite pests.
Leave the healthy stuff standing
Here is where the old "cut everything down" advice has changed. Leave healthy perennials and seed heads standing over winter:
- Hollow stems and seed heads shelter native bees and other beneficial insects through the cold.
- Seed heads (coneflower, rudbeckia, sunflowers, grasses) feed chickadees and finches all winter.
- Standing stems catch snow, which is the best insulation your perennials can get in most of the country.
Cut it all back in spring instead. Your garden looks a little wilder over winter and your pollinators and soil are much better for it.
Do not leave the soil bare
Bare soil erodes, compacts under winter rain and snowmelt, and loses nutrients. Cover it:
- Mulch empty beds with shredded leaves, straw, or compost, a couple of inches is plenty.
- Shredded fall leaves are the best free resource you have. Run the mower over them and pile them on the beds; they break down into gorgeous soil by spring.
- Cover crops like fall rye can be sown early enough in milder zones; in the coldest zones you have usually missed that window, so mulch instead.
Skip the tilling
Tilling in fall breaks up the soil structure, buries the mulch that protects it, and disturbs the earthworms and fungi doing the real work. Leave beds intact, top them with mulch or compost, and let winter do the rest. Come spring you plant into loose, living soil instead of a compacted crust.
A few end-of-season chores worth doing
- Empty and store containers and hoses before a hard freeze so they do not crack.
- Drain and shut off outdoor taps in freezing zones.
- Clean and oil your tools before they go into the shed for the winter.
- Mulch tender perennials and new plantings after the ground has started to freeze, not before, so you insulate the cold in rather than keeping the ground warm and confusing the plant.
- Plant garlic and spring bulbs if you have not yet; fall is the window.
Put this way, "putting the garden to bed" is less about tidying and more about tucking it in: pull the problems, protect the soil, and leave the rest for the birds and the bees. Spring you will thank yourself.