Fall Garden Planting
3-2-1: Plant!
Clean up your area, ensure you have access to a water source, gather your materials, and plant!
If you recall, I began this process a few weeks a go as I prepared my seeds. If you missed it, feel free to click HERE to get caught up on part 1 of Fall Garden Prep. It’s definitely the time of year where I have to get things into the ground to beat our first frost in November so over the past week, I’ve been painstakingly cleaning our summer garden out.
I’m embarrassed to even share the before photo, but in the spirit of transparency, it’s the hot mess you’re viewing up above 😬 . I had definitely let it get over grown as our summer garden was kaput so it needed massive TLC.
The cleanup took me 4 days in total. I was only able to dedicate about 2 hours each day to get it cleaned – it was a process, y’all. Soccer season has begun, we had chickens to process, and work to balance as well so life has been a bit more hectic than usual. My weed whacker also died so I did the entire clean up using hand held tools and my not-so-dainty lady fingers.
Cleaning up all the weeds, grass, and pulling out old plants was a full body workout and it was amazing to see the slow, but steady progress. I got more excited as each row slowly became plantable (if that’s a real word). The process, while labor intensive, was pretty straight forward.
I loosened up large clumps of grass and weeds with my hand-held garden hoe (I use THIS one). Then I’d drop it like it’s hot and put the largest sections into a container to get out of the garden area fully. Anytime I pull weeds or grass, I get them fully out of the garden space. I’ve noticed that this reduces the amount of growth over time so I try my best not to till anything back into the soil. Once I had large sections cleared, I used my hand-held tiller to till the soil and then I came back through with a rake to even the soil out.
I did this for all 4 rows being extra careful to not destroy the plants I currently had in the ground or ruin our drip lines (I learned today I wasn’t as careful as I though so waterproof tape to patch 2 spots is en route as we speak). Progress can be seen below and it’s a wonderful thing!
Now you may be wondering, “Why didn’t she just use landscape fabric?” Yes, it would make my life easier BUT it is absolutely not sustainable and degrades terribly in the soil! I’d much rather deal with weeds and grass any day over the mess and nastiness the fabric brings with it over time. (We have tons we’re unable to fully clean out from the previous owner’s old garden plot.)
Get to Tillin'!
With everything cleaned up, next step was to till in our compost and manure to make sure the soil has some fresh nutrients replenished after the last few months.
We actually used our cultivator to do this – we did NOT do this piece by hand.
Not sure about y’all but the smell of freshly tilled soil and knowing what that’s going to potentially yield for us is an awesome thing!
If you look closely enough, you’ll see some fresh rows where we mixed everything in.
Time to Plant!
Don’t put everything in haphazardly. Take some time to think about what grows well next to one another, what type of space will be needed for each to grow, and the support structures you may need long term.
I planted my squash along the outside row since they’ll grow large and vine-like. As they grow, it’ll provide some shade for our bean plants!
While I planted quite a few established seeds today, I left plenty of room to plant fresh seeds and marked where those were placed with poles.
Label your Plants
I attempted using actual plant labels over the spring/summer. The issue was they faded and then I had no clue what was what until things started to flower and bear fruit or veggies.
This time around, I simply staked where plants or seeds were but I didn’t label them. Instead, I drew out a map in my garden notebook to help me keep track of what’s growing where.
Now all that’s left is just to care for, maintain, and nurture all of our plants for the next few months.
