Preparing Your Garden for Winter

Overwintering Plants & Other Fall Gardening Tasks

  See our list of fall chores to prepare your garden for winter—and ensure a beautiful and vibrant spring! We’ve covered vegetables, herbs, berries, perennials, roses, trees, and shrubs.

Preparing Your Vegetable Garden for Winter

You can postpone the inevitable (that is, winter) for a while by covering your vegetables with old sheets or bedspreads on cold nights, but the declining light and chilly daytime temperatures will naturally bring plant growth to a halt. Get tips for protecting your garden from frost.
Leave carrots, garlic, horseradish, leeks, parsnips, radishes, and turnips in the garden for harvesting through early winter. Mark the rows with tall stakes so that you can find them in snow, and cover them with a heavy layer of mulch to keep the ground from thawing.

• Pull up tomato, squash, pea, and bean plants. If they’re disease-free, compost them. If any are diseased, either burn them or discard separately. Pull up and put away the stakes.
• Before the ground gets too hard, remove all weeds and debris and eliminate overwintering sites for insects and disease. Check our Pest Library for tips on preventing the most common pests in your garden.
• Gently till the soil to expose any insects who plan to overwinter; this will reduce pest troubles in the spring and summer. This is one of the most effective ways to reduce populations of Japanese beetles, whose grubs live and overwinter in the ground.
• Once most of the garden soil is exposed, add a layer of compost, leaves, manure (if you have it), and lime (if you need it). Gently till into the soil.
• Another option is to sow cover crops, such as winter rye, to improve your soil. See our article on Cover Crops for the U.S. and Cover Crops for Canada.
• If some areas have hopelessly gone to weeds, cover them with black plastic or a layer of cardboard and leave it in place over the winter and into the spring to kill sprouting seeds.https://www.almanac.com/content/preparing-your-garden-winter?trk_msg=KIB1GMFTKV5K94C4G06KV4N1HC&trk_contact=EEBLFVJ2I0VAQT9EM5JFVJAK9O&trk_sid=CCACS49RDRI5R357108JLCRIA8&utm_source=Listrak&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=Preparing+Your+Garden+for+Winter+(title)&utm_campaign=Companion+Daily