How To Replant Your Fall Season Garden
Hello Fellow Home Gardeners -
My name is Nick Bielec and I’ve been working at Revival Roots since 2018. I run our maintenance operations to care for about 100 vegetable gardens in the Southern California region. I’ve been vegetable gardening since a young age and passionate about helping others grow their own food. I’ve included below some easy tips to prepare your garden for the fall growing season. Some of my favorite vegetables, leafy greens, and herbs are now in season and you won’t regret growing the cooler season crops!
How To Replant Your Garden For The Fall Season Crops
As the fall season approaches with cooler nights and shorter days, we begin to plan for fall and winter crops! It’s finally time to plant your cool season crops! Before you plant your garden, you’ll need to give your planters a healthy refresh. Amending the soil rebuilds the soil with more nutrients to supply your new crops. Healthy soil equals healthy plants, which in turn gives you the garden bounty you’ve been waiting for. Replanting for fall gives you the opportunity to tune your garden and basically start fresh. Double checking your irrigation, tossing in amendments, and taking a step back to plan your garden layout should all be done before the fall season takes off.
Prepping Your Garden
The first step in preparing your garden beds for fall is to remove any veggies from summer that have slowed production or are starting to die off. This is difficult for any farmer, gardener, or plant novice to do. But need not worry, the garden scraps will be put to good use later in the season. After you remove your summer season vegetables, you can chop them up into smaller pieces and place in your compost bin. The plant scraps will break down over the coming months and can be used as mulch and fertilizer later in the fall season.
Once you have cleared your garden bed, you’ll want to aerate the soil with your shovel. Turn the soil in every nook and cranny about 8-12 inches down into the soil. Turning the soil with your shovel helps break up the old roots systems and allows oxygen to reinvigorate the soil. In raised garden beds, it is important to completely loosen every inch of the soil as it tends to get compacted from seasons past.
Adding The Good Stuff/ Amending Your Soil
After loosening up the soil, you’ll want to add your amendments and mix it all up again. A good amending consists of all the healthy nutrients your garden needs to start off on the right foot. This part of prepping your garden is essential to growing healthy, bountiful vegetables. Your newly planted seedlings will want lots of fresh nutrients to start growing. Adding these amendments will promote a healthy root system for your seedlings to grow and strengthen their defenses towards pests and diseases they may encounter later in the season.
Soil amendments usually consist of a mix of ingredients. This can range from your pile of compost you built up all summer long or a bag of organic compost you purchased at your local store. After you remove our old plants and turn the soil, add a mix of worm castings, then healthy handfuls of organic granulated fertilizer. The granulated fertilizer should be a well-balanced blend of nutrients that will slowly release into the soil as the seedlings grow and mature. Once you’ve added your amendments to the soil, give the soil a thorough mix with your shovel. Ensure you’ve mixed up all the good stuff and then even out the soil, it’s almost time to plant!
Planting Your Fall Garden/ Almost Time To Get Planting!
Before you plant your fall season veggies and the garden bed is fully amended, it is important to do a quick check of the irrigation system to make sure it’s watering properly. Then, like in every season, you should do a check of the direction the sun will travel throughout the fall season. This allows you to properly map out where to plant your fall crops. Keep those taller veggies like broccolini and chard in an area that will prevent shade from covering your smaller veggies, like spinach and arugula. Most of all - have fun planting, this is the most rewarding part after completing the hard work of fully amending your garden. If you have any questions regarding where, how, or what to plant in your garden you can always contact us via email or directly through our online chat found on any page on our site.
Have fun plating your fall season garden and we can’t wait for your homegrown bounties to come!
