Fall is a wonderful time in the garden, especially in the Southeast. The temperatures are cooling off, allowing us to grow another round of heat-sensitive crops like lettuce, radishes, and kale. While we no longer have to worry about the heat, fall can bring its own unique set of challenges to the garden. Here are a few common fall garden mistakes we see and how to correct them.

Under Watering

In the summer, remembering to water is easy. Each time we step outside, we feel the heat and sun, but in autumn, it’s easy to forget about how dry the soil might be. Plants use less water in the fall as they grow more slowly in the dwindling sunlight.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t always mean we can slow down watering too much. Many areas have experienced autumn droughts in the last few years. If your area isn’t getting regular rain, be sure to check your soil often and water as needed to keep the soil moist but not water-logged.

Planting Too Tightly or Not Thinning

Especially if you’re planting in a high tunnel, cold frame, or greenhouse, trying to pack in as many vegetables as possible is a common fall garden mistake. Unfortunately, fall and winter crops can be especially prone to fungal diseases.

Season extension methods like high tunnels often offer minimal airflow compared to field conditions. This limited airflow, combined with high humidity brought by autumn rains and cooler temperatures, contributes to the spread of fungal diseases. Ensuring your fall crops have adequate spacing for airflow is essential. Avoid transplanting crops too tightly and thin crops like radishes as they reach a couple of inches in height.

Not Mulching Thickly

A good layer of mulch in the autumn can help insulate the soil and keep your crops thriving longer. For perennials and flowers, it also protects their root systems from heaving during freeze and thaw cycles.

Not using enough mulch is a common fall garden mistake. We like to mulch with a 2 to 3 inch thick layer in the fall, and you may want to go deeper if you live in a northern climate. When mulching, we recommend adding a layer and then re-assessing in a week. Often hay, straw, leaves, and other mulches may appear like a nice thick layer when applied but will quickly settle, leaving thin spots and bare patches.

If you grow fruit trees and other woody perennials, remember to avoid the “mulch volcano” or mounding up the mulch around the stem in a cone or volcano shape. This cone of mulch will trap moisture against the stem and provide a great place for pests and diseases to hide.

Fertilizing in the Fall

It can be tempting to give new plantings and perennials a boost to get through fall, but fertilizing in the fall can actually do more harm than good. In perennials, nitrogen will stimulate tender new growth, which can be damaged by frost. Fertilizing may also prevent natural dormancy.

In vegetable crops, it can also stimulate too much quick foliage growth. We recommend applying compost to fall vegetable beds instead. Fertilizing in the fall is also usually a waste of money. Vegetable crops slow down in the fall and winter and will fail to take up the nutrients provided by fertilizer.

Further, fertilizing in the fall can be detrimental to the environment. As vegetables and other crops usually fail to take up fall applications of fertilizer, it will leach over the winter with rains and snowmelt. This fertilizer run-off can contaminate nearby watersheds.

Assuming that Pests are Gone

Sadly, pests don’t immediately disappear as we head into autumn. In fact, a few may actually get worse. Sometimes, pest populations of cabbage loopers, aphids, or slugs can accumulate over the season and target your cool-weather crops like brassicas. Stay watchful for signs of pests and address the problem quickly to prevent setting back your plant’s growth.

Failing to Ventilate Crops Under Season Extension

Many of the crops we grow in autumn and winter are in cold frames, high tunnels, or low tunnels. These structures do a great job of protecting vegetables from frost and providing a few degrees of temperature buffer from the outdoor temperatures.

While this temperature buffer can be a great thing, it can also spell trouble on sunny days. Just because it feels cold outside doesn’t mean it’s not getting hot under your tunnel or cold frame. On sunny days, always check inside temperatures and ventilate when necessary.

Not Starting Crops Early Enough

Another common fall garden mistake is failing to start your crops early enough. In the fall, cooler temperatures and shorter days slow plant growth immensely. For fall crops, we recommend adding 15 days to your days to harvest number to account for slow growth.

For new gardeners, planting dates can also be surprising. We start many crops in fall and winter, like bulb onions, which we sow in cold frames as early as November for the following season. Always check your planting dates!

Failing to Clean Up Diseased Material

While gardens don’t need to be tidy and spotless, a little fall cleanup can go a long way in keeping your plants healthy next season. Cleanup and burn or remove any material from your garden that is diseases or full of pests. Examples include tomato plants that were killed by blight, squash plants with Downey mildew, or dead asparagus fronds that were covered in asparagus beetles.

Cutting Back Perennials and Flowers Too Soon

While we want to clean up any diseases or pest-ridden material, especially from annual crops, getting the garden too tidy is also a common fall garden mistake. Perennials and flower stalks provide critical habitat for overwintering beneficial insects like solitary bees and predatory wasps. They also provide perches and seeds for songbirds. Be sure to leave some standing until the weather warms next spring.

Leaving Beds Bare for Next Season

After a long summer season, it’s natural to want to take a break from the garden, but leaving your beds empty and bare is another common gardening mistake. A little work in fall can go a long way in preparing your beds for an easy spring planting season.

Bare soil provides no habitat for beneficial insects and is prone to erosion, compaction, and nutrient loss. At the very least, covering your soil with a layer of mulch can help protect the soil, encourage beneficial insects, and help build organic matter. You can also sow fall cover crops to help reduce weed pressure, improve soil structure, and add nitrogen.

If your beds are weedy in fall, you can also use silage tarps to cover the soil for 6 to 8 weeks or longer to kill weeds. Then, you can use mulch or cover crops depending on your schedule or climate.

 

Autumn is a beautiful time to grow another round of cool-weather vegetables. Avoid these fall garden mistakes to make the most of your garden this season.

Market gardeners are always striving to maximize their garden’s efficiency. To be successful, they need to get the most quality produce out of the smallest space and least labor as possible. While home gardeners can take a more relaxed approach, these efficient market gardens still offer some great ideas for your backyard garden. These are five simple garden tools that are popular with market gardeners that can reduce labor and make your home garden more efficient so you can focus on enjoying your garden and harvest.

Push-Operated Precision Seeder

If you direct seed long rows of crops, a seeder with adjustments or seed plates for different crop types is indispensable. Most of these seeders will allow you to precision sow seeds as small as carrots and lettuce and as large as lima beans. They’re excellent for sowing long, straight rows that are easy to weed and manage.

There are a few different seeders on the market, with Jang and EarthWay seeders being popular options. These seeders offer different pros and cons, including very different price points. No matter what seeder you opt for, a push seeder can help you cut down on sowing time and remove the need to bend over for extended periods of time.

Row Cover

Row cover is a lifesaver in any organic garden. Organic market gardeners often rely on row cover in place of pesticides to keep crops like cabbages, broccoli, and kale free from pest damage. At Southern Exposure, we always use it over eggplant seedlings to protect them from flea beetles.

Row cover is also helpful in the shoulder seasons, extending your production window in spring and fall. It’s great for protecting early spring sowings of cool-weather crops like lettuce, arugula, carrots, and mizuna. You can use it the same way in the fall, to protect your crops from early frosts.

Row cover comes in different weights depending on your use. The lightweight row cover is ideal for insect protection while still being breathable and allowing in maximum sunlight. Medium-weight row cover still allows most sunlight through and is good for early spring growth and light frost protection. Heavy-weight row cover is best for heavy frost protection and overwintering crops, but it only allows 30% to 50% of sunlight through and can slow growth.

Typically, we use wire hoops to hold up row cover. They’re easy to place and move each season. Some gardeners make their own hoops with PVC or other flexible material to place over beds.

Silage Tarps

Many market gardeners are switching to no-till operations. No-till can help build soil structure, but it also helps cut down on labor. One effective way to prepare beds in a no-till operation is silage tarps.

Silage tarps are typically black plastic sheeting that you lay down over a planting area and hold down with weights. The tarps terminate vegetation and help suppress weeds to prepare an area for planting. Typically, you use mileage tarps for about 6 to 8 weeks before planting.

Wheel Hoe

Weeding is arguably one of the most labor-intensive parts of gardening. In the Southeast, when we have warm weather and plenty of rain, it can feel like the weeds can overtake the garden in just a day or two. One of my favorite gardens tool that can make keeping up with the weeds much easier is a wheel hoe.

Wheel hoes are manual garden tools that come with one or two wheels and a few different attachments to kill weeds, break up soil, create furrows, or hill soil. Some also allow for a seeder attachment, similar to the seeders discussed above.

One way a wheel hoe can help cut down on weeding time is with a stirrup attachment. Similar to a traditional stirrup hoe, a wheel hoe with a stirrup attachment will quickly cut through young weeds just below the surface of the soil. The wheel hoe eliminates the need for bending and is perfect for staying on top of weeds in long rows.

Popular brand include Hoss, AgTec, Tilmor, and Valley Oak Tools.

Broad Fork

Popularized by Eliot Coleman, broad forks are now a staple among no-till market gardeners. These heavy-duty forks allow gardeners to lift and aerate the soil without turning it over. Many broad forks are wide enough to span one entire bed, depending on your system. They’re a great tool for improving soil health.

Broad forks can be especially helpful for new no-till systems in areas with heavy clay or compacted soil. They’re great for loosening the soil without resorting to tilling.

Today, there are many brands of broad fork like Treadlite (pictured above), Meadow Creature, Johnny’s, and Neversink.  

 

You don’t really need any special tools to get started with gardening, but if you’re looking to make your garden more efficient next season and grow as much food as possible, these tools can help. These five garden tools are simple but effective. They’re popular with market gardeners because they decrease labor costs while improving the soil, eliminating weed pressure, reducing planting time, preventing pests, and extending the season.

What’s your favorite garden tool?

Peppers are stars in the summer garden, but quickly fall to autumn’s chilly frost. If you’ve still got peppers coming in from the garden, it’s time to get picking and preserving before the season ends. Here are a few ways to preserve peppers for winter use.

Note: When working with peppers, particularly hotter varieties, it’s a good idea to wear gloves and safety glasses and work in a well-ventilated area. We sometimes even wear masks when working with large quantities of hot peppers. While you wouldn’t normally do this to cook a pepper or two, processing large quantities of peppers can be extremely irritating.

Preserve Peppers with Pickling

If you love pickled banana peppers on sandwiches or pickled jalapeños on your nachos, this one is a great option. Pickled peppers are simple to make and safe for water bath canning, a straightforward process to make them shelf-stable at home.

You can create traditional pickled banana pepper or jalapeño rings or opt for something with a bit more seasoning, like this recipe for marinated peppers, which works well with bell, Hungarian, banana, or jalapeño peppers.

Ferment Your Own Hot Sauce

Hot sauce is a pantry staple, but few people make it at home. While there are hot sauce recipes that are as simple as blending peppers, vinegar, and salt, there’s also some amazing hot sauce recipes that rely on fermentation. The process isn’t as difficult as it sounds and is part of the flavor of some popular commercial brands like Sriracha and Tabasco.

You can use many varieties of peppers to ferment your own hot sauce. Serious Eats has a great deep dive into fermenting hot sauce at home, including how to select a hot sauce style, choosing your peppers, preparation, and even adding some additional flavors.

Preserve Peppers by Pressure Canning

Peppers are a low-acid food, meaning that if you want to water bath can them, you must pickle in vinegar, as mentioned above. If you want plain peppers without vinegar, you’ll need to pressure can them.

Pressure canning is a little intimidating, but it’s easier than you’d think and is a great way to put up many low-acid garden vegetables like green beans, peppers, or sweet corn. Pressure-canned foods are shelf-stable and ready to go when you need them.

The National Center for Home Food Preservation has instructions for pressure canning peppers and some great resourcesfor folks new to pressure canning.

Create Your Pepper Powders or Flakes

Drying or dehydrating your peppers is a great way to make your own spices or seasoning mixes. Drying works especially well if you’ve grown paprika, chili, or spice peppers, which have thinner, more tender skins and plenty of flavor.

If you’ve ever seen strings of chili peppers, you know that they’re an easy vegetable to air dry, as long as you can keep them somewhere warm and dry. To air-dry them, it’s best to string them. Thread a needle and create a loop at the tail end for easy hanging once you’ve threaded the peppers. Then thread the peppers by pressing the needle through the green stem or cap. Some people prefer to dry them indoors, while other people dry them into the open air and sunlight. Air-drying peppers can take 3 to 4 weeks.

For faster results, you can use a dehydrator. Depending on the variety and thickness, a temperature between 125° and 140°F will work well. Lay your peppers on the dehydrator rack in a single layer with air space between them. Large peppers may need to be sliced.

It can be tricky, but you can also dry peppers in your oven; you just don’t want them to get too hot and burn. Lay your peppers in a single layer on a cookie sheet with space between them. Turn your oven to its lowest setting and then place the peppers in with the door propped open with a wooden spoon. You can also turn the oven on for a bit and then turn it off again for a while, alternating until the peppers are dry.

No matter what method you use, you want your peppers to be dry and crisp. Then you can process them into chili flakes, spice blends, or even hot sauce.

Freeze Your Peppers

Unlike many other vegetables, peppers don’t have high levels of enzymes that cause flavor and color loss in the freezer. This means you can skip blanching! Peppers are one of the easiest vegetables to freeze.

Cut your peppers into strips or chunks that you’ll use in recipes, then lay them on a cookie sheet in the freezer. Once completely frozen, you can transfer them to a container or bag, or vacuum seal them, and they won’t stick together.

Preserve Peppers in Salsa

Salsa and chips are a top-tier snack, and a colorful jar of homemade salsa makes it even better! Depending on the recipe, you can incorporate bell peppers, poblanos, jalapeños, and more.

As salsa typically contains plenty of acidic vinegar, it’s safe for water bath canning; just make sure you use a tested recipe. Here’s a great roundup of 60+ tested salsa canning recipes so you can find one that suits your taste.

 

Peppers are a beautiful and flavorful powerhouse of the summer garden, but a few good pepper plants can result in armloads of peppers that’s tough to use. This fall, as frost approaches, try one of these ways to preserve peppers from your garden.