Summer Garden Cleaning

Summer Vegetable Harvest

We are just days away from the official first day of Fall, and here in the Valley of the Sun, it's time to get those summer vegetable gardens cleaned out and prep the beds for Fall planting. I absolutely love this time of year. I love when you walk outside early in the morning and the air feels cool on your skin. For me, this is the big shift that comes when we finally get to freshen up our garden beds and enjoy a long planting and growing season during the cooler months. Summer garden cleaning is a necessity and here are some ideas to make it go smoothly.

The first step in cleaning is to cut back any plants that you want to keep. This would be any plants that may have become overgrown or unsightly, but you know will produce once the weather drops. Quite often the base plant is still happy and thriving, and just the outer branches and leaves got hit with the scorching heat.

Late Summer Vegetables

Tomatoes and peppers are plants that can look pretty peeked during the late summer, but will bounce back and give a seond round of produce during the fall. If there's anything you'd like to try to extend into the cooler months, just give it a little pruning and it should bounce back in no time. Last year I had 2 cherry tomato plants that gave me a huge flush of tomatoes up until the first frost.

Overgrown Garden Beds

For crops that are definitely seasonal, like squash for example, get them pulled and disposed of. Some plants can go into the compost pile, but if you're noticing a lot of pest damage, it's better to completely remove the remains from your yard. Be sure you pull up root balls when removing

old plants too. I usually let my sunflower stalks stay in the ground long after I harvest the heads in the early summer, so remembering to remove the stalk and roots is important. Some plants really dig in deep, so this can be a bit of a challenge at times

Once your beds are cleaned out, it's time to refresh the soil. The Arizona summer sun is particularly brutal on soil, and you've probably had a reduction in volume over the summer months. Even if you've kept water supplied to your garden, the level of your soil is very likely lower than it was 4 months ago. I didn't take the time to top dress my beds with a thick layer of mulch this summer, as I was out of town a lot, and my raised beds have decreased in volume by 5-6 inches. Unfortunatley, I'm now going to have to spend some money on soil and ammendments to get all of my raised beds ready for fall planting. I urge you to try and choose the nicest organic compost/soil that you can find. I prefer to add different soils together because I feel like it creates a nutrient dense final product. In addition, I add mushroom compost and well rotted horse manure to my beds. **Let me stress that you do not want to add fresh manures to your garden because it's too hot and will burn your plants and roots. Only ever put very well rotted manure into an active garden bed!

2 raised garden beds

After the soil ammending is finished, you'll want to do a good run through of your watering system. I designed an inexpensive sprinkler system for my raised beds, so I will need to check each individual emitter and make sure none are plugged or broken. If there are any needing a fix, I will get those replaced. This is also a great time to make sure any automatic timers are working properly. Change out batteries, double check electrical connections, and verify that the clocks work properly. Times and days for watering a fall garden will be different than a summer garden, so you'll also want to change up the watering times as needed.

Another often overlooked part of summer garden cleanup is eliminting any unwanted pests that may have been hiding out in your garden. If your beds are like mine and got a little overgrown and unruly, you may have some unwanted visitors. One of the great aspects about dropping temps is that some of the bugs die off. Just trimming away any weeds or tall grass around the beds and mowing the grass in the yard will help eliminate homes for bugs and critters to hide in. Clearing away any old brush piles will help too. Our area tends to get rats, so setting a few traps before fall planting is something we like to do as well.

Pepper and Herb Bed

Once you have completed all these cleanup steps, you can sit back and enjoy what you've created. You should now have a mostly blank slate, and the next part is the fun part...designing your Fall and Winter garden! I absolutely love sketching what plants I want to place where, and then going shopping for transplants. If you have started fall crops from seed, they should be just about ready to go through the hardening off process. This year I was unable to start any seeds for my garden, so I'll be having to purchase transplants (shout out to Berridge Nursery in Phoenx, my favorte place to buy plants locally!). In addition to transplants, I will be direct sowing seeds for root crops. I look forward to sharing many more gardening tips with you throught the upcoming growing seasons and I'm here to answer any gardening questions you may have!

Please consider joining me in the plant nursery for one of my classes. Here's a link:

Link to Classes I'm teaching

Kitchen Garden Consultations Available

In addition, if you need help getting your own Kitchen Garden planned out and started, I do offer Kitchen Garden Consultations and would love to help! Please visit my website for the information and to schedule a consultation with me. Just one visit can get you started on havng the garden of your dreams!

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