How to Prep Your Fall Garden the Easy, Earth-Friendly Way

Fall is in the air. Cooler days brings the unmistakable shift in our gardens as the growing season winds down. It’s tempting to grab your rake, pull every plant out by the roots, and “tidy up” before winter hits.

But if you’re aiming for a healthier garden and less work next season, it’s time to embrace no dig garden clean-up. No dig gardening is more than just a trend—it’s a smarter, soil-loving way to garden. And when it comes to fall cleanup, the no dig method gives your garden a natural boost while cutting your workload. Win-win.

I started seed saving the year I got behind (way behind) on picking my pole beans. When I found a few (ok, lots) of bean pods that were swelling in their pods and starting to yellow I was in despair at a lost harvest.

But then a light bulb popped on.

These were not a waste—just a different stage of the plant.

I didn’t have to toss these overripe beans into the compost. I could leave these to grow and save them as dried beans. I could eat them or save them to plant for more beans next year.

It was a sublimely empowering moment. One I want you to have too!

I got lucky by stumbling onto starting with one of the easiest vegetable seeds to save. For the first few years I saved mostly bean varieties and native flowers. Over a decade later, I’m still experimenting with saving new seeds. Which is why I’m well suited to pass the torch: if I can do it—you can too!

Sweetcorn Season = Peak Summer.

I am a Midwestern gal, through and through. And let me tell you, we take our corn seriously.

That coupled with the growing interest in preserving more of our foods brought about this article. I’ll share my family’s favorite ways to enjoy and preserve this beautiful bountiful crop.

I love the versatility of strawberries – just enough tart to hold their own, and shine through even in salads!

At this point of summer, even I’m getting tired of the same old salads. But making your own dressings is an easy way to jazz up your salad routine!

I love rhubarb for so many reasons! This is now my 4^th article on rhubarb (and counting) and I think it’s because it is one of the first to arrive in my northern garden that I give so much attention to it! We’re just all so excited to have fresh fruits and veggies to play with again, so here’s a newer favorite way that I’ve found to preserve rhubarb—in rhubarb chutney!

Find more information on Growing Great Rhubarb HERE.

Eating this with grilled pork chops or a spring charcuterie board helps this rhubarb chutney shine. Paired with the goat cheese, crackers and cured meats, along with the first spring greens salad = spring in a meal. But the flavors are also deep enough to work well all summer and into fall.

Organic mulch is the unsung hero of my veggie garden.

Mulch performs garden magic by just lying there looking gorgeous in my garden.

Like a good milk mustache, I see mulch in people’s gardens as an endearing and wholesome quality.

It is one of my secret tools in the garden—I can control so many variables, soil moisture, soil temperature, and organic content, with an annual addition.

One of the basics of soil health is to ‘keep the soil covered’ and mulch does this and so much more. Specifically, I’m talking about organic mulch, like straw, tree leaves or compost added to the top of the soil (not worked into the soil).

‘Lettuce’ Introduce You… Everything you need to know about growing lettuce and the best salads in town!

We’ll get you harvesting more flavor and crunch from your lettuce patch.

New gardeners are often told to grow salad greens as an easy vegetable crop. This advice is likely linked to the shorter harvest time for most salad greens. But beyond that, lettuce can be tricky for us northern gardeners- especially as climate chaos keeps creeping in.

Lucky for us, we’ve got a salad-centric farmer as our guide. Meet Jesse Edgington of Edgie’s Veggies. He’s an organic urban farmer and salad slinger. He grows in zone 4 around the Twin Cities (you may have seen him at St. Paul’s weekly Farmers Markets) so he’s a pro at pushing the early and late ‘shoulder seasons’ and dealing with those high heat and humidity days that plague many a salad lover.

Here’s what I gleaned from spending a day on his urban farm to help you grow great lettuce.

I truly can’t believe I’ve been sharing garden, homestead, farmer, and food stories with you all for eight years now.

Thanks for being part of the movement to heal our earth one garden, homestead, and meal at a time.

In those 8 years lots has changed and much has stayed the same. Locavore is a known word. Farmers markets have exploded. We’re inching towards Victory Garden era numbers of people gardening (but not quantity yet). Climate news has gotten scarier, but many people are doing more.