Getting Started
Start off on the right foot by planting your fall organic garden with all the tools you will need for the job. This is a curated list of the top products sold on Amazon.com
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Learning how to start and manage a fall organic garden is one of the healthiest ways of growing flowers, and producing your own nutritional rich, delicious, and contaminants-free food. Gardeners can easily start a fall organic garden, as there are abundant fallen leaves in the nearby areas. These leaves along with kitchen waste, and other organic waste can be used for composting, or can also be incorporated into the soil. However, it is extremely important to know the quality of organic waste, leaves, twigs, and branches. This organic material should be free from pathogens, and contaminants as otherwise, they can easily degrade soil quality, and underground water table.
Urban organic gardens are a great way to produce healthy, safe, nutritionally rich, and contaminants-free food, and help to save money by minimizing purchase’s from the organic food store. Based on the significance and benefits of urban organic gardening, this article is mainly focused to highlight the basic strategies and management practices for urban organic gardening and teaching people to how to start an organic garden.
Gardeners should start thinking about fall crops, as late growing is not effective to achieve uniform cover, good growth, and development. Successful harvesting in fall can be ensured by growing the late season crops during the peak of the summer season. The predictable life span of different crops is different so growers can easily anticipate the approximate time for harvestable size. These days to maturity are also influenced by climatic factors, environmental conditions, and bioavailability of nutrients.
Flower Planting in Fall Organic Gardens
Daffodils, tulips, iris, crocus, and hyacinths are excellent choices to add bright colors in spring. So, fall is an ideal time to differentiate and separate the perennials and their seeds for next year’s gardening. Usually, the fall season keeps the gardeners busy for a few weeks but they can enjoy uniform, lively, and better gardens in the following season.
Fall is an ideal time to sink the spring season bulbs and to grow more cool-season plants for filling the gaps in the landscaping sites to brighten up the end season gardening. Cyclamen, chrysanthemum, kale, pansies, and asters are an excellent choices for fall organic gardening. Growers can make floating rows to provide a few degrees of extra heat to support the growth, and anchorage of tender seedlings.
Other than planting vegetables, and flowers, gardeners should manage and cover the leftover garden part by using turf grasses. However, it is necessary to check the compatibility of certain grasses with soil types. Gardeners should check the type of soil, nutrition status, physical, chemical, and biological health of the soil. If any of the parameters is causing some limitation, it should be immediately corrected by using an amendment of any other relevant material. For this purpose, gardeners can contact any nearby agricultural extension services or can obtain help from any reliable soil, and water testing laboratory. There are also soil testing kits you can purchase that will do the job quite well. Based on testing results, gardeners should only use healthy soil for organic gardens.
Planting Trees, and Shrubs in Fall
Fall is the best season for planting, starting the gardening and planting shrubs, and trees, as this season does not come with harsh environmental conditions, and abiotic stresses. The fall season allows enough warmth in the soil to allow active root growth and development. Shrubs and trees require months to develop an efficient rooting system, so fall planting can provide appropriate soil temperature for successful anchoring and growth. Therefore, the fall season allows the best management opportunities for landscaping and planting shrubs and trees.
Dumping the leaves or fallen plant material to the ground and running a lawnmower is a great option to ensure good decomposition. This breakdown causes the addition of organic amendment and nutrients to the soil, which in turn supports the excellent growth and development of plants. Spreading these leaves on the topsoil layer is also an excellent option, as it acts as a mulch layer on soil, and offers protection from external environmental conditions.
Learning How to Grow and Manage Vegetables in a Fall Organic Garden
Starting weeks of fall are ideal to remove the remains of summer vegetables and clean the garden. Many diseases and pests are over-wintered in the old remains and plant debris. These remains can be used for composting, but growers should make sure that these are not infected or contaminated as otherwise, they can cause negative consequences.
Lettuce, broccoli, radish, and cabbage are good vegetables to achieve a uniform and good gardening cover. Download this free cover crop growing guide from True Leaf Market.
Yes, it’s completely free–download the free PDF. We are doing this in hopes that it will motivate people to get out there and experience the joys of growing their seed.
Other than these beets, onions, salad greens, asparagus, scallions, and garlic are also good choices for fall organic gardening. Scallions can be directly transplanted or sown in the garden, but gardeners should ensure a minimum space of 6-8 inches between plants. Salad green most likely thrives best in the cool growing conditions, so it can easily grow well in the fall season. Greens are easily matured in a short period so these can be planted throughout the fall season. When you’re ready to plant, make sure you use a trusted source for all of your organic gardening needs like True Leaf Market. Since 1974, True Leaf Market’s brands: Mountain Valley Seed and Handy Pantry, have been providing a multitude of high-quality seeds to residential and professional growers alike, which include flowers, vegetables, grasses, herbs, sprouting, long-term storage, and wildflowers.
Management of Irrigation Scheduling in Fall Organic Gardening
Growers should care about irrigation scheduling and should prefer to apply frequent but less intense irrigations, like cooler weather, and dry winds can quickly dehydrate the plants. Water should only be applied after properly checking the moisture contents in soil and moisture requirements of plants. Some plants, especially vegetables, and flowers are extremely sensitive to over-irrigation, and under irrigation so there should be a proper check, and balance to manage irrigation in the fall season.
Benefits of Fall Organic Gardening
Organic gardening allows good control of managing soil fertility, and insect pest attacks, by following crop rotation, mulching, and cover crop practices. There is no need to apply synthetic chemicals, such as pesticides, fertilizers, weedicides, and insecticides so, organic gardening helps to save money along with harvesting fresh, nutritionally rich, and exceptional quality food. Rustic greens such as turnips, mustard, and arugula are good for triple use fall gardening crops. They offer unique and amazing taste and help to shade out weeds due to the presence of broad leaves. Whereas, nutrients taken by these plants are recycled back to the soil as the winter season causes the killing of residue rots.
Furthermore, the use of organic practices, composting, and application of microbes help to improve the physical, chemical, and biological conditions of soil that not only improve plant growth and development but also help to protect the environment by reduced carbon emissions from soil. The benefits of organic garden pest control are great and allow greater control over safe food production.
While, there is no need to worry about ingesting harmful chemical residues of fertilizers, and pesticides, gardeners can enjoy fresh and healthy crop production according to their taste, and preference. Organic gardening also boosts the production of healthy, and vigorous flowers, shrubs, and plants, which increases the beauty of the garden by multiple folds.
If you have any tips for fellow organic gardeners, we would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment below and share it with your fellow readers.
