Fall Garden Chores: Setting Priorities

Since I haven’t been feeling great this week, it definitely made me be very specific with my garden chores. I’m still suffering from an ongoing headache, congestion, and a bit of brain fog but it’s not covid. I also get sick every fall, a symptom of my fibromyalgia, so it’s hard to completely parse the two apart as they’re certainly connected.

It means, though, that my summer energy levels have evaporated. Combine that with a high of 40-something today, and I barely want to get out from under the blankets. I got lucky overnight without a frost because I forgot to harvest our shelling peas yesterday, though I did pull the edamame, some gorgeous carrots, and a handful of green beans (that I did cover last night, go figure). The peas were hit last week with our mild frost but so far have persevered with some damage to some peas. I’m gonna let the plants ride out this next cold snap and see if they can hold on as next week, again, looks warmer than last week.

We’re in this yo-yo pattern with frosts and then 70s that follow, so on the one hand it’s tempting to try and save all the plants that have signs of newly set fruit, but the days are rapidly shrinking, the soils are cooling, and our sunlight is skirting the treeline to our south. All this means there’s really not much growing happening in the garden this time of year. We’re nearing refrigerator season at this point, and so I work to set plants free, dropping them off by the shredder for our growing compost heap. Here’s a link to the chipper we invested in last year for building our massive compost piles.

I set meager goals this time of year of doing one or two things a day in the garden. Many days it’s not quite enough to eliminate what can feel like a burdensome task list, but it’s all my body can handle and it’s equally critical to get something done each day because in reality, we could get snow in a few weeks, or better yet a week of drizzly weather (we’re 8” behind in rainfall this year) in the 40s or 50s, conditions at which I want to crawl into a bear den and huddle for the foreseeable. So as I survey the garden or my weekly task list, I’m constantly assessing and reassessing the plants I’m thinking of working with, deciding who is more sensitive to the cold. I’ll always work with the less cold-tolerant plants first unless a harvest of something that doesn’t keep well in the garden necessitates my attention.

If you’re in a warmer climate and you’ve still got all your summer veggies in the ground (peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumber, summer squash, green beans, corn, and melons), you’ll soon need to consider which ones to prioritize first. Or maybe you’ve got a reasonably-sized garden and you can handle it all in the early evening hours after work if a frost is predicted (this was us years ago, and it was a good life too!). I encourage you to assess your warm-season crops and start to make a plan for which ones to pull first — maybe it’s due to disease pressure that’s been building or maybe you need room for some fall/winter veggies. Or maybe it’s a size and scope consideration.

Today it’s the flour corn and the peas for me. Peas are more tolerant of some cold air and light freezes than corn. The corn is really a prized food here; it’s the first time we’ve grown a flour corn variety specifically for tortillas. So I will start with that because it will take much longer as I need to cut down the entire plant, thus it’s a lot heavier, and I need to carry it into our garage to dry a bit longer on the plant before I pull the ears off the plants. This variety was a complete experiment this far north and it looks like we are barely squeaking by but it’s working.

As hard as working in the cold is, tending to things like the flour corn will make room for the yards of compost needed to top dress the beds. Working with wheelbarrows full of compost is actually a great project for a cold day because you warm up rather quickly moving around so much — definitely a warmer activity than harvesting peas and carrots. So I’ll throw some wool on and my winter parka (not joking!) and lopper or saw down the corn forest today ahead of what is sure to be a frost tonight.
If I’m feeling extra sprightly tomorrow, I’ll go pick up our first yard of fall compost this weekend, which will break the seal on compost for us and get me rolling with that critical fall chore.

How is your fall garden cleanup coming along? And how are you making sure to listen to your body as you balance the endless garden tasks?

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