Fall Garden Cleanup Checklist: How to Put Your Garden to Bed
The leaves are coming down, the tomatoes are done, and the garden is ready for a nap. A little fall garden cleanup now means fewer weeds, healthier beds and a much easier start next spring. Here's the simple checklist we use at Grampa's Gardenware, the family-run garden tool company from Oregon. Pick a dry weekend, grab a wheelbarrow and work through it one job at a time.
1. Pull weeds before they set seed
Fall is one of the best times of the year to weed. Cool, damp soil lets roots slide out whole, and every weed you pull now is one less plant dropping seeds over the winter. (We cover the why in our fall weeding guide.)
- Start with weeds that are flowering or forming seed heads.
- Go for the root, not just the leaves. Dandelions and other tap-rooted weeds come back from root pieces left behind.
- Weed the day after a rain, when the soil is soft.
For lawn and garden weeds, a stand up weed puller does the job with no bending or kneeling: Center. Press. Lean. The four steel claws grab the weed and lever it out, root and all. Prefer an all-steel handle? The Grampa's Metal Weeder works the same way. Got a lawn full of dandelions? Here's how to remove dandelions by the root, step by step.
2. Clear out spent plants (but not all of them)
A tidy garden is nice, but a spotless one isn't always best. Use this rule of thumb:
- Remove: spent annuals, vegetable plants and anything that had disease or pest problems. Bag or trash diseased leaves and stems rather than composting them, so problems don't carry over to next year.
- Leave: healthy perennial stems and seed heads like coneflowers and black-eyed Susans. They feed birds through the winter and give beneficial insects a place to shelter.
- Compost: healthy plant material and pulled weeds that haven't gone to seed.
3. Loosen the soil and tidy the edges
Once beds are clear, loosen the top few inches of soil, scrape out small weeds and clean up bed edges so grass doesn't creep in over winter. A garden hook hand cultivator is made for this: it rakes out roots, loosens crusty soil and cuts a clean edge in one tool.
4. Put fallen leaves to work
Leaves are free garden gold. Instead of bagging them all:
- Rake thick layers off the lawn so the grass isn't smothered.
- Shred them with a mower and spread them on beds as mulch.
- Add the rest to the compost pile, mixed with green material.
Hauling armfuls from bed to bin is a lot easier with a gardening apron with pockets. The big kangaroo pouch holds leaves, pulled weeds and gloves, and keeps your hands free.
5. Plant, divide and mulch
- Plant spring bulbs like tulips and daffodils before the ground freezes. Our guide to planting bulbs in fall walks you through it.
- Divide crowded perennials so they have room to grow next year. A hori hori garden knife slices through root clumps and opens bags of mulch and soil, too.
- Mulch bare soil with a few inches of shredded leaves or bark to help hold back weeds and protect roots.
6. Clean and store your tools
Last job: brush the dirt off your tools, let them dry, and store them somewhere dry so they're ready on the first warm day of spring. Good tools last for years when you look after them.
Your fall garden cleanup checklist
- ☐ Pull weeds, roots and all, before they seed
- ☐ Remove spent annuals and diseased plants
- ☐ Leave healthy seed heads for the birds
- ☐ Loosen soil and edge the beds
- ☐ Mulch or compost the leaves
- ☐ Plant bulbs and divide perennials
- ☐ Clean and store your tools
Where to get Grampa's tools
Shop the whole family of tools at grampasweeder.com, or find them on Amazon:
- Grampa's Weeder (the Original): on Amazon
- Grampa's Metal Weeder: black · green
- Grampa's Garden Hook: on Amazon
- Grampa's Garden Apron: red · blue · green · yellow
- Grampa's Garden Knife: on Amazon
Grampa's Gardenware is a family-run business from Oregon. We started in 1999 in our garage, and our stand-up weeder design dates back to 1913. Happy fall gardening!