December 12, 2022
Even if the main vegetable harvest season is behind you, gardening never stops. Gardening is a year-round hobby, with every month providing a new opportunity to tend to your gardening projects. Keeping up with your post-harvest vegetable garden maintenance will ensure the health of your garden the following spring.
Weeds can actually be at their most prolific in the autumn. Staying on top of weeding will deter new weeds from seeding, allowing fewer of them to propagate next year. Keep your vegetable garden grooming on track, and the boring task of weeding will become noticeably more manageable.
It's important to be consistent with your deadheading after the harvest is done. To deadhead your plants, pick off any old, spent flowers, which allow healthy new growth and buds to form. Staying consistent with this task forces ever-bearing plants to channel their energy into producing new buds and flowers.
Post-harvest can turn any vegetable garden landscape into a mess of brown plants trying for one last round of blossoms. By removing the dying portions as the month progresses, you'll create less garden cleanup work later. You can also save vegetable seeds from your harvested plants, to sow next season. A compost pile is a simple effort that will yield excellent returns. Add organic materials like rotted vegetables, plant scraps, and leaves to create a mulch pile that can eventually become compost. This will be useful, come the next planting season!