Autumn is an ambiguous season. She sums up the results of seasonal work in the estate. It also lays the foundation for next year’s harvest.

Previously, my ideas about the chores on the estate during this period were reduced to harvesting and clearing the site. In fact, the gardener has much more worries in the fall and they are all aimed at reducing the load in the spring.

Leave or scrape? If you rake it, what to do with it next?

If the garden is decorative, healthy and not sown with lawn grass, then you can not get rid of the fallen leaves. During the winter, a natural process of decomposition will occur, and unripened residues are removed in the spring to accelerate the growth of young grass.

On the lawn, fallen leaves are an unnecessary and harmful element, it must be removed. The same applies to a garden with fruit trees.

Fallen leaves should not be burned. The ashes from it will not bring any benefit, and along with the smoke, half of the periodic table is released, which is extremely undesirable for the health of the environment.

The foliage of this year is not suitable for mulching and warming — the debate process contributes to the reproduction of harmful microorganisms that are dangerous for cultivated plants.

Freshly harvested foliage should also not be sent to the compost pit (all for the same reason). It is folded separately in the far corner of the garden and left until next year. In the resulting heap, hedgehogs will overwinter with pleasure. And next year, withered foliage will become a valuable element for a compost pit or a warm bed. It does not fertilize the earth, but fluffs it well.

If you really want to burn something, then let it be the branches left after the sanitary pruning of the garden. Wood ash is a mandatory component of the soil fertilization procedure.

IT’S IMPORTANT TO KNOW: if the foliage is collected under a diseased tree, then it must be burned, otherwise pathogenic bacteria will spread throughout the garden.

In fact, whitewashing is already the final stage of autumn processing of trees. And before that, you should get rid of dried branches, exfoliated bark and treat the trunk with an insecticidal preparation. Thus, we deprive pests of a winter shelter.

Whitewashing also copes with this task, but another and no less important function of it is protection from sunburn. Although the winter sun does not heat, it is extremely dangerous for plants on clear and frosty days.

IT’S IMPORTANT TO KNOW: you need to whiten not only the lower part of the trunk, but also the branches, wherever your height allows you to reach.


Young trees with thin bark cannot be whitewashed — they are protected with a mesh wrap (against rodents) and a vapor-permeable material (geotextile, synthetic burlap).

Not all plants tolerate cold painlessly, especially if the winter is snowless.

Heat-loving exotics (feces, cannes, dahlias, etc.) are dug up in September, dried and sent to the cellar for wintering. To do this, prepared roots are placed in containers (boxes) filled with sawdust.

hosts and everything that grows on drained soils and raised beds should preferably be insulated with a layer of peat in case of a snowless winter.

primroses in most cases, they are planted precisely in the fall — in September. Until November, they adapt, begin to grow, winter safely and, with the first spring thaws, decorate glades, albeit modest in size, but with juicy colors.

Bulbs are laid in the ground to a depth three times their height.

tree plants (roses, clematis, hydrangeas) cut off, spud with earth, peat, dry sawdust, wood chips.

It is better to refuse other organic mulch, since it can cause various kinds of diseases: bacteria multiply intensively in a warm environment caused by debate.

Shelter with spruce branches or hut baskets will help protect branches from frostbite.

Grape they are also cut off, removed from the supports, bent to the ground, tying the whips. Before the first frosts, the vines are covered with spruce branches or straw, covered with a film or slate on top. In such a dry shelter, the vine will survive even severe frosts.

raspberries in the fall, they get rid of old branches and fragile green ones by pruning. The soil is mulched with organic matter (peat, manure, kurpomet) and generously covered with dry grass or straw. In the spring, the straw is raked away so that the spring sun warms the earth faster.

Strawberry also loves autumn mulching with organic matter and coniferous litter. But this is in October. And in September, young rosettes are transplanted into future beds. It is these first years that will give the maximum harvest in the spring. Just as in the case of raspberries, the mulch should be removed from the roots in the spring, but only until the soil thaws, after which it is loosened into the garden.

Peach very sensitive to frost, and if you dared to land him, then take care to properly “dress up” this southerner for the winter. Before the first frost, the soil in the root is loosened, fertilized and generously spilled with water. The next day, a thick layer of straw is laid on the ground around the trunk and everything is covered with plastic wrap. The edges of the film are pressed with stones, it is desirable to wrap the young peach crown with geotextile.

Other fruit trees need to mulch the trunk circle with organic matter (a mixture of straw, peat or manure).

Decorative varieties of evergreens plants in winter can get burned, and their branches can break off under the influence of frost and the weight of snow. Particularly affected by this plant with branches pointing upwards — arborvitae, cypresses, juniper, boxwood. To keep the beautiful shape of the crown, it is tied with garden twine. And arborvitae and cypress trees, which are especially sensitive to winter burns, are wrapped with geotextiles.

Anything you do in the fall will make an already busy spring season much easier. After all, now all the work can be done slowly and with pleasure.

Let’s start with preparing the beds for spring planting. If there are still 8-10 weeks before the first cold weather, sow the ridges with mustard. Nothing else will have to be done here until spring: the frozen greenery will go under the snow, overheat, and by spring the beds will be fertilized, and the earth will become looser.

The more often this procedure is repeated in the fall, the softer the soil becomes.

A big plus of mustard is that, unlike manure, it does not contain weed seeds, which means that you will do less weeding next year.

IT’S IMPORTANT TO KNOW: if next year you plan to sow radish, radish or cabbage on the beds, then you should abandon this method and use the one described below.

A more traditional fertilizer option is the addition of peat, compost, manure (chicken manure), wood ash and sand to the soil. The components are scattered over the surface of the beds and dug up or plowed with a cultivator. During the winter, the soil will acquire a homogeneous structure, the manure (litter) will pereperet, and it will be enough to loosen the bed before sowing with a hoe.

To get a super early harvest in the fall, you should prepare «warm» beds. The scheme of their “work” is simple: under a layer of fertile soil, a thick layer of mowed grass is laid, laid on small branches, the grass that rots in the lower layer releases heat and warms the earth. Warm beds are buried in the ground, broken up at the level of the garden, or, conversely, made raised. The best option is selected depending on the level of soil moisture in the spring.

Everything here is just simple: by getting rid of everything that destroys the crop in the fall, you significantly reduce their population and minimize their ability to multiply in the spring.

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