- Keep harvesting those cold crops such as carrots, leeks and kale. You will find these crops taste a little sweeter after some cool weather.
- Extend your harvest with a cold frame or row cover, especially if you were wise enough to keep sowing new crops throughout the season. Check out our conversation with Niki Jabbour (below) where we talk a bit about garden season extension.
- Collect seeds from your heirloom vegetable varieties and perennial flowering plants. Remember, fancy hybrids will not reproduce “true” to their stated genetics, so it is a waste of time to gather those. Of the heirlooms, you can scoop out the seeds of ripe tomatoes, squash, pumpkins and melons and spread them out to dry in a well-ventilated space. Beans and peas, dry down on the pod and then sort for the biggest and healthiest. If you can find a screen with the right size holes, it’s a “grate” way to sort seeds by size.
- Rake your leaves right into the garden. Free mulch! If your canopy is heavy with oaks or other waxy-leaved trees, you might want to run over them once with a mulching mower to help jump-start that decomposition.