Fall garden tasks: the complete autumn checklist

Updated on 8 September 2026Published on 18 September 2019

Harvesting, raking, sowing, planting, protecting: fall is the busiest season in the garden, and the one that decides what spring will look like. Here is the whole of the work, section by section, from the vegetable patch to the orchard.

In the vegetable patch

The clock is ticking for the last harvests. Abundance is the word, and it means more than you can eat at once: get the kitchen ready for jams, preserves, sauces and jars, or pack the surplus into the freezer. Root and leaf vegetables can spend winter in the ground without being lifted, but pears, apples, potatoes and squashes belong in a room that is dry, cool and frost-free.

Clear as you harvest. Send old plants and leaves to the compost, after checking they aren’t diseased
Set up cold frames and tunnels before the cold arrives. They protect winter greens such as corn salad — see also the greenhouse vegetable patch
Weed by hand or with natural weed-fighters, then stop regrowth with mulch
Break the ground up with a toothed spade or a broadfork — never turn it inside out — and add organic matter: compost, dead leaves, manure, or sow green manure
Keep the soil covered. This is the point of the whole operation: nutrients wash away with the rain on bare ground, and weeds move in

Fall is also a planting season in its own right. Sow or plant cabbage, winter lettuce, turnip, sorrel, leek and garlic. Put in strawberry plants too: they root through the cold months and fruit the following summer.

Cold frame and tunnel set up over a vegetable bed before winter — *Set the frames and tunnels up while the soil is still workable. Doing it once the cold has settled is far harder work.*

In the ornamental garden

Season’s cleaning for the lawn, the flower beds and the walkways. Rake dead leaves all through the autumn months and recycle them, in the compost or spread as mulch. Mow the lawn one last time. Shredded branches and organic matter go the same way.

Bulbs and flower beds

Plant spring-blooming bulbs — tulip, narcissus and daffodil, hyacinth, crocus — and perennials that come back every year
Never bury a bulb deeper than twice its height. Use a planter designed for bulbs: the usual pointed vegetable dibber leaves an air pocket underneath, which rots the bulb
Lift summer bulbs, dry them, dust them with sulfur and store them in a metal box — this is also how you propagate dahlia
Sow biennials and hardy annuals: pansy, papaver poppy, nigella
Weed the beds and run the hoe along the plants, to destroy the insects and slugs sheltering in the topsoil
Pick the last flowers for dried bouquets. Hydrangea heads keep far longer if you douse them with hair spray after cutting

Roses, shrubs and containers

Fall is when to prune roses and plant new ones. It is also the moment to move a rose that has outgrown its spot: prepare the ground well, since the roots need loose, rich soil to spread fast, and choose a sunny place out of the wind.

Plants are entering dormancy, so this is the window for transplanting shrubs that are not thriving — timing matters for plants vulnerable to transplant shock. Trim and prune conifer hedges for the last time of the season, or replace them with a mixed hedge that changes as the seasons roll on.

Before the first frosts, bring garden boxes and containers inside or protect them. Pelargonium and summer flowering bulbs keep in the cellar. Mediterranean and tropical plants — bougainvillea, oleander, olive tree, citrus, cactus — must overwinter somewhere frost-free that still gets light through a window.

In the orchard

Pick autumn fruit on sunny days — pears, apples — and store them in a dark, well-ventilated room. Rake up fallen leaves and mummified fruit and burn them: diseased material must never reach the compost, or brown rot comes back next season.

Fall is the best season to plant a fruit tree, and November the best month of it — hence the old saying that in November, any tree sprouts roots. Conifers and heath shrubs go in at the same time.

Dig a wide hole and drive a stake into it before planting
Root-dip the clump, cover with soil, water to close the air pockets, then mulch
The graft joint must sit an inch or so above soil level, never buried
Prefer disease-resistant varieties, and add natural fertilizer and compost — a tree planted in fall grows away stronger than one planted in spring
On trees that showed disease, spray Bordeaux mixture once the leaves have dropped, and again in spring just before the buds break

Remove dead or diseased branches, but do not prune every tree and shrub in fall: a fresh wound is more vulnerable to frost.

Picking apples in an orchard on a sunny autumn day — *Pick on a dry, sunny day: fruit gathered damp keeps far less well in store.*

Around the pond, and the birds

A water feature needs its own autumn round, and it is the part most often forgotten.

Pull the dead leaves out of the bottom before they rot, and stretch a net over the surface to catch the rest
To keep fish supplied with oxygen if the surface freezes, stand an old ball or a faggot of twigs upright through the water line so the ice cannot close over entirely
Once the cold settles, feed the birds with fat and oil-rich seeds: rape, sunflower, millet

Smart tip about fall garden tasks

Remember to take a few breathers. Hustling from one job to the next will wear you out and the list never truly ends. Harvest the fruits of your work for the mind too: take the time to contemplate the garden before winter closes it down.