Fall Garden Check-In
With the growing season winding down, October may be an especially appropriate time for vegetable gardeners to note what worked, what didn’t, what needs improvement, and how their space can be advanced moving forward, while this year’s efforts are still fresh in their minds. Be it enormous plants growing from a mildly amended ground or poor production through an experimental growing method, no growing season is ever quite alike. Often, the aspects we wind up learning come as much from surprises as from the designated experiments. Taking the time to note the results of both is what makes good gardeners great.
The first, and often easiest, step is to simply list what went wrong. Everybody dwells on it. Use that dwelling to your advantage and make note of the errors now before you forget them. Over the winter, when bored and ready to refocus on gardening again after a much-needed break, revisit your list to assess what can be done differently in the coming growing season. For the trickier questions, local county Extension offices and Extension Master Gardener Hotlines are wonderful resources for assistance in amending your approaches.
Sometimes more difficult for people to note off the top of their head, the next step is to think about what went right! Even if you thought your garden was a failure this year, did you still get a harvest from it? Which plant performed abnormally well for you? What was its variety? Was there a particular window in the growing season where everything was going right? What conditions made it that way, and how could you emulate them in the future? Often, there were many more hidden successes in the growing season than what you have given yourself credit for. Take the time to find them so that you can learn from them.
And, of course, there is much to consider in both realms of success or error when it comes to gardening. Not only should you consider plant varieties, but also pest and disease resistance, harvest output, flavor of the produce, maintenance practices, garden design, watering, mulching, and weeding habits, and much more. The extended time off from the growing season in winter will provide just the space needed for rumination, investigation, and preparation.
Make a handful of short lists to store in a handy place for next year, be they in a notebook, in your phone notes, on a spreadsheet, on photos with notes, or more. Earmark items that worked under “keep.” Vice versa, items that failed spectacularly go under “change.” And then, based on your rumination and research, additional items can go under “try” and “fix.”
Remember, however, the ever-changing growing seasons will never quite behave exactly the same as they have before. Much of adaptive gardening entails recognizing that what didn’t work one year may work very well the next, and vice versa. Thus, a thorough recollection of the environment(s) at play for your garden space throughout the last year will also be of benefit. Your ever-evolving garden will be better for it.
by Anthony Reardon, 2026