5 Things Every Gardener Needs To Do In Late Summer

Everywhere I look, I’m seeing signs of fall: pumpkin lattes, pumpkin beer, even Halloween displays in stores (which seem to start earlier every year).

But hello! It’s still summer! And we’ve still got plenty of harvests left.

Let’s savor these last few weeks before the (official) start of fall and make the most of our summer gardens while they’re winding down. I personally love to take advantage of the cooler evenings by staying outside a little longer and really taking in all the smells and colors.

(It’s also a good time to take notes on what didn’t work this year—I use my Ultimate Garden Diary to keep track of issues so I can switch things up the following year.)

Before we jump into fall cleanup mode, here are five ways to enjoy the end of the season while preparing for the one ahead:

1. Harvest often

A squash plant with several crookneck yellow squash growing in between the vines — Whoa, I need to start harvesting all of these!

Summer crops like tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and peppers will keep producing until the first frost, so harvest frequently (before the fruits get overripe) to encourage these plants to continue producing.

Tomatoes, in particular, can be picked before they’re fully ripe—in fact, you’ll get better-quality fruit if you pick them when they’re still turning color. (Picking early also keeps the skins from splitting and cracking this time of year.)

If it feels like your tomatoes are taking forever to ripen, this is a good time to top off your plant or put the roots in distress to force the fruits to ripen sooner.

2. Save seeds

Close-up of dozens of tiny tomato seeds scattered across a white towel — These tiny tomato seeds will be next year’s salsa

Saving your own seeds from open-pollinated plants makes sense on many levels:

You get free seeds to sow again or to share.
Your seeds will always be fresh (as long as you store your seeds properly, that is).
You know exactly where the seeds came from and how they were grown.
You can preserve a specific variety that’s hard to find.
You can actually improve the next crop by saving seeds from the strongest, biggest, tastiest, earliest-maturing, or highest-producing plants.
Your next crop will start to become more adapted to your particular growing conditions.
Growing the same variety, from your own seed stock, year after year helps you replicate successes in the garden.

This is how I save seeds every season to produce better quality plants, better yields, and better resistance to pests and diseases.

3. Deadhead flowers

Removing the spent flowers on annual and perennial plants will encourage continued blooming through fall. This includes blanket flowers, zinnias, petunias, dahlias, salvias, cosmos, coneflowers, golden marguerites, Shasta daisies, yarrows, and columbines.

Deadheading keeps your garden looking beautiful, prevents your plants from putting energy into seed production, and provides a constant source of food for pollinators and other beneficial insects like hoverflies and golden-eyed lacewings. (The latter two are predators you definitely want to keep around to help reduce late-season aphid infestations!)

4. Start fall crops

Raised bed with rows of kale and mustard seedlings growing in between straw mulch — A fall garden bed planted with lettuce, kale, and Asian mustards

Now is the time to direct-sow seeds for quick-growing, cool-season vegetable crops like spinach, kale, lettuce, Asian mustards, radishes, baby beets, and baby turnips.

The warm soil helps them germinate faster, while the cooler air keeps them productive well into autumn and sometimes even winter (where frost can actually sweeten the flavor of certain crops).

In some climates (especially with winter protection like mulch and frost cloth), plants started in late summer to early autumn can overwinter and resume growth in early spring, giving you the first harvests of the year.

5. Fill empty beds with cover crops

Fava bean plants growing in a raised bed — Fava beans make an excellent fall cover crop—and you can eat the leaves too

If you’re not starting fall crops and want to take a break until spring, don’t just leave your garden bed fallow—plant a cover crop instead. A cover crop has many benefits for your soil: it adds nutrients, improves soil fertility, loosens heavy soil, chokes out weeds, and prevents soil erosion.

The best cover crops, in my opinion, are also edible and release nitrogen back into the soil when they die. So it’s almost like growing your own organic fertilizer! I like to grow fava beans to improve my soil (and to eat) and I plant Austrian winter peas every September as a cover crop (and to pick for salads).

You can grow many different types of cover crops on a small scale too. No need to fill an entire bed if you’ve got a few perennials you want to keep—just plant any bare patch of soil around them. Some cover crops will naturally die back after a hard freeze and turn into a protective mulch over winter, while others will grow until winter dormancy and then pick up again in spring.