3 Simple Gardening Ideas for Fall

Looking for some fun and easy fall garden projects? You’ve come to the right place! Here are 3 simple ideas to keep you busy in the garden as the warm season comes to a close.

Bring your favorite plants inside

Does your heart start to ache to see the frost warnings on your weather app? Are your plants starting to slow down and give up for the winter? You can save a few of your favorite plants and keep them alive through the winter on a sunny kitchen windowsill. The kitchen is the perfect spot to place a few edible plants in containers. The air is warmer inside, and the humidity in the kitchen air is ideal for your plants. And how much closer from the plant to the plate does it get? Herbs like rosemary, basil, and thyme will do well in the kitchen. You can save a few of your pepper plants by planting them in containers and keeping them indoors - but you won't be harvesting from them until next summer. Remember to give the plants a good prune in their new containers. This will help them adapt to the change a little bit better.

Gourd shakers

Did you know that gourds have been used to make instrumental shakers in West Africa for millennia? If you allow gourds to dry out entirely after harvest, the shell will become very hard, and the inside will become hollow with tiny hard seeds moving around loosely. Shaking these dry gourds is like shaking a rattle—nature’s rattle. Oil is often used to polish the gourds, giving them a shine, and you can customize your rattle by adding strings of beads to the outside (creating even more sounds). Undersized pumpkins can be dried out and used as Halloween rattles. Get creative, and get everyone involved in this musical gardening project.

Use your heap of leaves

Fallen leaves are nature's gift to gardeners. A pile of leaves can be used in many ways, from feeding the compost pile to mulching barren soil. You can even fertilize your lawn with your fallen leaves by simply mowing them into the grass. Dry leaves are rich in carbon, phosphorus, and potassium and become a much-needed food source for microbes in the soil during the long, cold winter. Fallen leaves are large and rather water-repellent, so a layer of leaves on the soil surface can block water from getting into the soil. That’s why it’s so important to shred the leaves before adding them to the soil surface. Unless you mow the leaves into the lawn, shredding the leaves before us is vital. Even if you plan on mixing the leaves into the compost pile, making leaf mold, or mixing the leaves into the soil, shredding the leaves will help speed up the decomposition process. Fallen leaves are free and full of uses for creative gardeners. Please share with us what you do with your leaf piles on Facebook or Instagram.

Fall is a great time to start moving the fun outdoor projects inside. And using the beautiful leaves and other harvests as art is a great way to share in the wide varieties of beauty nature has to offer us.