Fall Garden Tips for 2026

Fall began today, September 22nd at 5:50pm Pacific according to The Farmer’s Almanac. Fall is my favorite season of the year. I also think it’s the best time to work in the garden. I’ve put together fall garden tips that I use every year that help my garden prepare for the year ahead. These fall garden tips will establish the foundation of a great growing season this fall, will sustain the health of your garden over the winter and payoff with massive improvements in soil health, pest and disease resistance and plant growth come next spring.

I know that sounds like a lot of promises, but the truth is if you will help your garden by utilizing these fall garden tips, you will be playing the part of nature in areas that nature cannot perform to it’s natural and intended state when it comes to the way soil and plant systems are designed to work. Most of our properties or areas that we grown in are on cut and fill from development and the native biology. The soil microbes were stripped away when the topsoil and substrate of the properties were excavated and compacted for building sites, homes, yards, industrial areas, parks, roads, infrastructure and neighborhoods. Most of us are not growing in natural, native soil or ecological environments, and that is why we must help our gardens along. 

I'm sharing with you HOW I garden in my garden which means you’ll have to accept one more caveat besides “playing the part of nature” as I do in my garden- winter, spring, summer and fall.

And that caveat is that if you want to garden as Norma and I do, you will be growing real organic. Or, you will be transitioning to a system of organic gardening that moves away from all chemical input, from the use of products, fertilizers, composts and soils that come from the conventional organic, traditional organic, or as I like to call them, the faux organic lines of these items that have been created by Big AG, Big CHEM, Big PHARMA, Big MONEY and Big PETROLEUM. Ninety-nine percent (99%) of the things that local nurseries, big boxes, feed and farm supplies, hardware stores and online resellers, like the Big A are all hawking products that are labeled “organic” yet are absolutely not!

If you’d like to know more about the facts, the background and history of the creation of the faux organic, organic gardening world, and the chemical big brother that spawned it, you can order my book: A Hundred Years of Deception - Why Gardening Must Change. It’s a very quick weekend read that will set you straight on what to use and what not to use when growing an organic garden, especially when you're trying to grow you own food. 

The last thing that I want to highlight before getting onto the actual Fall Garden Tips is a key component of organic, real organic gardening- the microbes. The microbes, or soil microbes consist of bacteria, actinomycetes, fungi, protozoa, nematodes along with the counterparts- the soil animals: arthropods and earthworms that play a key role in breaking down organic matter in the soil. Organic matter is often confused because the term organic does not mean it’s origin was from a “organic” source, like organic mill from the store. Organic matter literally means, any material in the soil that is alive, was alive, or was an alive living organism which is currently in a natural stage of decomposition in the soil.

The soil microbes play the key role to soil health in nature and will also take the starring role of the hero in your garden if you will let them. This is where you come in, in your supporting role as playing the part of nature. 

In very simplified terms, the soil microbes and soil animals break down organic matter into microscopic particulate that can be further broken down by these heroes of the soil and be excreted as nutrient and mineral by them for the plants to uptake in perfect form for them. This process called mineralization is HOW PLANTS GROW in nature. This is how the plants grow in our garden at home, because we do not use fertilizers. We feed the soil microbes and soil animals and then they feed our plants and continue feeding the soil as they die off, are eaten by larger microorganisms and continue to reproduce over and over in the healthy soil biome that we help create as we play the part of nature. 

Our heroes, the soil microbes thrive in 72F-80F degree temperatures. This means that between these temperatures they are most active in terms of eating, feeding, breaking down, excreting and reproducing. The fall is when our temperatures in the garden begins to decrease from the warm days of summer as the Earth’s axis tilts away from the sun in the Northern Hemisphere. Our temperatures begin to decrease from the 80’s and 90’s in September down to the 80’s, 70’s and 60’s in October to 60’s, 50’s and 40’s in November. This means our soil temperatures keep dropping throughout this time, and the activity of the microbes gets less and less until they become dormant or much less active. 

We also begin to have higher moisture levels in the soil from rain and snow as fall progresses. The temperature shift and moisture exchange are what make it necessary for us to step in as we play the part of nature to feed and nurture or heroes, the soil microbes, so that they can show us what they can do come next spring. If you’ve never grown real organic, you are in for a treat. You are about to have the safest, cleanest, healthiest, most productive garden that you’ve ever had. Fall is the season of change. Now is your time, and your garden’s time to change. Now, we’re ready to look at HOW TO create the best garden ever which begin with our Fall Garden Tips. 

Fall Garden Tip #1- Compost

Fall is for composting. Not making compost. That should be done year round. By compost we mean to apply a real organic and biologically active compost throughout the garden. Right now, during the first two weeks of fall, apply 1/2” of Bu’s Blend Compost from Malibu Compost over all of your containers, raised beds, in-ground beds and in a 12”-16” swath around your fruit trees and landscape trees directly below the drip line of the branches. Water this topdressing of compost in with your watering wand (Most people forget to water in compost after applying it). If you have mulch around you trees or plants, you can add the compost directly over the mulch, then water in. Or you can rake the mulch back, apply the compost, water it in and then rake the mulch back in place. Either way, it will get down to the soil level sooner or later after watering.

For lawns: put compost down at 1/16” - 1/8” over the entire lawn and then water it in really well. Do this now at the beginning of fall. If the temperatures stay mild over fall, you can do this one more time in late fall, but this time do not water it in, let the first real rain of the season do that for you. If you have lawn, or need a little lawn, growing a real organic lawn is a great way to create a superb microbial base that will become loaded with earthworms, that will naturally aerate your lawn, as well as create a breeding ground for them to move into other areas of the garden. 

We compost in the fall to feed the soil, the microbes and the plants. We want to push plant growth in our fall food crops, recharge our raised beds and food growing containers with all of the major and minor nutrients & trace minerals that are in Bu’s Blend Compost. Composting our landscape trees , plants and shrubs in the fall helps to strengthen the root zone for the cold, the wet, the freezing and the soil expansion and contraction that the weather brings over the winter. Composting is one of the steps that we must do to winterize our gardens in the fall. 

Fall Garden Tip #2- Irrigation and Watering Adjustment

Adjust the Irrigation or Watering Schedule. It’s time to reduce the water that your garden is getting over the fall. In the first few weeks it might be hot and a 3 day watering schedule may still be necessary. As soon as you see those temperatures drop into the 70’s, begin to taper your watering schedule down to twice a week. Once those temps hit the low 70’s, 60’s and 50’s, you should drop to once a week and turn the irrigation off, or do not water anytime that there is rain in the immediate forecast. We want the earth below the surface of the garden to be moist, but not wet, not soaked. 

The microbes will help hold the correct amount of moisture in the soil as they continue eating each other and breaking down organic matter in the soil over the fall. Our garden heroes will start creating a healthier tilth in your garden beds, landscapes, orchards and containers by attaching to aggregates and other organic particulate in the soil to the polysaccharides on the cell wall of the bacteria. These miracles of nature will help build soil in a productive and natural way. This function of the bacteria also help hold soil in place during heavy rains and give your plants stability in stronger, more structured soil. 

Fall Garden Tip #3- Pruning and Cleaning Up

Many gardeners don’t like pruning in the fall, but I say it’s the perfect time of year to get things tidied up and reorganized before winter sows us down, or spring explodes with growth. Fall is the perfect time to remove old growth and cut back dead stems of plants that have been pushing growth all summer long. Fall is also a great time to prune everything that is dead, diseased and damaged. For perennials that have gotten tired and leggy or don’t have decorative seed heads, they should be cut back to the ground. Early fall is the time to prune down lavender and rosemary. They are mediterranean plants so prune them now because they cannot be pruned as the temperatures get colder. If you have an orchard and your fruit trees have dead branches, prune those off so they can heal now before the rains come.

Fall Garden Tip #4- Berms, Swales and Wells

Fall of 2026 is the time to research the water movement that is coming over the next several months. It is time, especially in California and other parts of the west where we are facing the threat of a Super El Niño, to make sure that the the water that falls from the sky has somewhere to go. We use berms, swales and wells to do this task. Berm or use straw wattle on contour where there are slopes to move water to areas where the water can drop away from your garden or home without creating erosion. You can use swales at the bottom of berms to slow the water and to help water penetrate your land deeply. Use swale in lower garden zones to get water away from buildings, beds and hardscape that you don’t want undermined from water pressure. Make wells from a mixture of native soil and a really great topsoil, like Premium Organic Topsoil from Number 2 Organics. It is a real topsoil that took 80 to 100 years to make that contains sandy loam with up to 17% of aged dairy cow manure. Using this combination will mix your native soil with the benefits of the polysaccharides in the bacteria to hold garden wells in place so they do not blow out from heavy rains. 

Fall Garden Tip #5- Compost Tea

You will want to compost tea drench heavy feeders like your roses, raised food beds and container gardens. To find out how to make a good compost tea, click here. You will see how easy it is for you to make a compost tea extract. This is something that should become a big part of your gardening regimen if you haven't done so yet. As we move toward mid to late fall, give your fruit trees a compost tea drench. This will be late enough to not push a lot of new growth, but will give the microbes some last bits of food for energy as they close out the season, and more importantly, offer a source of clean, healthy organic matter for the microbes to feed on as the warmer temperatures of spring emerge. 

Fall has arrived and the time to implement these Fall Garden Tips is NOW. Happy and healthy fall gardening everyone.