Gardening isn’t just for spring and summer. As the cooler months approach, it’s prime time for fall gardening to begin. Pulling bulbs for overwintering, planting new bulbs and winterizing your beds are just a few ways to set your garden up for success.
Read on to learn more about how to prepare your garden for winter and the next blooming season.
Plant your spring bulbs and seeds, trees, and shrubs.
Plants like tulips, daffodils, snowdrops, and crocuses need to experience cold temperatures before sprouting, while trees and shrubs benefit from the cooler fall temperatures and moisture to establish roots. Just make sure you put a decent layer of mulch on top of your bulbs and seeds, or some intrepid chipmunks and squirrels might abscond with them.
Pull plants and bulbs for overwintering.
Unless you have only Michigan-native perennials in your garden, chances are you have some plants and bulbs that need overwintering. Pull those plants and bulbs, clean them thoroughly, and store them in a cool, dark place over the winter. MSU Extension has excellent tips on overwintering tender garden plants and container plants.
Water sufficiently before the ground freezes.
Watering isn’t just for the hot summer months. It helps perennial plants, especially trees and shrubs, pull up moisture during the dry winter months and reduces plant stress during harsh winter conditions.
To ensure your plants have sufficient water to get them through the winter, check if there is moisture below the top 8 inches of soil. If the soil is dry, make sure to thoroughly soak the ground around your beds, trees, and shrubs.
Cover up your topsoil.
To keep soil from drying up, insulate your plants from freezing, conserve topsoil, and provide a haven for beneficial insects and pollinators, cover your garden with a 3-inch layer of organic mulch. Be sure to leave some spaces in your garden without mulch to provide entry points for beneficial insects and pollinators to find places to hibernate over the winter.
Mulch that is made of leaves, straw, or compost is best, as it will provide lots of nutrients to your topsoil as it breaks down. After the ground freezes, you can add an additional several inches of leaf, compost, or bark mulch for added protection.
If you use bark mulch, be sure that it is not dyed. Dyed wood mulch does not break down the same way as natural wood mulch, and can leach harmful contaminants into the soil that can hurt beneficial insects and your plants.
Avoid cutting back and deadheading.
During the summer months, deadheading and pruning help your plants produce new flowers and maintain the aesthetics of your garden. In the fall, however, let the last of the flowers, leaves, and stems die back naturally and stay through the early spring.
Unless you are treating a plant with a disease or infestation, this will help the plant maximize the energy it sends to its roots to sustain it over winter and create an energy store to get a head start on sprouting in the spring. It also provides additional places for pollinators to spend their winters and lay their eggs.
Come spring, when you start to see new growth, then the dead foliage can be pulled away and composted.
If you have a vegetable garden, plant a cover crop.
Cover crops are to vegetable gardens as mulch is to flower gardens. The biggest differences are that cover crops are significantly more beneficial to the soil, and you are essentially growing your own mulch.
Cover crops are typically planted in the late summer or early fall. Then their growth is either terminated, or they are left to die back. The decomposing stems and roots are left to act as natural fertilizer and mulch for the garden. The Midwest Cover Crops Council is an excellent resource for learning more about the best cover crops for our region.
Follow these basic housekeeping tips:
- Clean, sharpen, and store your gardening tools. Michigan State University Extension’s End of Season Gardening Tips provides more details on how to care for your tools.
- Put away any watering systems and shut off your external water to avoid freezing and damage to the system.
- If you haven’t done so already, cover your compost pile to keep snow out.
- Remove any diseased or insect-infested plant material and do not compost it. Some diseases and insects will overwinter, and you do not want to reintroduce them to your beds in the spring.
- If you have a vegetable garden, harvest and store your vegetables. The Old Farmer’s Almanac has a detailed list of typical garden vegetables, herbs, and berries, including their cold hardiness and how to prep them for winter.
- Take advantage of those end-of-season sales if you need to replace any tools, gloves, kneelers, etc.
Additional Resources
How to Mulch – Profiling a variety of techniques that include sheet mulches, feeding mulches, and living mulches, Stu Campbell and Jennifer Kujawski help you choose the best mulching strategy for your backyard, vegetable garden, or flower bed.
Michigan Month-by-month Gardening – With this book, you'll know what to do each month to have gardening success from January to December. It's full of the when-to and how-tos of gardening along with richly illustrated step-by-step instructions, so you can garden with confidence.
The Month-by-Month Gardening Guide – A compendium of practical advice for the home gardener, arranged by month.
Encyclopedia of Gardening Techniques – This book covers every aspect of gardening from pruning to sowing, watering to feeding, and propagating to planting. Covering all plants, including trees, flowers, shrubs, climbers, lawns, vegetables, fruit and herbs; it also includes organic techniques, recycling and how to treat pests and diseases.
Gardening Tasks Through the Year – This practical guide gives advice on preparing the ground, sowing, planting, caring for plants, and harvesting fruit and vegetables, from early spring to late summer and into winter. Basic maintenance tasks are included.
Gardening Step by Step – This gardening manual offers practical tips, checklists, charts and step-by-step instructions on keeping a garden gorgeous all year round.
Four-season Food Gardening – The host of "Learn to Grow" on YouTube shares her knowledge and enthusiasm for growing edible plants year-round, even in colder climates, through the use of season-extension techniques, such as cold frames, mini hoop houses and thick mulches.
RHS: The Garden Almanac 2026 – The essential companion for gardeners: the RHS Garden Almanac is the must-have seasonal guide written by RHS experts.
The Wildlife Gardener's Almanac – Taking a month-by-month approach, this book is packed with ideas, advice, tips and checklists to give gardeners the best chance to make their contribution to conserving our native flora and fauna, no matter what size their garden.
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