Fall garden clean up is a time to sort, sift and store. A time to cut back perennials, yank annuals, harvest herbs, veggies and seeds.

There are several schools of thought on the “fall cleanup.” Some folks like to leave the sunflower, peony and Echinacea seed heads for the birds, chipmunks and squirrels to harvest. Some like the look of swaying, decaying vegetation. Some even let the purplish haze of pigweed and native grasses remain to ripen and release their seeds.

I’m more of a control freak. In my autumn garden, I cut back most perennials to about two inches high and add the spent foliage to the three part compost bin. I do make an exception for ornamental grasses, which give shape and interest to the garden during late fall and winter.

Seeds I’ll harvest include prickly echinacea, fine digitalis, larva like hollyhocks, and clingy forget me nots. Cilantro and arugula seeds also store well for use in next year’s garden. The dry seed pods go into marked paper bags, where the seeds continue to dry. I glean the seeds by rubbing the dry capsules between my hands and against the sides of the bag. A satisfying pile of seeds ends up in the bottom of the bag.

As for letting weeds remain to spread their seeds for spring germination, I’m not of that school. After the initial annual plant removal, I go after those hidden weeds. I yank ‘em all and till the rows with my miniature rototiller. Then I edge the beds. I mulch where I can, using a variety of materials.

Seaweed is my favorite, because it breaks down easily and harbors no noxious weed seeds. I get my seaweed on the New Hampshire coast, collecting what washes up on the shore. No one minds my cleaning up the beach after a storm.

From our house we look right out onto the garden all year long, and its visual order soothes my soul. Although the active growing season has passed, we still enjoy the bones of the garden a cement rooster, a wooden trellis supporting Sweet Autumn clematis vines. After all, the garden may be bare of snow until late December.

After pulling squash and tomato vines, basil and zinnia plants and other tender annuals, I pot up the rosemary, which will spend the winter on the kitchen windowsill. The fall garden remains bountiful until Thanksgiving and beyond. Carrots, leeks and parsley are still tasty after even a heavy frost.

After a good frost (is that an oxymoron?), I dig, dry, and label the dahlia roots and gladioli corms to await spring inside. After the fall tubers are harvested, I plant seed garlic and spring flowering bulbs (daffodils and tulips, for example) in compost enriched beds.

Garlic is a most satisfactory crop. I plant individual cloves about three inches deep in late September and mulch them with straw, seaweed, pine needles or whatever other organic materials I have on hand. Garlic sprouts in the spring. By midsummer, “scapes” the flower stalks of the garlic plants, which grow in fascinating curly pigtails arch up from the centers of the plants. Removing the scapes maximizes garlic head size, so I clip them off, using some in floral arrangements (stunning!) and cutting others up into stir fries (tasty!).

Garden cleanup is ongoing. Gardening is a process, after all. Now is the time to harvest the compost from the oldest bin. Kitchen refuse (egg shells, coffee grounds, carrot tops and apple cores, for example), along with spring garden litter, has decayed into rich, friable compost. Worms, microbes, and rain transform organic matter into black gold. Some of the finished compost goes directly into the garden, some is sifted and stored for spring seedling propagation, and some gets used to re pot houseplants.

The final stage of fall cleanup happens in the cellar. I clean, sharpen and oil the tools, then store them in an unheated shed. That makes room to stack the dry cordwood near the wood burning furnace in the cellar.

This fall I have another motive for a thorough garden cleanup: a family wedding will take place here about this time next year. That event has inspired me to make the garden lovely, and the process begins with the fall cleanup, soil enrichment and weed eradication. I’m never really ready for winter, but I do my best.

By Nancy Schlosser, Master Gardener