The GREEN Organic Garden Podcast will inspire, teach, and promote earth friendly techniques by interviewing organic gardeners who share their journeys, tips, and tricks to simplify the process of growing your own delicious healthy food. Whether you want to have a small bed in your backyard or a full grown farming operation, our guests will help you reach your gardening goals and offer you resources and solutions to everyday gardening challenges, and inspiration to dig down in the dirt and get growing!
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Are you dreaming of harvesting your own juicy, homegrown tomatoes next summer? Tired of paying outrageous prices at the grocery store? Good news: fall is the best time to prepare your garden for success.
If I’ve learned one thing about organic gardening, it’s this: healthy soil = healthy plants. And there’s no better season than autumn to build a strong foundation for next year’s harvest.
Start Composting in the Fall
Fall leaves are gardening gold!
Instead of sending them to the landfill, add them to your compost pile. Mix dry leaves with kitchen scraps—like eggshells, coffee grounds, and banana peels—and you’ll have rich compost by spring.
Healthy compost improves soil structure, boosts nutrients, and helps your garden retain moisture during summer heat. If you don’t already have a compost bin, fall is the perfect time to start one.
Build New Garden Beds Before Spring
Looking to expand your garden? Fall is the ideal season to create new growing spaces. You’ll avoid the spring rush and be ready to plant as soon as the soil warms.
Whether you’re dreaming of a kitchen garden, raspberry patch, pollinator border, or raised beds for leafy greens, gather your materials now. Supplies sell out quickly in spring—and often cost more.
Tip: Raised beds need a lot of soil. Start sourcing or making it now so you’re not scrambling in April.
Do a Fall Seed Inventory
Seeds are often sold out by spring, so use fall to get organized. Go through your stash, toss old or expired packets, and make a list of what you’ll need for next year.
Ordering early ensures you get the varieties you want—and avoids that dreaded “out of stock” label when planting season arrives.
How to Save Tomato Seeds
One of the easiest fall gardening tasks is seed saving. Just one ripe tomato can provide enough seeds to grow a whole bed next year.
Here’s how to do it:
Scoop out seeds from a ripe tomato.
Rinse and ferment them for a few days (to remove the gel coating).
Dry thoroughly and store in a labeled envelope.
Plant Cool-Weather Crops in Fall
Want an early spring harvest? Try sowing spinach or lettuce in fall. These hardy greens can overwinter and sprout as soon as the snow melts—giving you fresh greens weeks before summer crops take off.
Most experts recommend planting by mid-August, but don’t be afraid to experiment. Weather patterns are shifting—this year we had 100° days in September with no frost by the end of the month! I’ll be sprinkling spinach seeds anyway to see what happens. Gardening rewards curiosity.
You can also save seeds from lettuce—just let a few plants bolt and go to seed. You’ll collect plenty for next year while feeding birds and beneficial insects in the fall. Here’s a great blog post from Megan Cain at the Creative Vegetable Gardener (https://www.creativevegetablegardener.com/fall-spinach/)I think you’ll love!
Revisit Your Garden Goals
Fall isn’t just about cleanup—it’s a season for dreaming and planning. Take time to reflect on your garden goals and put one into action before winter sets in. Compost, build beds, save seeds, or plant fall crops—whatever you choose, your future self will thank you.
Question for you: What garden goal are you starting this fall? Share it in the comments!
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26 Oct 2025TRANSCRIPT
Talking Tomatoes
The shortest episode ever probably but a couple of good tips about tomatoes.
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7 Sept 2025TRANSCRIPT
430. My 2025 Compost bin
Nutmeg helps us lay out all the parts and pieces
I got this Vivosun Compost bin (https://amzn.to/4lY9GIt) off of Amazon for a bit of a cost of $150.00 but it's so worth it to see my mom have an easy place to throw her scraps and leaves and make that good rich soil for her new kitchen garden vegetable bed.
(https://mikesgreengarden.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/img_3600.jpg)
I'm also going to include the link to my favorite pitchfork (https://amzn.to/4lZnAtG) from AM Leonard.
Please remember when you put food waste in the landfill it doesn't decompose the way it does in a compost pile. In a landfill, it is compacted in a closed environment and releases methane gas into the atmosphere, in a compost pile food waste decomposes in an aerobic environment decreasing the release of harmful green house gases. So even if you aren't a gardener it's important to keep your food waste out of the landfill. Can you recycle your neighbors scraps or find someone to donate your scraps to? In San Francisco make it mandetory residents and businesses collect the scraps for a municipal compost pile (https://www.sfenvironment.org/recycling-composting-faqs).
I filled up two giant garbage bags of leaves after I filled my mom's beds with about 8 birdseed bags full of leaves and grass clippings that had been in her bin.
The hugleculture method was the exactly what I needed to fill my mom's bed with soil.
I actually dug all of this dirt out, rebuilt the sides, put the broken limbs in, smothered them with leaves, and then dug out my mom's dirt beneath the compost bin in order to fill this bed. But boy oh boy did it grow.
Stain recommended by Nicole Burke from Gardenary (https://shop.gardenary.com/products/eco-restore-wood-treatment?_pos=10&_sid=9bb614719&_ss=r).
The Stain I bought (https://amzn.to/3VzlXbn) from amazon.
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Inside a recent episode
Gardening Starts in the Fall
Published 26 Oct 2025 · Transcript excerpt
[…] Healthy compost improves soil structure, boost nutrients and helps your garden retain moisture during summer's heat. If you don't already have a compost bin fall is the perfect time to start one. Another thing that you can do this fall before next spring is expand your garden or if you don't have one build a new bed it's the ideal season to create new growing species. You'll avoid the spring rush and be ready to plant as soon as the soil warms which is something I really learned last year trying to build that bed for my mom. Like you really if you can get it done this fall and be ready to just plant as soon as the snow melts you'll be so much further ahead of the game and eating more delicious vegetables earlier in the spring. […]
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