For two reasons we recommend you look at your garden as an outdoor housekeeping project: maintain the beauty of your garden, and keep each plant healthy. Several basic steps go a long way towards both these goals.

Keep your garden weed free. Since pests are harbored among the weeds, you deny them a home, and the same goes for plant diseases. Weeds also hog the water and nutrients, depriving your flowers and veggies of their needs. A weed free garden is a healthier garden, and obviously also a more beautiful one.

While weeding your garden, remove over-ripe veggies so that they do not attract rodents and bugs. Use this time also to carefully turn over leaves and stems, looking for insect damage. Apply the species-specific organic pest control products before the pests get established.

Carry your shears with you as you enjoy your garden and deadhead any bloomed-out heads. This encourages further blooming and keeps your garden attractive.

Keep a notebook to keep track of the location of each type of plant, including the variety from the seed packet. Note down which varieties performed best so you won’t wonder next spring which seed packet to buy. When sharing plants with other plant lovers or when selling your property, you can tell the new owners exactly what they are getting.

Draw a simple map of your vegetable garden indicating where you planted each variety so that you can plant a different vegetable in that area next year – this is known as crop rotation and yields you better harvests and avoids plant specific diseases from attacking next year’s crop. It is especially important to rotate corn with beans or peas so that the legumes will replace the nitrogen the corn depleted.

Allow your perennial to go dormant first, and then trim to withered foliage close to the ground for overwintering.