5 Easy Projects for the Late Summer Garden

19 August 2026, written by Barbara Pleasant

Like the plants we love to grow, vegetable gardeners come alive in summer, and then we start feeling the season’s loss as days get shorter and cooler. You can be sad, or find ways to celebrate summer’s last blast.

Start by reminding yourself to savor the moments you do get to spend in the garden. Listen to the crickets in the weeds and the cicadas in the trees. Maybe you’ll hear some songbirds or crows, or the sudden honking of southbound geese. Should biting bugs be a bother, help yourself to handfuls of basil tops, mints or fading lemon balm and crush them to release their aromas. It’s a great start to any late summer garden project.

Arugula in a pot — Arugula sown in pots will keep growing well into autumn

1. Keep Planting Quickie Vegetables in Pots

You can still plant fast-growing fall vegetables in warmer climates, but for most of us time is getting short for growing light-loving veggies. Deer, rabbits, chipmunks and other animals know the hungry season is coming, so you may need to step up animal protection in the garden with covers or cages. Or, avoid potential animal problems by switching to pots kept on your deck or patio. Arugula, leaf lettuce and baby bok choy are fast and easy to grow from seed in containers, or you can try “baby” varieties of spinach or chard, which can be amazingly productive in pots. Parsley seed is often willing to sprout in pots in late summer, and the plants can be grown in a sunny windowsill through the winter months.

Cloth mulch between radishes — After daikon radishes are weeded and thinned, strips of cloth mulch keep future weeds at bay

2. Weed and Thin Fall Crops

If you’ve direct-seeded turnips, radishes, kohlrabi, lettuce, or other autumn crops, they no doubt need to be weeded and thinned. This is such a satisfying operation, especially if you use a weeder with a sharp edge to shave down the tiny weeds between seedlings. Then use nimble fingers to gradually thin seedlings to their mature spacing.

Fall weeds are not as aggressive as those that appear in spring, but you won’t have to weed again if you place strips of cloth mulch between the thinned and weeded rows. Cloth mulch doesn’t host slugs, and it will keep soil from splashing onto the leaves of lettuce, turnips and other leafy greens, making them easier to clean.

Compost pile — Build several small compost piles to attract more crickets

3. Collect Material for Composting

On good weather days, collect tattered plants for composting, including both veggies and weeds. Crickets and other ground-dwellers eat weed seeds around the clock, so setting weedy material aside to shrink into smaller piles gives them a ready food supply. Like bees and butterflies, garden crickets have been impacted by insect decline, so composting in stages, with them in mind, is a good conservation move. When cooler weather comes and the piles collapse, you can move them to your main composting area and build a super-super compost heap.

Zinnia seedheads — Seed-bearing heads from an heirloom yellow zinnia

4. Collect Special Seeds for Replanting

If you want to feel rich, go around your garden and collect seeds from herbs and flowers you want to grow again, or want to share with others. Most flower blossoms are on the verge of shattering by the time the seeds are fully mature, after which birds may make short work of eating them up. So, you have a short time window for gathering seeds from generous seed producers like arugula, cilantro, dill, and most annual and perennial flowers.

Use paper bags and a marker pen to gather and label your treasures, then let them dry indoors for a few days. Check for bugs and mold, then let them dry a few weeks more if there are no signs of trouble. You can wait for an indoor day in early winter to clean and sort your collected seeds.

Violas — Long-blooming annual violas sparkle in the early autumn sun

5. Renew Tired Containers

This summer I grew three big containers of rollicking marigolds in a high visibility spot, which are now droopy and overgrown despite constant trimming. Enough is enough. It’s time to reset the scene with feature flowers that look good in the fall such as pansies or violas (mini-pansies), which are surprisingly winter hardy and always put on a happy face. I enjoy potted chrysanthemums, but late season butterflies show a preference for pink and purple fall asters, which are also sold in ready-to-bloom pots in early autumn.