During your fall garden cleanup, remove every little piece of tomato and potato plants to avoid late blight spore reproduction throughout winter.

Before you hang up your garden tools for the season, you have a bit more work to do.

#5: Leave some hiding spots. Beneficial insects like spiders, solitary bees, ladybugs, and some beetles rely on logs, brush piles, or dead groundcover to overwinter in, according to our friends at Organic Gardening magazine.

#6: Save your leaves. Instead of putting your leaves out with the trash, bag them and let them break down over winter; throw them on a pile, and in a few years you'll have a rich garden amendment called leaf mold. To use them sooner, shred them with a lawnmower or a leaf blower set on reverse (the only sensible use for a leaf blower, in our opinion) and rake into flower garden borders. You can also toss grass clippings onto garden beds, but Waltman recommends composting them first to kill any weed seeds.

#7: Leave certain veggies in the ground. Leaving arugulas or brassica vegetables in the ground, including cabbages, kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and radishes can attract, and then kill off, harmful pests, explains Waltman. For example, the plants attract nuisance wireworms, but as the plants decompose in the spring they release cyanide compounds that will kill off the worms.

#8: If frost hasn't hit yet, consider cover crops. Cover crops, a.k.a. green manure, build healthy soil, beat back weeds, and serve as aids in pest and disease control. You should plant fall cover crops at least four weeks before the frost. You can plant cereal rye cover crops up until a frost.

#9: Think spring. As winter sets in, you don't have to abandon your garden—just move into the planning stage for spring planting. With a hot cup of coffee or hot chocolate in hand, you can map out a vegetable crop-rotation chart to lower the risk of disease next growing season. And make sure you order your favorite seed catalog (we like Seed Savers Exchange and Seeds of Change) to peruse during the colder months.

Once your garden beds are in order, you may want to check out our fall lawn care story for tips on mowing this time of the year.