Fall lawn, yard, and garden care will help you prepare for winter and the coming spring. Oakridge Greenhouse Owner Erna Wiebe says there are eight tips to help homeowners with their fall yard maintenance.

1. What To Do With Leaves
Wiebe says if you have leaves on your lawn, the first thing is to decide what you want to do with them.

"As your leaves fall, if there's excessive leaves on your yard, I would either mulch them into your grass or rack them up. If you leave too many leaves and you develop of a bit of a wet, soppy mass on top of your grass."

She notes leaving a wet mass of leaves on your lawn over winter can be the perfect breeding ground for snow mold in the spring.

2. When To Mow The Lawn For The Last Time
The lawn requires one last cut before the snow flies, says Wiebe. 

"But leave it a little bit longer, one higher setting than you normally cut."

She says when there is rain the grass, naturally, wants to keep growing adding it's hard to tell when the best time to cut the lawn before winter is, though she would guess closer to the end of October.

3. Why Fall Fertilizer Is Helpful
Wiebe notes adding a fall fertilizer to the lawn, like a 4012, before the snow falls will help set root hardiness and will keep the grass vigorous through spring start up.

4. Preventing Spring Weeds In Fall
Fall can be a good time to apply weed killer or suppressant to the lawn, says Wiebe.

"You can use corn gluten. How it works is when you apply it in the fall it has the winter to break down the particles of the corn gluten and it will adhere to the soil, inhibiting any seed development."

She notes, if it already has roots, like grass, the corn-gluten will not hurt it. Additionally, she says if there are standing weeds present, the suppressant will not kill them but will prevent any weed seeds from germinating.

5. Getting Perennials Ready For Winter
Although Wiebe says she does not cut back her perennials she notes there is no harm in doing so. She says she does not cut them back to they can act as a snow trap. Whether or not they're cut back, she adds, a bone meal should be applied to feed the root system.

"If you've got good roots, you've got a good perennial. If you chose to cut them down, it's not a problem, if you're someone who really likes to clean up their yard for fall and have it look perfectly ready for spring."

6. To Prune Or Not To Prune
Fall time is the wrong time to prune trees and shrubs, according to Wiebe.

"Towards later fall, like now, I stop pruning anything because pruning, or cutting, acts almost like a fertilizer in that it pushes out a bunch of new, fresh growth and you don't want that when you have a hard frost."

She adds, once there has been a hard frost and the plants are truly dormant, pruning may be done.

7. Preparing Vegetable And Flower Beds For Winter
Wiebe notes fall is a good time for a little vegetable or flower bed maintenance.

"Maybe your vegetable beds and all your flower beds are tilled once already, but I would do it one more time. [That is because] the worms, the cutworms, they're wintering maybe an inch or two or three down in the soil, they're settled in. If you turn that soil over one more time you, you bring many of them to the surface and when you do that, they're a lot more exposed to the cold and a lot of them will die off."

She adds fall is a good time to add peat moss or aged manure to vegetable and flower beds as well.

8. Fall Is A Great Time To Seed A Lawn
It's not too late to do a little landscaping, notes Wiebe.

"People find it one of the best ways to put a lawn in, to seed in the late fall. The timing has to be fairly close because you really would like to get the seed down, and get the snow to fall on top of it because then you never have to water."

She says when the snow melts in the spring it provides the necessary moisture for the seeds to germinate. Wiebe adds she has heard many people who have successfully planted a lawn this way, including herself.

9. Trees And Shrubs Can Brighten Up A Yard In Fall
Although fruit trees need a little more time to settle in, says Wiebe, trees and shrubs can still be planted in the fall.

"You have to remember that the soil down where you're planting, that root zone is still a lot warmer than it is at the surface. So, those roots will still, fairly actively, settle in."

She notes, as long as the ground is not too frozen to dig a hole, you can plant trees and shrubs.