5 Steps to Take This Fall to Cultivate Abundance Next Year
Fall is here, and the life on your property is getting ready to rest. But you can still do a lot right now to help your place come alive with abundance in spring, like planting perennial foods, building healthy soil, planting native plants, working with wildlife, and working with your land. Here’s how each of these 5 different pathways will help you cultivate abundance next year.
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When fall arrives, it can often feel like it’s time to take a break. The leaves are all falling, tomatoes and other warm-loving vegetables are on their way out, and frost is on the horizon.
And the days are getting shorter and wetter.
But if you take some basic steps, you can lay a solid foundation that will help you cultivate abundance next year.
Each of these paths are part of a journey you can take to make your place come alive with abundance for people, plants, and wildlife: growing perennial foods, building healthy soil, working with native plants, working with wildlife, and working with your land.
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When you grow perennial foods, you’re building a resilient food system that not only supports you and your family, but also builds soil and supports the beneficial critters that help keep pests in balance.
Building healthy soil is key to helping your plants get the water and nutrients they need to thrive.
Native plants support native pollinators, picky, plant-eating insects like monarch butterflies, and much more—they’re the foundation of an abundant living system that comes full circle to help keep pests in balance.
And working with your land allows you to moderate extremes and build on the specific characteristics of your land, so it can be as productive as possible.
The result of all of this is abundance, and fall is a great time build it. Let’s dive into each of these methods.
Act Now to Cultivate Abundance Next Year by Planting Perennial Food
Each fall I try to plant a bunch of new perennial food plants on my property. Every year, I get more and more food without having to plant!
Fall is the perfect time to plant perennial foods, to set yourself up for easy abundance again and again down the road.
Perennial foods are plants that come back year after year without needing to be replanted like your garden veggies do.
Not only does this save you time and energy, but these plants are also much more resilient than annuals.
Once established, their roots will go far deeper and spread far further than annuals. This gives them access to water and nutrients that would be out of reach of annual and biennial plants.
Plus, this deep root system helps to build soil through their interaction with soil life.
Perennial foods can be broken up into 3 basic groups:
- Fruit and nut trees
- Edible shrubs like berries
- Perennial vegetables and other edible non-woody perennial plants
Planting a mix of all of these can provide food for most of the year, all while needing little-to-no water or fertilizer.
And it turns out that fall is one of the best seasons to plant perennial plants. When you plant them in the fall, you give them extra time to get established before spring. This makes them far more resilient come summer, and much more likely to make it through a summer drought.
Getting Started with Perennial Foods
Here are some links to more posts about getting started with perennial foods.
Build Healthy Soil This Fall
Compost is a great way to boost your property, and fall is a great time to start your own compost pile if you haven’t yet.
If you want to build abundance this fall, a great way to do that is to give your soil a boost. With your plants all going dormant, you can use this time to give back to your soil, so it will be full of soil life and the nutrients that your plants need to thrive.
One of the best things you can do to help build healthy soil is to make sure the soil is covered. Especially before the rain and snow comes.
While your property needs all this moisture to recharge before the next summer, this can also wash away nutrients and erode your soils.
Keeping the soil covered with living plants is one great option. But another is to put down a layer of mulch.
And luckily, fall is when nature helps out with this by dropping all those wonderful fall leaves. Instead of removing the leaves, make sure to leave them as a mulch over your soil. This will help protect your soil from the winter rains and snow.
If you want to take it further and make compost, you can find instructions for a very quick, 18-day compost method here.
Plus, they will feed soil life and help you build abundance this fall by building healthy soil.
And don’t forget about planting perennial plants. As mentioned earlier, perennial plants can help you create a foundation this fall that will lead to rich, healthy soil.
Nitrogen-fixing perennial plants like lupines, alders and goumi berries will even release nitrogen into the soil through a partnership with nitrogen-fixing microbes.
Planting these great perennial plants can help you build soil, and fall is a great time to do this. And a diversity of mixed plantings (a polyculture) that include perennial foods, nitrogen fixers and others, like flowers, is a great way to build abundance this fall.
Getting Started with Building Healthy Soil
Here are some additional resources to help you get started.
Cultivate Abundance this Fall by Planting Native Plants
I’ve planted native plants all over our property, and the response from our local wildlife has been amazing.
Part of cultivating abundance for people, plants and wildlife is to reconnect your property to the living world around us. The vibrant living systems that recycle nutrients, keep pests in balance, and ultimately sustain us all.
And a big part of doing this is to plant native plants.
Native plants have a connection to the rest of the life that live in your area that non-native plants just don’t have.
The bloom times of native flowers are perfectly synced with native pollinators they’ve adapted to live with. And native plants feed the specialist “picky” insects that ultimately go on to feed songbirds and other wildlife—beneficial critters that help keep pests in balance.
Planting native plants is a beautiful way to heal our living world and cultivate abundance—for your garden as well as for the living world around you.
Plus, there are many edible native plants that can provide you food in addition to supporting local wildlife.
And since most native plants are going to be perennials, the fall is a great time to plant them.
So if you want to take steps this fall to cultivate abundance next year, then planting native plants is a great option.
Getting Started with Native Plants
Here are some additional resources to help you get started with native plants.
Work with Wildlife This Fall
Since moving here, we’ve seen far more wildlife move in. But the result has been a boon to our property and an increase in abundance for us and for the wildlife.
When you support your local wildlife, you help create a balance between prey and predators that helps you cultivate abundance.
Without this balance, prey species—often referred to as pests—can cause significant damage to your food crops and throw your whole system out of whack.
But when you support a diversity of wildlife, you attract the predators that keep those pest species in balance.
You can cultivate abundance next year by taking some simple steps this fall to provide habitat for wildlife. One great way to do this is to add habitat features such as log piles, rock piles and snags to your property.
If you do this early enough in the fall, you can help many species such as frogs, snakes, and lizards make it through the winter.
There is much more you can do to support wildlife and help build abundance this fall.
Getting Started with Wildlife
Here are some resources to help you get started.
Cultivate Abundance Next Year by Working with Your Land Today
This is a very wet area on my land—but instead of fighting that, I’ve embraced it, and I’m working to restore it to a healthy and thriving wetland.
How often have you taken a moment to just walk around your property? It can be easy to come up with what seems like great plans for your property, only to find that the land has other ideas.
Some areas may be too wet and other may be too dry.
Taking time to observe your land will help you understand its characteristics and develop better plans for building abundance.
And fall is a perfect time to do it. Make sure to take walks in the rain, so you can see where water collects—and where water flows off your property.
As you gain a greater understanding of your property, you will be better able to moderate extremes, such as dealing with drought.
Plus, you can build off the characteristics of your property to get the most from it.
Taking a moment to observe your land will give you the knowledge you need to work with it better, so you can cultivate abundance for people, plants and wildlife.
Getting Started with Your Land
Ready to get started? Here are some posts to help you move forward.
Take Steps this Fall to Prepare for Next Year’s Abundance
Fall really is a beautiful time—let’s do what we can to build abundance this fall.
While the land may be heading into its annual sleep, fall is a great time to take steps that will help you cultivate abundance next year. If you can take at least some of the steps outlined here, you will be well on your way to abundance down the road.
Each of these ways of cultivating abundance can work on their own, but each one will also build on the others.
By taking these actions in the fall to cultivate abundance next year, you’re starting down 5 interconnected pathways that will let your property flourish and blossom come spring.
Don’t try to do it all at once—just pick one and get started. Once that is done, then do the next. Each of these small steps will build on the others.
And before you know it, your property will be alive with abundance for people, plants and wildlife.
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