Your question about what to do to get ready for next year is the best and first question you asked. Pull out all the dead plants from your garden. If they had disease, put them into the garbage so they are hauled away. Otherwise, put them into your compost pile. (If you don't have one, this is the perfect time to start one. Pile up all the leaves you can lay your hands on.) Hoe or pull the weeds from your garden. Then cover the soil with leaves, grass clippings, straw, or whatever organic mulch you can get. This will stop erosion and keep down cool weather weeds. But most important, it will take away insects' winter camping grounds. If they spend winter break there, they will be bigger, healthier, and earlier next year. If you haven't had frost yet, sow some kind of winter cover crop rather than mulch. Then in very early spring, plan to till it into the soil. You'll be amazed at all the good it will do your soil. You can contact your local Agricultural Extension agent for recommended crops that do well in your area. When you are just starting out it's a good idea to sow the tried and true the first couple of years. In my town, we have Agricultural Co-ops and Farm supply stores that carry the locally popular varieties of seeds. They are a fraction of mail order cost. And finally, use your winter for learning and planning. Read a good basic book or two about vegetable gardening. You can check them out from your library for free. Get a nice calendar and make notes on it for seed starting dates, when to plant, prune, fertilize, start seeds, etc. This information is also available at the Ag Extension office, usually for free. Draw up your garden area on graph paper to scale and plan when and where you will plant your crops on it. Your gardening books and pamphlets will have valuable information about laying out your garden and rotating crops. In many ways, winter planning is just as important and exciting as spring planting or summer harvesting. Finally, seed starting is a great way to jump start your gardening season and eventually is a money saver too, but in the beginning, perhaps not so much. You will need an area to start seeds that provides the right light and the right temperature, as well as being easy to get to to water. Assuming you have all this, most seed packets give good information on when to start seeds. Pay very close attention to required temperature and light requirements for germination. These items are crucial to success. Hope next year's garden is better! It almost always is. :))

Typically you don't fertilize much of anything late in the summer/early fall since you want the plant to go dormant and not start producing any new growth. That being said some plants respond to lesser hours of daylight to trigger dormancy and others rely on a cold snap to make them go dormant. I haven't ever seen or heard anyone give information which camp clematis fall into. If you do use something, why not apply something organic that will take time to break down over the winter like grass clippings or shredded leaves (some trees here are already dropping leaves because of the drought conditions we are experiencing), or even some sort of shredded mulch? These things will start decomposing in the fall, attract earthworms to the area which will supply their own organic additives (worm castings), and you won't have to worry about it causing excessive growth at a time when they should be going dormant. I personally wouldn't use anything other than that at this time of the year.

i agree that the HR roots will probably penetrate the side of a smart pot eventually. i have my horseradish in a 3'x3' x 18" raised bed away from the rest of my garden area. I just mow around it to keep it in check. This will be my 5th year with it in this location and I have not had any problems with it spreading using this method. I dig mine in November after a few decent frosts but before the ground freezes. With the raised bet I am able to cut off the top growth, pull off the wood frame which exposes the roots, and then use a hand trowel to easily separate the roots from the soil. When done, I replace the frame and soil, mix in some compost, and then immediately replant a half dozen of the largest crowns. Some small pieces of root are always missed and regrow along with the crowns. The plants that grow from the crowns will flower the following spring and you will want to cut off the flower heads before they go to seed or else no telling where the birds will disperse it. I got about 6 lbs. of root last year and made 9 half pint jars of prepared horseradish. The finished horseradish freezes well so it will last until the next fall.

Thank you! I will definitely read through some of those discussions! I’m currently using just regular T5s not T5HO which I’m assuming means mine are less intense? Did you find your plants were stretching under LED tubes?In terms of panels, do you have a recommendation? I looked into them in the past when I was first considering grow lights but honestly my head was spinning with all the different types I landed on T5s instead. My shelves give me a total of 30 square feet of space, so no matter what, a switch will be pricey