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North Mississippi Gardening Tips
October, 2003

October Notes

October in the Midsouth is the month for the garden's last hurrah. Cool, crisp evenings with mildly hot days are the norm. Colors in the landscape rival the spring for variety and brilliance. Take time from your gardening chores to attend some of the fall garden days or festivals in Mississippi. One of the largest in the southeast is the Fall Flower and Garden Fest at the Truck Crops Experiment Station in Crystal Springs. This year's event will take place on October 17 and 18th. Call 601-892-3731 for details.

If you live in north Mississippi you need to travel to Verona and go through the Scarecrow Trail at the north Mississippi Research and Extension Center. Colorful scarecrow characters will be interspersed throughout the grounds and the Magnolia Botanical Gardens. The trail will remain open weekdays now until October 17th. The trail is free and groups are welcome. Call the Tupelo Convention and Visitors Bureau at 800-533-0611 for group scheduling and more details. Since my office is located at the Research and Extension Center I may wind up being one of your tour guides! Come, bring the kids, see the scarecrows and the beautiful gardens.

Annual Flowers and Vines

Garden centers and nurseries have expanded their fall selections of plants in recent years. People in the horticulture industry know that fall is an excellent planting time, but the public typically looks to the spring as the ideal time. As "green industry" businesses have expanded their fall plant offerings, the public has begun to take the hint and look at the fall as another gardening season with many possibilities. For example, it used to be that all you found was mums, pansies and ornamental cabbage or kale for fall planting. Now, there are all kinds of cool season annuals available to make the fall garden just as showy as the spring. Check out your local garden center or nursery right away to get those plants in the ground!

Bulbs, Corms, Roots and Rhizomes

If you have already purchased your spring-flowering bulbs, wait until November when the ground is cooler to plant. Store these purchased bulbs in the vegetable crisper of your fridge. Keep your apples and other fruit out of the bulb storage area or you might cause premature sprouting of the bulbs due to the ethylene gas that is given off by the fruit. Have your bulbs planted before January or the bulbs will not have time to grow an adequate root system to support the emerging foliage. Incorporate some bulb booster fertilizer in the back fill soil that goes under the bulbs. This is the only application of fertilizer needed until after the foliage emerges in the spring. Be adventuresome and plant some of the lesser known and used bulbs, corms and rhizomes like anemones, giant onion, cyclamen, winter aconite, summer snowflake and Siberian squill.

Fruits and Nuts

Now is not the time to prune fruit trees, fruiting bushes, or fruiting vines. Wait until January or February to prune fruit trees and vines. Blackberries and raspberries should have already been shaped and will need no further pruning before next year's crop of berries. Remember that if you mulch your fruiting trees, bushes and vines do not put the mulch touching the trunk or this will provide a cover for the vicious little vole that eats the bark and can girdle and kill your plants. Mulching is multi-functional. It retains moisture, keeps down weeds, buffers the temperature changes in the soil during the changing of the seasons, looks attractive and keeps the maniacal, over zealous weed-whacker operators away from the trunks of your plants!

Groundcovers and Lawns

You have until November 1st to seed those cool season grasses in Zone 7 (north Mississippi). Tall fescue and creeping red fescue are your choices for Zone 7. Kentucky bluegrass is recommended only for Zone 7a. Seeding rates per 1000 square feet are 4 pounds of tall fescue, 3 pounds for creeping fescue and 1.5 pounds for Kentucky bluegrass. Established Kentucky bluegrass lawns would benefit from an application of fertilizer the middle of this month. Remember to mow these cool season grasses high. Two to three inches mowing height is recommended for the winter months. You won't have to worry about mowing those warm season grass lawns for too much longer. Bermudagrass and the other warm season grasses cease top growth with the first killing frost. Hallelujah! That typically occurs around Halloween in north Mississippi.

Perennial Flowers and Vines

Remember last month when I told you to seed those hardy flowers like purple coneflower, Shasta daisy, larkspur, foxglove, rudbeckia and English daisy. Well, if you minded me, now is the time to transplant your little seedlings into their permanent place in the garden. You better stay on top of the watering for these little babies, as October can be one of the driest months of the year. If you followed my advice in the July/August report and cut back some of those perennials, you probably will be enjoying a new flush of foliage and flowers by now. If you didn't, woe unto you. Your more obedient neighbor might let you come over and take a gander at his gorgeous rejuvenated perennials if you act pretty. You still have time to visit the garden centers and nurseries and purchase perennials for fall planting. You might even find a bargain or two, as the nurseries typically do not like to overwinter a lot of stock.

Trees and Shrubs

As I have said repeatedly in this report fall is the time to plant. The dormant season is, by far, the best time to plant trees and shrubs. If you think about it, doesn't that make sense. Deciduous trees and shrubs are dormant. The leave canopy is absent, so there is less water and nutrient requirements to keep the plant alive. The metabolic rate has slowed even for evergreens during the cold season. Plants are typically not subjected to the stress of bugs, disease and hot, droughty weather during the winter months. Assess your landscape and determine where you need a tree or a grouping of shrubs to add to your landscape. Trees and shrubs have many functions. What function do you want them to serve? Do you need a screen, windbreak, noise buffer, or a specimen or focal point for the yard? Select the plant or plants based on your landscape needs and the environmental and cultural requirements of the plant. A great publication to help you is entitled, "Transplanting Trees and Shrubs in the Landscape." This publication can be picked up from your county Extension office or can be downloaded from the Mississippi State University website, msucares.com. Click on publications on this home page and go from there. Topics covered in the publication include: preparing the planting site, ball and burlap plants, container-grown plants, bare-root plants, watering, mulching, staking and guying, amending the planting site, easy test to determine soil drainage and planting in poorly drained soils.

Vegetables and Herbs

October is the end of the warm-season vegetable garden. Pick those last tomatoes, peppers, beans, squash, and cucumbers and get ready for the cold. Dig those sweet potatoes before that killing frost. Be careful not to bruise or injure the roots, as these damaged potatoes will be susceptible to rot. No matter how careful I am I always spear a few with my spading fork. No matter, these are the first to be eaten as sweet potato pie! It is always a good idea to clean up the garden before winter. Remove all the warm season vegetable plants. These can harbor disease organisms and overwintering insects that can infest your garden next spring. Some industrious gardeners will even till and "throw up" rows for next spring's early planting. Now is the time to do the soil test to see if a fall application of lime is needed and to determine what fertilizers will be needed for next spring's planting. Beets, carrots and turnips can stand a light frost, but not hard freezes. When a hard freeze is predicted, dig these roots crops, process and store or eat them up right off the bat! If you don't freeze or can them, beets and carrots store well in the refrigerator's vegetable crisper. Turnips can be stored the same way. Remember not to store them with your spring-flowering bulbs, as some of the vegetables are big ethylene gas producers that can cause your flower bulbs to sprout.

Lelia Scott Kelly, Ph.D., writes North Mississippi Gardening Tips monthly and is a Horticulture Specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service. Her office is in the North Mississippi Research & Extension Center, Verona.