Home Gardening

North Mississippi Gardening Tips
October, 2007

FLOWERS

By this time you probably have done one of two things to your summer bedding plants. 

You’ve trimmed them back in August or early September, fertilized them well and they have rebounded with vigorous growth and blooms! Or, you have done what I did--totally neglected them all summer, leaving them to battle drought, bugs and disease on their own.  At this time they appear a tad bedraggled and rather pathetic.  Have some mercy and put them out of their misery.  It’s time to pull up the embarrassing remains and dispose of them in a proper fashion.  This serves several purposes.  It makes you feel better to get rid of the evidence of your lazy gardening, it rids your garden of potential carriers of insects and disease through the winter, it makes the garden neater and more attractive and it relieves you of one less job to do next spring.  Your flurry of activity will also serve as a good example to your neighbor who will surely be impressed with your vigor.

Rest a little while and then get yourself down to the local garden center or nursery and check out their fall line of plants.  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. 

BULBS AND OTHER BULBOUS PLANTS

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 they 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!

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!

TREES AND SHRUBS

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.

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.  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.   If you haven’t done a soil test in a few years, it is probably time to 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!

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.