Garden Tips Newsletter
'To Do' List for Fall
October 12, 2009
Take stock of the garden. Take a pad and pencil and stroll around the landscape and make notes of what worked, what didn’t. Note areas that need improvement, cleaning up, areas that may need hiding and areas that need a focal point for the fall. Make your wish list and THEN---
Go shopping. Do your bit for the economic recovery by patronizing your local garden centers and nurseries. They are restocking for the fall with loads of new plants and bulbs.
Apply a fresh layer of mulch—nothing makes the garden look neat and tended to better than new mulch!
Seed the cool season annuals and wildflowers in the areas that will not be mulched. Don’t mulch those areas of the garden where you rely on reseeding to repopulate your beds.
Dig up and divide the spring and summer flowering perennial plants now. Be sure and water the divided clumps well to aid in good root growth.
Clean-up any dead or spent plants, in particular, summer annuals that look horrible—replace with colorful fall annuals, seed cool season flowers, or just cover the area with mulch. Don’t forget to leave some seedheads for the wildlife.
Continue to harvest herbs, vegetables—eat as much as you can, process the rest (canning or freezing) and give the rest to hungry friends, neighbors or a food bank.
Begin to pour over those catalogs that you are getting in the mail. Don’t get too bug-eyed with all the glossy pictures. Choose wisely!
Fall is the time to plant trees and shrubs. For deciduous plants the cool weather of fall encourages root growth, allowing these plants to develop a good root system before the growing season; thereby, increasing chances of survival.
Lelia Scott Kelly, Ph.D., writes Garden Tips weekly and is a Horticulture Specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service. Her office is in the North Mississippi Research & Extension Center, Verona.