Gardening Topic for October 2002
Ready For Bed?

School’s back in session, and you’re needed to help on field trips. Church and civic organizations are gearing up and calling you to meetings. Vegetables and fruits have ripened and it’s time to can or freeze them. Quilting classes are beginning or quilting groups reassembling. Stores are beckoning you with ads for snow tires and warm clothes—BUT DON’T WALK AWAY FROM YOUR GARDEN JUST YET!

You remember your garden—it promised such delights last spring and it brought such color into your life over the summer, so reward it with a good fall cleanup—“putting your garden to bed” is the way many gardening books describe it. And it can make a big difference in your gardening success next year. Here are some suggestions to get you started out there in the fall sunshine. Look them over, then make up your own checklist.

STARTING NOW

Keep watering. This is first and foremost. We’ve had a dry summer, and perennials, shrubs and trees need thorough watering before the ground freezes in order to survive the winter. Growth may have slowed above ground, but it continues in the root zone, so provide water regularly through the fall.

You can continue to divide clumps of daylilies and Siberian Iris into October, but hurry. They need time to establish roots before winter. Check the many excellent gardening books around for advice about what other plants are best divided in the fall.

You can continue to plant and transplant into early October. And you can prepare beds for spring planting all month.

Time to put the bulbs in, and water them, too, since it’s a dry fall. Be sure to put some where they’ll greet you when you arrive home next spring, and some where you can see them as you drink your morning coffee, and some right near the front door, and….well, you get the idea!

Continue to deadhead plants, but do not fertilize perennials or shrubs, as they should not be encouraged to put out tender new growth.

Mark plants that are slow to show in the spring (e.g., balloon flower, butterfly weed, and lilies) or make a diagram and mark them so that you don’t accidentally dig into them in the spring.

Cut down foliage afflicted with powdery mildew or other diseases or pests. Either dispose of it with the trash or burn it. If left in the garden, this foliage could infect new growth in the spring, or it could harbor eggs that will hatch into hungry insects next year.

Keep the leaves raked off of the grass and flower beds. Chop them with the lawnmower and use them for mulch or bag them to add to your compost pile over the winter. Or you can push them in around shrubs to protect them from winter damage. Or make your own leaf mold by chopping them and piling them into a wire enclosure to decompose over the winter. Get them into your garden in some fashion to provide organic matter to the soil.

Consider liming your soil now if it needs it. After all, you’ll have plenty else to do in the spring! And especially in this era of drought, add compost or chopped leaves to the soil.  It will help the soil retain moisture next summer.

Edge garden beds and while you’re at it, decide how you will mulch for the winter after the ground freezes. Don’t mulch yet, as mice and their friends may be tempted to establish winter quarters in those nice warm piles. But do assemble the mulching materials you’ve decided to use and find a nice dry place to keep them until needed.

Collect shrub and hedge clippings--“twiggy branches,” Elsa Bakalar calls them--to use as supports for plants next summer. Stash them in a corner of your yard to dry out. They’ll make unobtrusive supports for plants in 2003.

Be sure to rake and remove leaves from under the rose bushes, where they provide a breeding ground for insects and fungus. Keep the bushes watered well, but don’t prune them, as this will encourage new, tender growth which is susceptible to winter damage. As C.Z. Guest says in Garden Talk: ask me anything, “Hybrid teas and their cousins—grandifloras and floribundas—simply don’t know when the party is over and they should prepare for their long winter’s snooze.” After the ground freezes, you may want to add protection, so start thinking now about what you’ll need.

WHEN FROSTS ARRIVE

Pull out the dead annuals as they succumb to frost and toss them into the compost pile. You might make a note of what did best where.

Cut back those sad, brown, mushy perennials. Leave the stems of the plants, though. They help to anchor mulch and to remind you where your plants are located when you are adding new plants or bulbs to the garden.

Consider leaving certain plants for winter interest. Russian sage (Perovskia) and false indigo (Baptisia) help give shape and movement to a winter garden, as do clumps of grasses. The seed pods of purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) and Rudbeckia are attractive nourishment for birds. Butterfly bushes look positively romantic festooned with snow and can be cut back early next spring.

WHEN THE GROUND REALLY FREEZES

Now is the time to give your plants the winter protection of mulch. This is especially necessary for new plants which don’t have well developed root systems and can be heaved right out of the ground by alternating freezing and thawing. But you have mulching materials ready, right? A thick layer of mulch will keep the soil temperature even.

Roses need special protection. You can wrap burlap around stakes to form a protective barrier, then fill the middle with some of those chopped leaves. Or you may want to explore some of the commercial materials now available such as microfoam or styrofoam cones.

Hungry critters love to gnaw the bark of young trees, so wrap the trunks with wire or look into one of the commercial wrapping products.

Don’t be intimidated by this list. Do what you can, clean up well, protect what you can, make notes for next spring, and you will have earned the right to dream of the garden in its glory all through the winter!