Shop your farm stands, garden centers, and stores for fresh fall color. Not only are pumpkins seasonal and colorful, but a small sugar pumpkin (baked) will yield plenty of real pumpkin flavor for a pumpkin pie. Yes, please!
Besides the beauty of long-blooming, frost-hardy mums, cabbage, and kale, these plants will attract and sustain pollinators. Many beneficial insects use the cover of late-season plants to overwinter and help us out next season. The worst thing is to leave bare, open soil. If you want to remove frost-killed foliage due to disease or other concerns, cover the exposed garden beds with a fresh layer of mulch.
Summer-blooming bulbs like Gladiolus, Dahlias, Crocosmia, and Acidantherus (now known as Gladiolus murielae) will all need to be dug up for winter storage once nights get cold. All but the dahlias should be dug before frost, and the foliage can be left to dry before trimming off. The dahlias can stay in the ground until frost kills the foliage. I know that immature bulbs growing on the side of the original of all these beauties will have formed. When I store my bulbs, I leave all the new growth intact to overwinter inside. In spring, I will break the good size ones apart to plant separately. In this way, my expensive six Gladiolus become 12 in just one year.
I will go into storage of bulbs after we have a killing frost—but not in the forecast yet!
Spring-flowering bulbs have arrived at stores ready for us to make our design plans for next year. There are many types of bulbs beyond the familiar tulip and daffodil. If you want to make a big splash, plant 12 or more in a group. If you want hints of spring as the gardens wake up next year, plant three to five bulbs in various visible niches around the garden—at the corners of a large border, nestled between tree roots, or poking out under leafless shrubs.
You will find instructions with the bulb packaging, but, generally, plant a bulb to a depth of twice its length. The pointy side goes up. Tulip bulbs may get eaten in the ground, so surround tulip bulbs with a homemade wire cage or with earlier-blooming daffodils to repel pests.
I find daffodils the most reliable. I like yellow, and I like that daffodils have shades of yellow making the show more varied than you might think. I especially like that many animals—deer, rabbit, squirrels, moles, and voles—do not like daffodils. However, when you plant bulbs, you often disturb soil that hasn’t been worked in a while.
Maybe you wanted a naturalizing daffodil patch in the back part of the lawn that only gets mowed part of the time. That patch won’t need mowing until the daffodils are done. Great! But that soil probably is not loose. Once you dig it up for planting—even daffodils—the chipmunks and other critters will get curious. They may be attracted to the spot where you cleared the way, so to speak, for them to plant walnuts, butternuts, or acorns in that fresh pliable soil. So, while they may not be attracted to the bulb you chose, they will dig it out and put in their own treasure if given a chance.
Try this trick to deter such freeloaders: Lay chicken wire over the top of the soil over the bulb but still below the surface. Once they come across the wire, they will look elsewhere to store their nuts.
Spring-blooming bulbs will root in if planted by late October and shouldn’t bloom too early. Bulbs need a cold period of 12 to 15 weeks before they will bloom.
Have you purchased bulbs and then forgotten to plant them? It is not too late if you can dig a hole in the soil, even into December. Unfortunately, potting them up in December and trying to bring them into bloom won’t work. They need time to just chill. The time to prepare bulbs for forcing is earlier in the season, not later. Try potting bulbs in damp but well-draining potting soil. Put the pot in an extra refrigerator or cold part of your garage (where it will stay about 42–45 F) for 15 weeks—that is January 11! Then you can bring the pot to a warm (60 F) spot with indirect light. Water the soil just enough to dampen it. Once leaves emerge, you will bring it to a bright, warm spot to “force” the bloom, typically in another three weeks.
Another early October tip: Lawns are growing still. Avoid compacting soil in turf areas. Wait for lawns to dry before mowing and begin to mow to shorter heights with each mowing. You want to end up at about two inches high by mid-November. Fewer diseases develop on shorter grasses over the winter.
Finally, garden centers have great deals on perennials trees and shrubs now because these plants do best when planted in the ground by mid-October. Otherwise, garden centers must store the plants in mounds of mulch or under makeshift greenhouses. They do best if planted! Planted soon, they still have time to establish root systems before a hard freeze.
I call myself the Lazy Berkshire Gardener because I don’t want to work too hard in my gardens. I want to enjoy them. I find it easier to observe my landscape and let the compost happen, the water pool up, or daisies to self-sow. I look for ways to do the minimum task for the biggest impact. For example, mulching is better than spraying and much better than weeding all season. I look for beautiful, low-maintenance plants that thrive in or at least tolerate my garden conditions. Plus, I’m willing to live with the consequences if I miss something.
