Trees & Bulb & Mums, Oh My!

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This week, we said goodbye to summer, but not to gardening. With the temperatures still reaching the 70s and sometimes 80s in our neck of the forest, it seems silly to pack up our gardening gear and call it a season.

In fact, Fall means a lot to do for gardeners. 

First of all, take a moment to look around. Your garden is in its last full flower and now’s the time to take stock of what worked, what didn’t work and what you’d want to change next year. If you wait until winter or next spring, you might have a harder time remembering or visualizing the things you want to do.

Also, you might not get a chance to do it next month. October is the transition between summer fun to holiday crunch, particularly as we try to figure out how (and if) we can do our traditional get-togethers in the time of COVID.

Meanwhile, let’s talk about how to extend the season so you can enjoy your garden for as long as possible. Pretty soon the threat of a freeze will loom, so I’ll be honest with you – you’ll likely lose your “non-hardy” annuals. But you can replace them with some fall favorites, like mums, asters, flowering cabbage and kale, all of which will keep your garden looking beautiful for several more weeks. Meanwhile, spring blooms like pansies and violas have made a reappearance and aren’t threatened by a little cold weather – or even snow!

If you haven’t yet, make sure you get those spring-blooming bulbs into the ground before the freeze. Plus there’s still time to plant some cold-season veggies.

Fall is also a great time to get trees and perennials planted. I know the temptation might be to wait until next year, but there are a lot of advantages to getting them into the ground now. You’ll get more growth out of the plant next year if they are planted in the fall. Also, there’s less up-front care that is required when you plant this time of year as trees will soon go into dormancy.

The bottom line is that any excuse to be outside gardening during this beautiful season is a good thing!

Hope you are enjoying your Fall and we hope to see you soon at Warner’s Nursery.

Happy Gardening,
Misti