Maintaining Your Landscape - October

Maintaining a well cared for garden requires attention every season of the year. The fall is the perfect time to do some clean-up and pruning to reduce the risk of disease and encourage a lush, healthy garden for next spring. Here are some ideas for how to best prepare for the winter and get a head start on your gardening for next year:

-Clean out garden beds and cut back select perennials. Most herbaceous perennials will naturally die back to the ground in the fall; any dead plant material can be removed and discarded. For advice on pruning trees and shrubs, please contact one of our nursery professionals; how to prune often depends on the particular plant and how large you want it to get.

-Only compost disease and insect free material, otherwise dispose in paper lawn bags. Learn how to here.

-Turn compost piles to get ready for spring use.

-Keep up on mowing the lawn. Tall lawns during the winter run the risk of disease and rodents.

-Rake up leaves from lawn areas to avoid killing patches of lawn over the winter.

-Continue watering trees and shrubs until the ground freezes.

-Clean bird feeders for winter use.

-Put away pottery, statuary, and empty containers to protect them from the frost.

-Turn over or bring in birdbath tops, or winterize your birdbath with a birdbath heater.

-Drain garden and lawn equipment of gasoline to avoid damage and make necessary repairs.

-Pot up new amaryllis bulbs mid-month. Cut back the foliage on old amaryllis bulbs, and place in the dark and stop watering.

-Drain any outdoor watering equipment to ensure it doesn’t freeze.

Get Ready for November 

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