September is upon us. We begin to think fall around this time of year. The normal things in fall are back to school, football, music festivals and spending evenings outside with friends. Fall is the unsung savior of the landscape world. It’s one last hurrah for your landscape before winter takes over and it marks the end of heat and drought during the summer. For those last weeks of September, October and November your lawn and plants can thrive again. You may have heard that fall is the best time for planting and it’s true: the mild weather makes it ideal for planting trees and shrubs, since lingering warm days and increase precipitation are key for a new plant growth. I love to plant in the fall because the plants have time to get a little growth up top and more importantly down below where it counts. The shrubs and trees planted in the fall should get some root stimulator or a slow release organic fertilizer with a high middle number which is phosphorus. Those plants don’t have to move right into the heat like those planted in the spring. Instead the fall planted landscape will start their new lives by going into shorter days, more rain, less stress. From winter they will slowly come out of dormancy in the spring time and be more prepared for the summer months ahead. The plants do better and the work for you is easier. We are having a 50 percent off sale on all our trees until Saturday the 14th so this could be your chance to try fall planting at half the risk. Your lawn is the same, getting a high middle number fertilizer helps the roots get stronger and you will notice a thicker, healthier lawn next spring if you will get a winterizer applied before it goes dormant in October. Keep in mind that a thick, healthy lawn leaves less room for weeds to creep in during the winter months.

I am going to top dress all of my beds with cottonseed meal this weekend. Cottonseed meal is a very slow release fertilizer and soil conditioner that can really make a difference in the health of your yard. I like it because it is inexpensive, it doesn’t burn plants, and it promotes healthy foliage and fosters profuse and spectacular blooms. I have 2 50 pound bags which I think is going to disappear quickly. I’m going to see how much more I’ll need to get by using about a cup full worked into the soil for each good size shrub and more for the trees. There is no telling how many more 50 pound bags I’ll need, I’ll be listening to a lot of music for a couple days while I get that done. The old-timers swear by cottonseed meal, I’m going for it!

Mimi and I are doing something a little different this year. We had an area down a gully near the barn where our gardening debris wound up. We weren’t really working it like we should have as far as having a true composting area. We didn’t chip it or turn it or layer our sticks and stones and broken bones. We would literally dump everything in there as long as it was plant debris. We have opened up that area for our shade, damp garden which meant the debris pile had to go. I couldn’t get my Ditch Witch down there without getting it stuck so I parked the dump trailer as close to the pile as I could get. I put on my snake boots and some long pants and sleeves, got my headphones going and moved 12 years of debris. It took 3 full dump trailers to get it out of there. It was like an archaeologists dream. I came across old plants still surviving, vegetable plants and perennials that had come back from seed, decaying trees that I had forgotten about and even an old concrete bird bath. That was the only non “green” thing I came across at the very bottom of the pile. It made me chuckle because I remember a little skirmish about that bird bath about 5 years ago. Mimi wanted it to go away for the longest time. It was one of those things that I just couldn’t get around to, every time I looked at it my back would hurt, it was a big one. We argued over it one last time and when she wasn’t looking I threw (rolled) the 400 pound bird spa over the cliff into the depths of the pile, I thought I’d Show her. Now was payback time, now I had to get it piece by piece back up the gully and load it into the trailer where she wanted it in the first place. That move spurred a new idea. Until we get our compost rings built and are ready to make the commitment to work the compost properly we would leave the dump trailer out of sight. Now we dump our daily grinds from the yard directly into the trailer until it’s full. I hook the trailer up to my truck and dump it when I go to work that day and come home with it that afternoon. We had one trailer last weekend completely full of Limelight Hydrangas blooms, it was the prettiest trailer of debris you ever saw going down the road. If you saw last weeks blog on our website I had photos of the Limelight’s before we cut them, they are tree form and 12 feet tall. This week I will show the trailer filled up with the blooms on our website.

This is the time of year that Mimi and I will prune all of the roses for one more flush of blooms. It takes exactly 45 days to get them blooming again after a good pruning so we will be looking for one more good rose show around mid October, I think it will look like spring again for those last few weeks of fall. There will be another part of a trailer load but this time full of thorns that I won’t have to touch again.

We are already lining up all the crazy pumpkins and gourds for you to decorate your house with. I love using those great colors with a healthy green background in the yard. That stuff looks great on the front porch but we use them in the landscape for the view from the kitchen window, those colors really sing when the leaves begin to turn yellow and red around the yard.

I enjoy fall more than any other season for all of those reasons but I don’t forget to up my irrigation game for this last dry hurrah when necessary. Put your yard to bed this winter as healthily as you can by using plenty water and an organic slow release fertilizer the difference next spring will amaze you.

Now is time to start finding your fall veggie choices. This is the time of year that I like to plant lettuce seeds, broccoli, beets and radishes. We will probably do some more of the Dino-kale just because it is so pretty when it gets good and cold. I have planted seeds for Lupine , Sweet peas, Delphinium, Baptisia, flax, Larkspur, Love in a mist, Nasturtiums and even some Marigolds. Some of these will make it through the winter and those that don’t will look good until winter gets here. I’m really just trying to practice and get better at using seeds more. I love the plants that we grow at Garden Works but seeds open up a whole world to us. To grow something at our production facility usually means too many, when I just want to try a thing out this is easier than making it fit into our production program.

Hopefully the rain amounts continue to stay good enough, maybe a good inch a week, to get us through until things begin to go dormant. I have to say that since I started irrigating from my pond about a month ago my lawn and my plants are generally darker green and healthy looking. That pond water is full of good nutrients, I might even use it some even when I really don’t need to water, I need this place looking perfect for Max’s wedding weekend at the end of October. So far I believe our timing is looking good. Maybe I should give him some good Dad advise and tell him don’t argue over the little things like getting rid of a 400 pound birdbath when it becomes the source of a stink eye. We all figure it out sooner or later.