Taking Stock Of Those Fall To-Dos

It was Christmas in October when the lily bulbs arrived for planting earlier in the month—but it was also a sign that the colder months are not far off and our time to get our gardens ready is slipping away.Westhampton Beach has already recorded an early-morning temperature of 30 degrees last week. The mildewed stems and leaves of the tall garden phlox, the leafless tomato plants with slowly rotting fruit, and the spotted rose foliage, even with blooming canes, all remind us that it’s time to take stock, take notes, take a good look and get the landscape ready for what the guessers and prognosticators say may be a ravaging winter.

For starters, don’t panic. Get a writing pad or an iPad and walk around the property taking notes and pictures. What needs to be done? Maybe divide your notes into two sections. The first section can be what needs to be done now, before the ground freezes, and the second section can be notes on what you notice that needs to be done in early spring in terms of dividing, adding plants or changing things around.

I actually started my 2017 garden notes back in July, when I began to see holes in the garden where I wanted to add more of this and that next year. These notes help me come January when I start to page through the catalogs and when I can get discounts of as much as 20 percent for early-season orders. These notes are also important reminders about what plants I want to move that are not transplantable in the fall. In some cases I flag or tape these plants as well, with my written notes being reminders and backups.

The lawn still needs to be cut, and I’m always getting asked, “When can I stop?” Easy, when it stops growing. A frost does wonders to slow or stop turf growth, but frosts can be late to nonexistent out here, so our lawns seem to just gradually fade into dormancy. Remember that you can’t apply fertilizer to your lawn after November 1 (it’s not just illegal but pointless), but this is the absolute perfect time to adjust your lawn’s pH. I mention this over and over and over, and yet having the correct soil pH for your lawn can be one of the most critical elements in having a healthy lawn.

Why now? Because if you need to add limestone, the least expensive way to do this is by adding ground limestone with a spreader. The limestone acts slowly, but by next spring the pH change will kick in. Testing is cheap, simple and liming rarely has to be done more than every decade.

And while you’re thinking about your lawn, think about the leaves on it. Allowing falling leaves to accumulate on your lawn allows them to mat down and smother the turf. Rake, sweep or blow the leaves weekly, but try not to get rid of them. Depending on what kinds of trees you have these leaves can be “banked” in piles, passed through a shredder or added to the compost pile. The leaves can be a winter mulch, especially if they’re mostly maple leaves, or composted and turned into garden gold. Remember, though, that these leaves are brown and a garden source of carbon. To break them down and allow them to compost, they need to be mixed with green (nitrogen) sources for composting to be effective and start the “cooking” process.

A general cleanup of the gardens is essential. In doing this it’s important to remove diseased and damaged plant parts and any weeds that may have established over the summer and into the fall. Perennial weeds and grasses that are removed from the garden now can’t produce seed next season. Garden phlox covered with mildew, roses with black spot and peony foliage can all be added to a compost pile that you know will get hot and thus destroy the pathogens. While it’s too soon to prune back roses, plants like garden phlox and hollyhocks that may have had diseases on them can be cut back to the ground and the diseased parts moved far from the garden. Any parts from these plants that are left behind will become the source for next year’s reinfection.

In the vegetable garden we follow pretty much the same regime with one exception—we do some planting now. In fact, this planting should have started weeks ago. We remove diseased plant parts and foliage from the vegetable garden to reduce the chances of reinfection next year. But another, often ignored step is to add cover crops which become green manures (which don’t come from green horses or cows). As a section of the vegetable garden becomes available, it can be seeded with a cover crop that has several functions. First, a cover crop stabilizes the garden soil during the winter and should stop erosion and soil loss. Second, the cover crop enriches and rejuvenates the soil in a number of ways, depending on what seed you use for your cover. The root system can enrich the soil if legumes are used, and when the shoot (foliage) of the cover crop is worked back into the soil it naturally adds structure and nutrients to the soil. A cover crop may also have the effect of suppressing some soil-borne diseases.

If you have fruit trees and berries such as blueberries or raspberries (any of the brambles), don’t leave fruits on the trees or bushes through the winter, and don’t leave dropped fruit on the ground. Dropped fruits will attract deer and raccoons, and dropped fruit can also harbor disease pathogens that we don’t want to leave around until next spring. The same holds true with the foliage that drops from your apple trees and other fruit trees. Don’t leave them on the ground. Instead, gather the leaves up and add them to the compost pile. If you see fruits out of reach on any of your trees come November and it’s not a very late maturing variety, then get yourself a pole picker and remove the fruit.

I’ve mentioned mulch this week a number of times. It fine to make mulch now, but don’t add mulch to the garden yet for winter protection. This step has to wait until the soil gets really cold or even freezes—then we add the mulch to stabilize the soil temperature. And finally, if you are planting or have planted bulbs that might tempt our furry friends (including deer), add a repellent to the soil surface where you’ve done planting. Better yet, if you haven’t planted yet, you can dip your bulbs in repellents, let them dry, and then plant. It’ll work for this year, but that’s it.

If you’ve got oak trees on your property, now is the time to learn about gypsy moths and what their egg masses look like. Go online and educate yourself and your neighbors, because early detection of the egg masses will help you get control of this invasive insect early next spring so your oaks and other trees don’t become defoliated. Learn what biological controls are available, because they are effective, though not without some consequences.

Next week we’ll look at the mechanical end of getting the lawn, garden and landscape ready for the big chill. In the meantime, get those bulbs in the ground, be mindful of what else needs to be done and, of course, keep growing.