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Welcome to our Gardener’s Calendar section here at Growing Wisdom and this is where we go over sort of the things you are supposed to do each month. You want to put down your fall fertilizer for the season. If you are lining your lawn, get that down early in the month and also begin to mow the lawn just a little bit lower. That will help you to rake and clean things up off the lawn. If you have got a water garden, it is a good idea to bring in some of those tender plants. I winter over, many of the plants in my water garden, I put them inside. Some go down on the basement.
Some of you will begin to get your first froze and freeze this month. And once that happens, your perennials will die back. It is a good idea as they begin to die back, to cut them back to the ground, take that material, if it is healthy, put it in the compost pile. Bring in some of the tender bulbs and store those. So if you have things like gladiolus or elephant ears and you want to save the bulbs year to year, bring them in and store them downstairs in the basement or in a cool, dry spot in your house.
You can also plant the spring bulbs now. Believe it or not, you can plant garlic now. So if you want to plant garlic now, you can do that. Find a sunny spot in your garden then plant it. If you want to move some trees and shrubs, it is the terrific time to do that. There are few that you want to wait until spring. Things like birch, any of the stone fruits, those peaches, pears and plums and things like that. Also oaks, you do not want to move in the fall, you want to move them in the spring. But other trees and shrubs, you can move them now. You can start dividing and moving perennials now. Just keep them watered.
Weeds now are putting out seeds that will actually seed new weeds for next year. So if you get those weeds up and you discard them, put them away somewhere where they are not going to be able to seed. That will actually help you so you will not have to weed this much next year. Sharp up your leaves and use them as mulch in the garden. Do not just throw them down because they will tend to mat down and they can rot things.
Ornamental grasses, I actually tie them up. I tied them up and that helps to give me winter interest all year long. If I do not tie them when the first snow fall comes, the grasses tend to flop over and they get all mush down. But if you take them with a nice piece of string or some twine, and tie them nice and tight at the base, it will stay tall and they look wonderful all winter long. If you have a snow blower, you want to check it to be sure that it is in working order, check your snow shovels and your ice choppers. Be sure that they are not all bent and dinged up so that next month or the month after, when we do eventually get some snow, if you live in the part of the country that gets snow, everything is all ready.
So that is our Gardener’s Calendar for October. Come back every week for all of our information and come back every month for a new garden calendar.
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