Gardening This Weekend: October 3, 2024

Here’s my checklist of the most critical landscaping and gardening goals for early October.

PLANT
Cool-season color, including pansies, violas, pinks, snapdragons, ornamental cabbage and kale for late fall, winter and early spring color. Choose pansies and violas that are full and compact. Plants that have been exposed to high temperatures may have grown lanky.
Daffodils and grape hyacinths as soon as you buy them. Ask questions about how well the types that you’re choosing will “come back” year after year.
Buy your tulips and Dutch hyacinths when you find top-quality bulbs. Remember that they must go into the refrigerator for 45 days (or longer) at 45 degrees.
Dig and divide spring-flowering perennials such as violets, oxalis, candytuft, iris, daylilies, coneflowers, gloriosa daisies, thrift and others. Prepare their new planting soils carefully.
Trees and shrubs. By planting them now, you’ll give them maximum time to establish before next summer’s hot weather arrives. Nurseries often have significant sales at this time of year.

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PRUNE
Keep perennial beds tidy by removing old flower and stem stalks.
Dig and remove roses infested with rose rosette virus. Their foliage will be abnormal. Stems will often be exceedingly thorny. Buds won’t open properly.
Mow turf at recommended height. Do not let grass grow tall in the mistaken idea that it will be more winter hardy. Tall grass quickly becomes weak grass.

FERTILIZE
Newly planted winter color annuals with water-soluble, high-nitrogen food. Repeat weekly until frost.
Fescue turf if that is your permanent lawngrass, with high-nitrogen or all-nitrogen fertilizer so it can take advantage of cooler growing conditions.
Young ryegrass turf after it has sprouted and is growing actively. That’s generally after you mow it the second time. Apply the same all-N product that you’ve been using on your lawn all season long.
Last feeding of patio plants before bringing them indoors for winter. Don’t encourage new growth in lower light intensities inside your house.

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ON THE LOOKOUT
Check patio plants closely for insects before bringing them inside your house for the winter. Inspect drain holes, too. Some pests like to hide there.
Turf areas where you intend to develop new garden or landscape beds next spring can be sprayed with a glyphosate herbicide but do so soon. It won’t contaminate the soil, but it must have warm conditions to kill out the unwanted vegetation. You’ll be able to rototill within a couple of weeks so that you can start working up the soils well in advance of late-winter plantings.
Brown patch (now being called “large patch”) in St. Augustine. It causes 18- to 24-in. yellowed patches that quickly turn brown. Infected blades pull loose easily from the runners. You’ll be able to see the decaying sheaths at their bases. Apply a labeled fungicide and avoid nighttime waterings since they promote spread of the fungus.

Posted by Neil Sperry
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