Gardening This Weekend: October 9, 2025
Here’s my checklist of gardening activities for the next several days. I hope you find it useful.
PLANT
• Dig and divide spring-blooming perennials such as iris, daylilies, coneflowers, gloriosa daisies, thrift and others.
• 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. Tulips and Dutch hyacinths must go in the refrigerator for 45 days (or longer) at 45 degrees. Do not plant them into the garden prior to mid-December.
• Trees and shrubs to give them maximum time to establish before next summer’s heat.
PRUNE
• Dead and damaged branches from shade trees and shrubs. It will become more difficult to identify them as your plants lose their leaves for the winter.
• Have a certified arborist do large limb removal from shade trees. That’s not a job for amateurs – too much chance of injury and damage.
• Trim and reshape houseplants you intend to bring indoors for winter on an as-needed basis.
• Continue mowing at recommended height until frost.
FERTILIZE
• Newly potted fall container color with water-soluble, high-nitrogen fertilizer to maximize its good look and growth.
• Fescue turf if that is your permanent lawngrass, with high-nitrogen or all-nitrogen fertilizer so it can take advantage of cooler growing conditions that are soon to come.
• Ryegrass plantings with half-rate dose of same high-nitrogen lawn food to get it off to a good start, whether it’s being used for overseeding of warm-season turf or as a temporary cover for bare ground in winter.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Tropical plants on porch or patio that you intend to bring inside for the winter should be inspected closely for insects and other unwanted passengers. It’s easier to eliminate them before you bring them indoors.
• Brown patch (also called “large patch” by university plant pathologists and others) will start to become common in St. Augustine and zoysia turf. Rounded patches 18 to 24 inches in diameter will turn yellow, then quickly brown. Blades will pull loose from runners easily. You’ll see where they have decayed where they attach to the runners. Control with Azoxystrobin fungicide. The disease is not fatal, but it does weaken the grass.
• Spray areas where you intend to develop new beds in spring with a glyphosate-only herbicide now to kill existing grass and weeds. It will not contaminate the soil as long as it does not contain any other herbicide. Give it 10-14 days to kill the vegetation, then you will be able to rototill the ground and start in soil preparation for spring plantings.
• Most tree and shrub insect pests do not justify spraying this late in the season. There isn’t time for the plants to regrow healthy new leaves before frost.