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Gardening Tips: October work in the garden

If you are wondering what garden chores you can tackle now, here are a few tips
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Susan Richards

October has arrived following a gorgeous September. Today the sun is shining, there is a fall nip in the air and a few trees are starting the autumn colour parade! As soon as I get this article sent off, I'm going to get back into my garden.

I have been work my way through each of my gardens, getting them cleaned up. Last week I tackled one of my worst beds.

The perennials were desperately in need of dividing but that job was complicated by the fact that twitch grass and an aggressive perennial called Turtlehead had invaded most of the garden.

I had to dig out each clump of perennial I wanted to save, shake the soil off the roots and carefully remove the invasive offenders! I potted up the clean perennials and set them aside for now.

Then I forked through the entire bed to remove the last of the twitch roots. I'll now add a generous amount of compost and get the garden replanted. Once that bed is finished I'll check my list and move on to the next task.

If you are wondering what garden chores you can tackle now, here are a few tips:

  1. Get your lawn in order now so you will have less work in the spring: Rake up and compost leaves. To speed up the composting process, run the lawn mower over the leaves to chop them up. The smaller the size heading into the compost pile, the faster you will get finished compost ready to use in the garden. Give your lawn a final short cut. This will make spring raking easier. If you have time now, hand dig any perennial weeds you come across. Be sure to get the entire root or they will be back to haunt you in the spring!
     
  2. Clean out garden beds to get a head start on spring work: Pull out dead annuals once we get a frost. Chop them up and add them to the compost pile. Weed beds and cultivate the soil. Add organic material such as compost, composted manure, coir fibre or peat moss. This will improve the soil texture and compost will add nutrients ready to be used by plants in the spring. Edge any beds that have had the lawn encroaching into them. Plan to put in lawn edging in the spring if this is a good solution for your problem.
     
  3. Cut back all your perennials that have finished blooming. Leave 3 to 4 inches of stem showing so you will know where the plants are in the spring. Ornamental grasses, Butterfly Bush and perennial Hibiscus should all cut back in spring.
     
  4. Make sure any foliage from plants that had disease or bad insect infestations are bagged to be put out in the garbage rather than going to the compost pile. This will help prevent a serious problem next season.
     
  5. Once your hybrid roses have had a hard freeze, they should be ready to be covered for the winter. Prune off any dead stems before you cover the plants. Put a rose collar around each plant and fill it full of soil or compost. This will freeze solid as temperatures drop, but not thaw and freeze numerous times throughout the winter. You can cut the stems that are not cover or wait until spring to do all the pruning once roses are uncovered. Remember, hardy shrub roses do not need winter protection.
     
  6. Make sure you have all the supplies you need on had to winterize any tender trees and shrubs. (You can refer to my previous article on this subject for full details.) It is not too early to put on white plastic spiral tree guards to prevent rodent damage or to wrap the tender bark of young trees with Tree Wrap to prevent frost cracks.

If you don’t get everything done, don’t panic. There have been years I have not managed to get through my entire fall chore list. It wasn’t a big disaster. Spring clean up just took a little more time the next year!


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