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HOME GROWN continued
Joshua Peede
Landscape Designer & Gardener
ISCO Landscaping • Wilson, NC
SCC Landscape Gardening Graduate
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featuring
Complete Fall Landscape
Checklist
From The Ground Up
by Joshua Peede
As the weather begins to cool, and we enter
the fall season, many of us like to get outdoors
and work in our yards. Although the weather
may entice us to work a little harder on some
things that got out of hand during the summer,
let’s overview the things that we should and
should not do, in order to make sure our work
is beneficial and not harmful. I will do my best
to touch briefly on some topics that affect those
living things from turf to trees, and make sure
we encourage them to perform to their fullest.
As we start at ground level and work our
way upward, we begin with turfgrass. There
are things that can be done during this time of
year to your lawn, but fertilization is probably
not one of them, unless you have tall fescue or
Kentucky bluegrass, the two main cool-season
turfgrasses that grow in our region. If you do
have one of these two, chances are that you will
need to overseed with an application of the grass
seed that matches your lawn to help thicken
it up from the weakening and thinning of a
hot summer, as well as the unwanted patches
that fungus leaves behind during the warm,
humid nights of June, July and August. If your
lawn is made up a warm season turfgrass like
Centipede, Bermuda, Zoysia, or St. Augustine,
then fertilizer is not needed this time of year.
Fertilizing warm season grasses in the fall with
any nitrogen based fertilizer could cause winter
injury by “waking up” a grass that has an internal
clock that is saying,“Go to sleep,” for lack of a
better explanation. What you can do though, is
get a soil sample and find out what nutrients
may be lacking so that you can be prepared for
next year’s growing season. If lime needs to be
applied, then go ahead and apply that in the fall,
but just wait until next year for any fertilization
with warm season turf.
If you are like me, then you love the flower
garden. In the autumn season, most perennials
are winding down, but there are still some
showing off in the garden like Asters, Blackeyed
Susans, Chrysanthemums, Joe-Pye Weed,
Leopard Plant, and Russian Sage to name a few.
But for those perennials who have done their
seasonal duty, it is a good time to clean them
up a bit by removing old flowering canes, spent
blooms, and possibly cut the entire plant to a
few inches tall. If your perennials are located
in a place that aesthetically doesn’t bother you
to see the old, brown plant material, then you
can leave it there until spring. If you do cut any
perennials down near the ground in the fall,
make sure of a couple things. Find out if that
type of perennial is subject to winter injury, and
if so, cover with a good layer of straw or light
mulch like pine bark to help protect from ice
and cold winter temperatures. Another thing to
remember in the fall flower garden, is to plant
any spring blooming bulbs that you want next
year like tulips, daffodils, crocus, hyacinths and
lilies among many others.
Shrubs can be some of the most likely victims
of “shear abuse,” due to the fact that many are
at a height that we can easily hack down with a
pair of shears, and it gives us the satisfaction of
completion, especially speaking as a man. With
the beautiful fall weather upon us, it is hard
to restrain from getting out of hand with the
trimmers, but a plan of action must be in place
before we pull the string to crank the power
tools up. If we prune first and think later, then
we will reap the consequences of our actions
next spring and summer, and we will not be very
happy when our favorite shrubs are flowerless.
As a general rule, most shrubs are best
pruned shortly following their bloom season,
and if light trimming is needed later, then do
only minor removal of growth to keep from
harming the coming blooms. Hydrangeas,
Camellias, Gardenias and Azaleas are common
examples of plants to which this rule applies.
With the new varieties of re-blooming shrubs
like Encore Azaleas on the market, that throws
a little different twist on the rule. It is best to
prune immediately after the main spring flush is
through with plants that have a major spring and
fall bloom, but only if there is a need to prune.
I know that with formal hedges, sometimes it
is necessary to prune as many as 4-5 times per
year. Pruning at various times of the year is not
a real issue with plants like hollies, boxwoods
and ligustrums that have been trained into
hedges, because only small amounts of growth
are removed each time, keeping the plant from
going into shock.
Roses have a different set of rules though.
There are many different types of roses with
a variety of needs, but one thing that is fairly
uniform for all of them is the need to wait on
pruning until early spring by the time their
fall bloom has ended. Pruning in fall creates
open wounds that cannot properly heal before
winter’s chilling temperatures arrive, and bring
in unwelcome injury that reveals itself next
spring. One thing that is encouraged during fall,
is the planting of shrubs and trees, because new
growth, as well as flower and fruit production
have slowed or ceased, and the amount of time
that the roots have to grow before supporting
new leaves, flowers and fruit is ideal. An early
fall application of Hollytone or similar fertilizer
is recommended to help the shrubs store energy
through the winter, but do not apply too late
into fall because this will encourage new growth
that cannot properly harden off by winter.
Trees have similar rules to shrubs when
it comes to checking off that fall list of do’s
and don’ts. Any major pruning of trees is
recommended while growth is active, so that
wounds can properly heal in a reasonable time
period, but if there is dead or damaged wood
present, it can be removed right away. If you
are planning to plant any large deciduous trees
such as oaks, then late fall to early winter is the
optimum time to dig and plant any field-grown
trees. Some deciduous trees do not respond well
to digging unless done at this proper time.
While we all know that trees drop leaves from
October right on through January, the majority
of the leaves have generally fallen by Christmas.
Many of us like to freshen up our mulch beds
before Thanksgiving when family comes over,
but if your mulch beds are near any of these
deciduous trees, you may want to delay your
fresh coat of mulch until a few weeks before
Christmas to give the bulk of the leaves time to
finish falling and reduce the amount of them
that land on top of your clean bedding mulch.
Now that you have the yard looking good, and
you are caught up in the landscape, it would be a
great time to put together a plan for next spring’s
vegetable garden. Decide your layout, what
you would like to grow, and make adjustments
based off of this year’s garden observations. It
is also a good time to send in a soil sample, so
that you can make preparations in your garden’s
fertility needs and adjust pH by adding lime if
needed. As we noted earlier, liming can be done
now as it can take 2-3 months for the pH level
to be properly adjusted. I know that many of
these tips are quite simple and straight forward,
but hopefully they will help guide you to better
success in next year’s gardening ventures.
No. 132 The Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. p.29