Just because fall is here doesn’t mean you need to give up on your plants and yard. There is still a lot of work to be done around your place. It’s time to start thinking about you vegetable garden, Lawn, Transplanting, and Bulbs.
Vegetable Garden
Here in North Carolina you can still plant a fall garden. All your cool weather vegetable do great up to the first frost. You now can plant your Broccoli, Cabbages, Brussels sprouts, Cauliflower, Kohlrabi, Mustard Greens, Radish, Rutabaga, Spinach, Lettuces, Collards, Kale, and Bok Choy. When you plant your leafier vegetables in the fall you lose the risk of insects and cabbage beetles eating away all your crop. You can also get a second round of tomato’s in which most people don’t think to do. You need to have planted them a little earlier like the end of August but you can remember for next year’s crop.
Plant Annuals, Perennials, and Bulbs
When it comes to fall plants, there are still plants you can plant to keep your garden areas pretty with blooms. Now is the season for all your Mums, Pansies, and Flowering Cabbage/Kale. You’re Mums and Flowering Cabbage/Kale will bloom and look pretty up to the first couple of light frosts. Pansies are very hardy when it comes to the cooler weather. They can take a hard frost and even snow and ice. They bloom none stop all fall and most of winter.
When it comes to your bulbs they can be a little tricky. You need to feel out the weather and wait for it to get cool enough. You need to wait tell the ground temperature is 60 degrees. This may not happen until well into November. You don’t want to plant too early and cause them to come up to soon. When prepping the soil to plant your bulbs adding Bone Meal or a Bulb Fertilizer will help keep them healthy and ready to go.
Mulching your fall plants is a great way to keep them safe and keeping moisture in the ground. Mulching heavily over the bulbs will help protect them if we get a bad winter. You can also mulch heavily over all you perennials to protect them from a colder more server winter to guarantee them to come pack up in the spring.
Shrubs and Trees
Doing all you’re transplanting or planting new trees and shrubs in your yard is ideally done in the fall. You can still plant all year round you just have less maintenance to do in the fall as of the other seasons. With the weather cooling off you have a less chance to stress the plant out that will cause them to go into a shock. When a shrub or tree goes into a shock stage they will lose all their foliage and look like sticks. If they don’t lose all there foliage them best thing to help them survive is to go out and pull the remainder of the leaves off. This will help them flush back out. Trees and shrubs to dormant come fall and winter this does not mean the plant is sleeping. This is when you grow most of you root systems with is the main factor and you plants thriving and living a happy life. This is also true with you perennials. Most people think that planting in the fall means they won’t have to water or do anything with shrubs or trees this is false. The weather is always unpredictable you will need to still water in the fall and winter months just not the same as in dead of summer. You will just have to watch and see how the weather turns. When it rains in the fall and winter months the ground dose tend to stay moist longer this is a plus.
Lawn Care
Early fall is a great time to get new seed to grow. With the cooler weather coming and rain it keeps the ground moist for the seed to germinate. You can also do a weed and feed if you’d rather wait tell the spring to seed. The only thing is you can’t do a weed and feed and a seeding at the same time. If you do the weed and feed think the grass seed is a weed and kill it. Weed and feed has a pre-emergent which keep any seed from germinating. The ideal time to do you seeding is in the fall and your weed and feed in spring. You have more problems with you weeds in the spring because everything is coming out to start the new season.