20 fall garden projects
It's the middle of October, Did you think the gardening year was over? Think again. There are dozens of fall garden projects you can do over the next few weeks before the light starts to fade and the ground gets chilled.
1. PLANT GARLIC
If you want a bumper crop next summer, now's the time to get the garlic cloves into the ground. There are basically two kinds --softnecked ( Allium sativum) and hardnecked ( Allium sativum var. ophioscorodon) garlic.
The soft-necked kind can be braided because the stems are soft and pliable. This is the variety you mostly find at the supermarket.
Artichoke and silverskins are the most common kinds grown commercially.
Silverskins are whiter and the cloves are small and more uniform.
Unlike the soft-neck garlics, hard-necks produce a stiff central flowering stem (scape) in June.
Hard-necked garlics are the best kind for growing in cool-climate gardens, such as those in the Lower Mainland. There are various named cultivars: Russian Red, Georgian Fire, Persian Star, Rocambole, Spanish Roja, Carpathian and Bogatyr.
Of the two types of garlic, the hardnecks are thought to have more flavour. You can also find purple striped hardnecks as well as some attractive polished looking ones called "porcelain garlic" that have a more tangy flavour.
Plant garlic in well-drained, deep, fertile soil in a sunny location. Work the ground ahead of planting to make sure the soil is soft and loamy. Garlic is a heavy feeder, so work into the soil plenty of rotted compost.
Break the cloves from the bulb. The small ones are unlikely to produce much of a bulb. Use these in the kitchen. The large cloves will give you a harvest.
Put each clove into the ground to a depth of about five to seven cm (two to three inches) about six to 10 inches apart.
Mulch after planting to give the cloves a little more protection from frost over winter.
It does need to be watered regularly in spring. It hates to be left in parched soil. It is also irritated by weeds, so you need to be conscientious about removing any weed competition.
2. LIFT AND STORE DAHLIAS
The traditional approach is to wai until frost turns foliage black and then dig up tubers, but this doesn't always happen in milder areas and it is also impractical for gardeners to wait around when they want the job done. Ideally, you want to lift tubers any time from the end of October to the middle of November.
Before you start to dig, you need to cut away the foliage, which sometimes involves slicing off perfectly good flowers.
Save these to display indoors. Snip away until you have reduced the plant to the bare bones of just the stems poking out of the ground.
Don't use a garden fork. You risk accidentally piercing tubers with the prongs. Use a spade and dig deeply to lift the clumps.
Start by working around the outside of the clump, about 15 inches from the main stem. Once you have completed a circle of the plant, you should find the clump is loose enough in the ground to start lifting.
Don't pull the tubers up by the main stem. Push your spade as deeply as possible under the clump, hold the stem and ease up the tubers, allowing the plant to go in the direction it wants to as you lift. This will prevent the stem tearing away from the tubers.
You might think you should only divide a clump every three or four years, but it is okay to divide clumps every year. A single tuber will still produce a sizable plant the next year.
It is not necessary to wash tubers. Simply knock or brush off as much soil as possible and wrap the tubers in newspaper.
Newspaper is ideal because it protects the tuber without causing it to dry out too much. Newspaper also doesn't add moisture and allows for some air flow.
3. GIVE PERENNIAL BORDER A BOOST
A light sprinkling of potassium will strengthen the roots of perennials and promote disease resistance and winter hardiness.
Some gardeners like to scatter triple superphosphate 0-45-0 over flower beds in late fall and again in spring to build up plants and give them plenty of nutrients for robust flowering in spring and summer.
4. BULK UP WITH BULBS
This is the time to go nuts planting spring-flowering bulbs of every kind - tulips, daffodils, alliums, crocuses, hyacinths, snowdrops, chionodoxa, muscari, you name it.
Bulbs are pretty much surefire things. As long as you don't push them into soggy or waterlogged ground, they are going to do what they are supposed to do perfectly.
Bulbs are planted with the pointy bit pointing up. Plant them at a depth of three times the height of the bulb.
5. PLANT NEW TREES AND SHRUBS
Fall is a great time to plant trees and shrubs or move trees and shrubs to new locations. Most important decision in planting a new tree is to make sure you don't plant one that's too big for the location.
Excellent choices for small to mediumsized gardens include Japanese snowbell tree (Styrax japonica), saucer magnolia (Magnolia soulangiana), star magnolia (M. stellata), coral bark maple (Acer Sango Kaku), red-leaf maple (A. `Bloodgood'), Japanese camellia-tree (Stewartia pseudocamellia).
Juvenile trees and shrubs can also be moved this season. Dig at least 30 inches around the trunk and takes as much of the rootball or root system as possible.
Use 5-15-5 transplant solution to easy the shock of the move.
6. PLANT A NEW HEDGE
Cedar is still the most popular choice for an evergreen hedge here on the West Coast.
Thuja occidentalis 'Smaragd' is the top seller, although cultivars of western red cedar (Thuja plicata) such as 'Excelsior' and 'Atrovirens' are also very good performers.
Common English yew (Taxus baccata) is still the classiest of hedges. However, it is usually more expensive and a little slower growing.
English laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) is often chosen because of the brightness of its evergreen leaves and Portuguese laurel (Prunus lusitanica) is also useful in protected locations.
Other good choices for evergreen hedges include boxwood, Ilex crenata, pieris, photinia, escallonia, aucuba, ceanothus, euonymous, Viburnum tinus, Mexican orange blossom bush (Choisya ternata), Elaeagnus pungens 'Maculata', blue holly (Ilex meserveae) and Japanese waxleaf privet (Ligustrum).
7. PUT IN A NEW LAWN
Laying turf in fall can be very good because if it is done in early October, the ground is still warm enough to allow the roots to connect. Landscapers often install lawns all winter, provided the ground is workable, but fall is ideal and gives the lawn all winter to get established.
8. WRAP YOUR BANANA AND TREE FERN
The hardy banana (Musa basjoo) and Tasmanian tree fern (Dicksonia antartica) are two popular garden plants that need special attention in fall.
With the banana, first remove the large leaves, cutting them off at the point where they join the main trunk.
Wrap the remaining part with a long length of thick polyethylene. You can wind this around the trunk or place plastic over the top and secure with duct tape.
Take 1.2 m (four-foot) bats of insulation and place them between sheets of polyethylene. Staple the edges to enclose the insulation.
Take these bats and wrap them around the tree and secure them with duct tape.
Lastly, wrap the tree one more time with more polyethylene and use a garbage bag to place over the top to prevent rain getting in.
Unwrap in April.
With the tree fern, insulate the crown (the top of the trunk) and wrap in plastic. The rest of the trunk can also be wrapped but the most sensitive area to frost is the crown at the top.
9. START AMARYLLIS
This is the largest member of the bulb family and one of the easiest and most worthwhile bulbs to grow inside.
Amaryllis never fail to produce spectacularly colourful flowers that can last a long time.
Don't plant your bulb in too big a pot. Amaryllis flower best (and fastest) when tightly potted with no more than an inch or two at most between the side of the bulb and the edge of the pot.
As well, don't plant the bulb too deeply. Allow about a third of the bulb to be above the surface of the soil.
Water thoroughly with lukewarm water immediately after potting. Keep the soil moist, but not wet, for at least a week. Try not to get water directly on the bulb stem (called the 'nose').
Place the pot in a warm room in a well-lit spot. A south-facing window is the best location. Watch for the green shoots to appear.
Once the flowers begin to appear, move the pot into a slightly cooler spot where it gets indirect light.
Turn the pot regularly to keep the flower stalk from leaning. When all the flowers have faded, cut the stalk off just above the bulb nose.
10. PROTECT ROSES
Prune hybrid teas and floribundas by about a third. This stops the long canes from whipping around in the wind, which in turn prevents the crown from rocking loose and roots being exposed.
Deadhead any lingering blooms. Remove any decaying or diseased leaves.
Peter Howard, of the Dogwood Rose Garden group in Coquitlam, believes in stripping roses of all their leaves in fall and collecting up all discarded leaves so as not to allow diseases such as black spot to over-winter.
"Some people don't believe in doing this, but I find it works very well. You won't see any disease on any of the roses here and this is one of the reasons why.
"You don't carry diseases over from one year to the next if you get rid of all the leaves."
Howard is also big on heavy mulching in November. At the Coquitlam rose garden, he brings in about six yards of mushroom manure every fall and with help from volunteers from the Fraser Pacific Rose Society disperses it, making sure it is mounded up around every rose bush.
Howard also believes that contrary to what some books and experts say, winter is an excellent time to plant new roses.
11. COLOUR YOUR HYDRANGEAS
If you want your mophead and lacecap hydrangea to have vibrant blue flowers next summer, spread aluminum sulphate under the shrub, working it into the top four inches of soil.
You can do this a couple of times during winter.
As well, the faded flower heads contain a high level of aluminum, so it can help keep flowers a vivid shade of blue by using these as a natural mulch under the bush.
If you want to make flowers to turn shades of pink or red-purple, add more lime.
12. DIVIDE AND CONQUER PERENNIALS
Before they disappear for the winter, you can lift and divide herbaceous perennials.
For large clumping plants, such as hostas or astilbes, a spade can be used to cut the plants into quarters.
Replanting immediately gives the divisions time to settle in before winter.
You may have noticed during the year that your hostas were in too much sun or your daylilies didn't get enough sun.
13. RAIN SCREEN YOUR ALPINES AND CONTAINER PLANTS
Collectors of alpine plants know that while cold is not a threat to their treasures, excessive rains can be. They move plants under cover to save them from getting soaked.
This is also worth doing to trees, shrubs, roses and vines in pots to prevent roots from becoming damaged by waterlogging.
It is also worth wrapping pots to shield roots of plants from below-zero temperatures.
14. EDIT AND DELETE
Walk your garden and decide which plants can stay and which have to go.
Apply this simple test. Look at each plant and ask: "What have you done for me lately?" If you don't like the answer, tag it for change.
Editing and deleting is not just about tossing out unproductive plants, it's about recognizing that in your enthusiasm you may have overplanted.
A small shrub may have become a big shrub and outgrown its location. You may have crammed too many plants into one small space.
Everything can be moved, so don't be afraid to edit your borders and delete or relocate to create a more effective over-all look. Doing this in fall will open up areas, give shrubs a chance to settle into their new home, and give you a jump on whatever makeover you have in mind for spring.
15. MOVE TENDER PLANTS INTO WINTER QUARTERS
The rule is move it or lose it. Tender (cold-sensitive) plants, such as fuchsias, pelargoniums, tibouchina, brugmansia, abutilon and plumbago all need to be moved into winter quarters before the first hard frosts.
They will require light watering over winter to keep the soil moist and the roots alive. They also need good air circulation to prevent disease problems or insects such as whitefly.
In the spring, they can be lightly watered with a diluted solution of 20-20-20 fertilizer and moved outside once the danger of frost has passed.
16. PLANT SOME INDOOR FIREWORKS
Paperwhites are the botanical equivalent of indoor fireworks: you light the fuse and off they go, burst into bloom within days.
It's a project parents can do with their children to show them just how easy it is to grow flowers.
Simply press bulbs into a layer of pebbles or gravel, add water, just enough to touch the bottom of each bulb, and they immediately start to root and grow.
Paperwhites can grow quite tall and end up toppling over. A solution is to grow them in a vase or jar so that as they grow the leaves receive support from the sides of the container. Another easy solution is to use decorative raffia to tie up the leaves.
Hyacinth, muscari and crocus are other bulbs that can be forced into bloom indoors over winter. The method for doing this is the same in each case. A bulb must root first in a cool, dark place before it produces a green shoot, which is then followed by a flower.
Bulbs needs to go into a cool place, ideally at a temperature around 9 C. In ideal conditions, the bulb will root in eight weeks.
When you see green shoot, bring the pot out of its cool, dark place into the warmth and light of the living room. The flower quickly develops after that.
One of the best things you can do for a lawn is help it to breathe by aerating regularly, which means pulling out tiny plugs of soil so air can get to the roots.
You can brush sand into the lawn once it is aerated to fill these gaps.
Aeration acts as a kind of fertilizer by promoting more robust growth.
And when the grass is growing better, there is less opportunity for weeds to get established.
17. RAKE LEAVES
This can be a very enjoyable task if you have the right tools: good rake and hand-held music devise and headphones to provide the pleasing soundtrack.
But, hey, there is another way and that is to invest in a electric vac-mulcher which sucks up the leaves and turns them into mulch which can then scattered around the flower beds or put in the compost or dug into the vegetable patch where over winter it will decay.
Mike Levenston, City Farmer's executive director, tells me he believes the secret to successful composting is to save as many leaves as possible from your fall cleanup to use in your composting throughout the year.
"Every time you put in food scraps in the compost, you should cover it with leaves. This is what we have found works best."
Whatever method you choose, this is one of the essential jobs of fall. Might as well make it as pleasant as possible.
18. MAKE A WINTER CONTAINER
It can be uplifting to have a cheerful container full of interesting plants, decorative foliage and attractive branches by the front door during winter.
It's easy to do and takes no time at all. The plants you use for this project, such as sarcoccoa, skimmia, euphorbia, ajuga, carex grasses and hellebores can all be recycled into the garden in spring, leaving the pot available for a summer colour display.
Often there are plants like ajugas, heucheras, ornamental grasses, ivy, ferns and vinca that can be lifted from the garden and used without causing any significant damage.
If you don't want to get your hands dirty at all, but would still like a beautiful winter container by your front door, consider using some cut materials such as brilliant red branches of sparkleberry (Ilex verticillata), purple stems of callicarpa and red-twigged dogwood and yellow curly willow. To smooth out the rough edges, you could use seeded bunches of eucalyptus.
Don't skimp on the size of the container: the bigger, the better.
Drainage is important. Make sure both the soil and the container are free-draining. Mix a little sand or gravel into the soil and place stones, pebbles or terracotta shards at the bottom of the container to ensure there is no waterlogging.
Pick an anchor plant as the main centrepiece. Fill space around this plant by squeezing smaller plants, in four-or six-inch pots, around the perimeter.
19. PUT DOWN MULCH OR SOIL AMENDER
You can do this in spring or fall, but it could be a job you think best done in fall. The idea is to put down a soil-amender than will enrich your soil or a mulch that will protect it as well as add nutrition.
A good way to get top quality mulch or soil deliver is to use the service of Gordon van Vliet at Mygardenbag.com. He delivers large one-cubic-yard yellow bags (they measure 3-by-3-by-3 feet and hold just over a yard - 27 cubic feet of material) of your preferred mix right to your driveway.
You can dig into it as time permits and it can be stored to one side if you want to wait a while and it won't be damaged rain. For more information go to mygardenbag. com.
20. LAWN CARE
Lime your lawn to reduce acidity caused by rain washing away nutrients from the soil. Grass prefers a moderate to high pH - in other words, a sweeter, more alkaline soil.
Dolopril is the best kind of lime to use, being more slow-release, but standard dolomite lime is also excellent.
You can also sprinkle your lawn with a fertilizer with a higher last number such as Evergro's Fall Fertilizer 6-3-20 or a slowrelease 10-4-24.
swhysall@vancouversun.com
