Time to ...
Redo or create a lawn. Have the soil tested beforehand to determine how much lime you need. Now through September is an excellent time for growing grass from seed. The old rule of thumb for lawn fertilization: Memorial Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving.
Next week, answers to gardening questions. Write to Michael Martin Mills, The Inquirer, Box 41705, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101 or gardenqanda@earthlink.net. Please include locale. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/michaelmartinmills.
Plant seeds of lettuce, spinach and radishes.
Sow seeds of biennials such as foxglove, hollyhocks, lunaria (money plant), and forget-me-nots where you want them to grow.
Keep deadheading annuals. But leave a few cosmos, perennial balloon flower and other not-overly-hybridized varieties to ripen and collect seeds for next spring.
Save seeds of heirloom tomatoes to grow next year. Cut a too-ripe-to-eat fruit and squeeze the pulp and seeds into a bowl. Let sit (room temperature or warmer) for three or four days, but no longer. Remove the gunk at the top, and rinse the seeds well. Dry the seeds on paper and store in a cool, dry place.
Hold off pruning shrubs till late November. Late-summer pruning induces new growth that may not have time to harden off for surviving winter. No fertilizing either.
Prepare last year's Christmas amaryllis for another show. This assumes you have kept it healthy and in full leaf over the spring and summer. Over a 10-day period, gradually reduce watering to nothing. To go dormant, the bulb should then have six weeks with no water (outdoors, turn pots on their sides). Mark the date on the pot with a grease pencil so there's no doubt in mid-autumn when to resume watering.
Begin transplanting evergreens. With all the rain, they should be in a good mode for digging. They'll have ample time to settle in before winter dormancy. (Hold off transplanting deciduous shrubs and trees until all their leaves drop.)
Delay any dividing and transplanting of perennials till cooler days in the fall (an exception: daylilies).
Weed and tidy up, but otherwise enjoy the lazy lushness before September arrives.
- Michael Martin Mills
Time to ...
"It's Time to . . ." appears on D6.
Next week, answers to gardening questions. Write to Michael Martin Mills, The Inquirer, Box 41705, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101 or gardenqanda@earthlink.net. Please include locale. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/michaelmartinmills.
