Time to ...
Start getting ready for 2010. Decide which projects you need to accomplish before the frost comes and which can wait. With weekends often fully booked and darkness now more than 12 hours a day, be realistic with your plans.
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.
Keep all new plantings adequately irrigated. Over the rainy summer, our routines never included watering; reacquiring the habit is prudent.
Plant pansies and mums. The former should winter over and provide color when most appreciated; do not count on mums purchased now to live through winter.
Sow seeds of bachelors buttons and tweedia (oxypetalum). Unless the winter is uncommonly severe, they'll have a headstart come spring.
Continue to divide perennials, but not fall-bloomers. Plant any new purchases promptly.
Finish planting and transplanting evergreens. Begin planting deciduous shrubs and trees. If all the leaves drop after planting, fear not; the disturbance has simply hastened natural leaf drop.
Finish lawn repairs and seeding.
Take cuttings of basil, coleus, plectranthus and tender geraniums (pelargoniums, technically speaking). The first three will root in water; after potting pinch periodically to keep bushy. For geraniums, cut new growth (green stems) and root in a porous medium such as perlite and peat moss. Weed. The abundant rains created a pokeweed-knotweed-porcelain berry jungle. Second and third generations of seeds are sprouting. Applying pre-emergent herbicide after weeding will minimize an autumn crop. To thwart squirrels that want to eat newly planted tulip and crocus bulbs, paint bulbs with deer repellent (bulb-formulated); include a 2-inch layer of sharp gravel in the soil above the bulbs; or secure a layer of chicken wire atop the soil and leave in place till late winter.
- Michael Martin Mills
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.
