General Gardening Tips
Stop using fast-acting fertilizers! As days shorten and the weather cools, plants grow less quickly and use fewer nutrients. Using chemical fertilizers, particularly high-nitrogen ones, can be unnecessary or even harmful at this season—they can stimulate lush new growth that will be vulnerable to fungus or frosts.
Some plants, including lawn grass and all new plantings (including bulbs), benefit from fall applications of organic, slow-release, high-phosphorus fertilizers to support root growth through the winter. (Bone meal is a traditional example of this fertilizer type, used alone or included as an ingredient.) For many other plants, including most houseplants after the equinox (9/23), simply stopping feeding is a good idea. In the tips below, if we don’t tell you to fertilize a certain plant, don’t!
Watering—you may or may not need to. Fall rains should be starting soon, but go by the weather and soil conditions rather than the calendar! Try to avoid overhead watering, however, or if you need to use sprinklers use them early in the morning; damp foliage at night can encourage the development of fungal diseases.
Vegetable and Herb Gardening Tips
Harvest! Regular picking encourages continued production of new and tender vegetables. If hot-weather veggies such as squash, beans, peppers and tomatoes are still flowering, however, you might start picking off the flowers in order to encourage the plants to divert their energy to ripening their existing immature fruit. (Remember that runner bean and squash flowers are edible!)
Plant your fall and winter vegetables! Sky has vegetable starts for fall/winter harvest, plus it’s not too late for seeds of the fastest-growing varieties such as arugula and radish. Not to mention overwintered peas for the earliest spring harvest…. Click for our winter vegetable information sheet.
Fall Greens: spinach, lettuce, and other greens that you are planting now for fall harvest (not for overwintering) are an exception to the don’t-fertilize rule. They need to grow quickly to get to harvestable size, so go ahead and feed them.
Tomatoes: cool moist nights can encourage the development of late blight, a fungal disease characterized by rapid browning or blackening of your plant. Infected plants are best written off for the rest of the year; pick unaffected tomatoes to ripen on a windowsill and pull the plant before it can spread spores. Do not compost blighted plants! (You can email us a photo of your plant to confirm the diagnosis first.)
Potatoes: To maximize your harvest, wait to dig until after the tops die down (which may be October for the late varieties). Ideally, leave the potatoes in the ground for two weeks after the tops die to allow the skins to thicken. Then dig, and let the potatoes dry, unwashed, for 2-3 days to cure for better storage.
Pumpkins: if you want big pumpkins, try removing all the smaller fruits on a plant to encourage the plant to send all its energy to the largest pumpkins.
Pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, and melons: as with tomatoes, the cool moist nights can encourage a fungus, in this case powdery mildew. Click here for information on powdery mildew.
Herbs: most of your herbs won’t need any special attention to prepare for fall. Stop fertilizing, reduce watering, and most will overwinter just fine. Basil is a tender annual, and will be on its last legs soon; you should probably harvest it all and freeze it. (I like to puree it with either olive oil or water and freeze the puree in ice cube trays—instant summer flavor in the winter!) Lemon grass can be brought indoors as a houseplant. Cilantro can still be replanted at the beginning of the month for a final fall harvest; in fact fall is a good time for planting most of the hardy herbs, giving them the winter to get established.
Unused beds: plant cover crops now and next month to eliminate nutrient leaching and soil erosion and to discourage weeds. Click for cover crop information.
Fruit Tree and Berry Gardening Tips
Reduce irrigation if plants are growing vigorously; however, don’t eliminate irrigation entirely if the fall rains are slow to start.
Trim grape or kiwi vines to keep them under control.
Support or prune heavily fruited branches.
Net grapes if needed.
Monitor fruit trees and berries for insect and disease problems; consult a Sky Nursery associate for recommendations if you spot an issue.
Harvest! The early apples, pears, Asian pears, grapes, and blackberries should be joining your later peaches and plums. It’s fruit cocktail time!
Rose Care Tips
Stop deadheading; allowing hips to form will naturally tell your plants it’s time to start preparing for winter (and give birds a treat, too!).
Stop fertilizing, but keep watering if we have dry spells.
Ornamental Border Gardening Tips
Groom bedding plants, perennials and flowering shrubs, removing spent flowers.
Now is a good time to evaluate the “bones” of your garden—if you need to add evergreens or other structure plants, fall is the best time of year for planting and getting them established. Sky gets fresh shipments of conifers and broadleaf evergreens in September specifically for fall planting.
Now is also the time to think about bulbs for spring color. Early September sees the arrival of most of our spring bulbs: crocus, tulips, daffodils, plus more exotic ones such as native camassia, chionodoxa, and the hardy white calla lily (the one that will naturalize for you). Shop early for best selection.
If your garden also needs an immediate pick-me-up (and most of them do), Sky has a great selection of the fall classics. Asters, mums in every color, winter pansies and violas, ornamental kale, glowing Swiss chard, plus heathers, anemones, fall-blooming sedums, and more.
Planter and Hanging Basket Tips
Water! Remember that a container can still dry out in less than a day in warm or windy weather. Deadhead regularly to encourage continued bloom. However, you should stop fertilizing.
As the weather cools, it’s probably time to start swapping out your warm-weather bloomers for hardy and vivid fall color spots. We have pre-planted containers, the starts to do it yourself, or we can custom create one for you.
Lawn Care Tips
Did you know that fall is the most important time of the year to ensure a robust, healthy lawn through the following summer?
General tips to make sure next year’s lawn is lush and gorgeous:
Fertilize around Labor Day and then again around Thanksgiving with a good slow-release organic lawn food such as Dr. Earth. The nutrients in these slow-release fertilizers will stimulate root growth through the winter and keep the grass strong.
Spread dolomite lime to keep the rains from making your soil acidic.
If necessary, thatch and overseed. The ideal time to overseed is when the fall rains have started but before the weather cools too much.
For a real treat for your lawn, topdress with a thin (1/4”) layer of screened compost.
Watch for craneflies (they look like mosquitoes on steroids); if levels seem high, nematodes can be applied while the soil is still warm.
Fall is also the very best time to reseed or to install new lawns. Click here for pdf of our “Lawn Planting and Maintenance” instructions.
Water Gardening Tips
Switch your fish to a spring/fall food; nutrient needs change as the water cools.
Stop fertilizing pond plants.
The more tropical water plants such as lotus and papyrus will start to become unhappy as summer wanes; lift them to store for the winter, or compost them.
Come to the Koi Show here at Sky Nursery on September 24th & 25th!
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