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Let’s Get Gardening in October, part 1

Fall color.

By Jennifer Fairfield

One of my favorite things about gardening in the fall is that the days are warm, but not too warm, making it comfortable to get all the work done that I need to do – and there’s a lot.

Of course, in Michigan, you can’t take anything for granted in the weather department.

Vegetable Garden: 

It doesn’t appear that we are expecting frost in the next two weeks (but it’s Michigan, so that could change), but it’s pretty much a guarantee that we will have frost by about mid-month.

If you still have plants in your veggie garden, keep fleece row covers handy so that you are can throw them on when there is a threat of frost. Some crops, such as kale, cabbage, and broccoli can take a bit of frost, but most other plants in the veggie garden will not survive it.

If you still have basil, you will probably want to pick it all in the next day or two. Temps are expected to get into the 40’s overnight later this week, and basil doesn’t like that – it will get lots of ugly black spots and become generally unusable.

This is the month to plant my favorite thing in the garden – garlic. Garlic is a bulb, and is treated just like our spring-blooming bulbs (tulips, daffs, etc.), in that it gets planted in the fall and comes up in the spring.

When you plant it, you break apart the bulb and plant the individual cloves – each clove becomes a garlic bulb, so you get a great return on your investment. It’s still a little warm yet, but as the temperatures cool off, and more importantly, the soil cools down, it’s time to get garlic in the ground. I usually wait until we have had a frost, but if we get some really cool, rainy days, that can cool the soil down enough as well.

If you like cooking with garlic, you really should try growing some of the more than 600 different varieties available (we have five of them available in the store, each with its own distinctive flavor). You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to grow, and what a difference there is in the taste.

If your veggie garden is pretty much done for the season, clean it up this month, while there are still some warm days that make you want to be working outdoors. Waiting until it’s really cold will ensure that it won’t get done until spring, and doing it in the fall means you can get planting as soon as the soil warms up in the spring.

Throw out or burn anything that is diseased, but compost as much as you can. Composting is a great way to keep from adding things to the landfills unnecessarily, and is great for your soil and plants when you add it to your garden in the spring.

Flower Beds: 

Just like with garlic, October is the time to plant bulbs for spring-blooming flowers such as tulips, daffodils, crocus, allium, hyacinth, and many others. Get your bulbs in before the ground freezes, and you will be rewarded with beautiful flowers early in the spring, when not much else is daring to peak up out of the ground. We’ve got some real beauties in the store this season, with lots of varieties of tulips (more arriving soon), daffodils, allium, crocus, hyacinth, and muscari.

If you haven’t already, it’s time to dig up your dahlias, cannas, caladium, and glads.

These tender perennials can’t survive our winters, so they need to be dug up and stored in a cool, dry place. The best way to store them is in something loose and lightweight, like Styrofoam “peanuts” or peat, in an attached garage or other cool spot. Keep an eye on them to be sure not to let them freeze during the winter – temps in the range of 35° to 50° F are good.

There is still time to divide and transplant perennials, but do it soon so that your plants have time to get acclimated in their new space before we start getting killing frosts and before the ground freezes.

After planting them, give them a good layer of mulch, keep them well-watered, and cover them up at night for a while if temps are dipping into the low 40s or lower. All of these things will help to ensure that your plants will survive the winter and come back up in the spring.

Make sure your plants go into winter with a good layer of mulch over their roots. It’s not unusual for us to get thaws throughout the winter, which can cause heaving, leading to damage to the crown and roots, or even to the death of the plant. Mulch can help keep the soil temperature consistently cold throughout the winter, helping to prevent these problems.

If you are worried about getting your flower beds cleaned up before winter, relax. It’s actually better for the bees and butterflies to leave your beds “messy.” Many bees and butterfly larva overwinter in the “debris” of your garden, and cleaning up in the fall could mean fewer of them in your garden next spring.

(Publisher’s message: Part 2 will publish tomorrow.)

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