Written by: Charlotte Glen, Horticulture Agent

Cooler temperatures make gardening and landscape maintenance much more pleasant in the fall and there are several important jobs to do at this time of the year. Tasks like cleaning up will help your landscape get off to a healthier start next season, while soil testing will let you know what nutrients your lawn and landscape need to support healthy growth. Fall is also a wonderful time to plant trees, shrubs, and perennials, as well as spring blooming bulbs and hardy annuals like pansies and ornamental cabbages. So enjoy the beautiful weather during the next couple of months by getting out in the yard and having fun while caring for your landscape.

Clean Up!

Fall is the time to give your landscape a good clean out. In fact, cleaning up well at this time of the year will help prevent pest problems next year since many diseases and insects spend the winter sheltering in old leaves and debris left from the previous season. Cleaning up this debris will remove potential pests from your landscape and prevent, or at least delay, their onset next season. If there are plants in your landscape that have had disease or insect problems this year, carefully clean up their fallen leaves and debris and remove it from your yard. Leaves that fall from healthy plants can be used as mulch or collected and composted. 

Cut Back!

As perennials go dormant, and leave behind only dry, dead stems, you can cut them back to the ground. You may want to leave some standing to provide a food source for birds, particularly perennials with lots of seeds like purple coneflowers and black eyed susans. Most ornamental grasses stand up well through winter, adding texture and interest to the winter landscape. It is fine to cut back ornamental grasses whenever they start to look messy. For trees and shrubs, minimal pruning to remove only dead, broken or diseased limbs and twigs is okay to do now, but fall is not a good time for large scale pruning. Pruning trees and shrubs at this time of the year can increase winter injury and cause them to waste energy on growth that will be killed by frost. Most trees and shrubs should not be pruned until late winter (Feb-March for our area), while spring blooming shrubs should not be pruned until after they flower. 

Mulch!

Once all the leaves have fallen, give your landscape plantings a finishing touch by spreading a layer of mulch over top, but first check to see how deep your mulch already is. Three to four inches of mulch is perfect around most plants while deeper levels can cause problems. If your mulch is already four inches deep but you want to give it a fresh look, try raking the mulch to turn over the brighter colored layer underneath the surface. Be careful to not pile mulch against the trunks of trees and shrubs since this can encourage disease and insect problems. When mulching over dormant perennials, simply spread a two to three inch layer over the ground. A few perennials have evergreen leaves. Avoid covering the foliage of evergreen perennials with mulch whenever possible.      

Plant!

Fall is the best time of the year to plant and transplant most trees, shrubs, and perennials! Plant winter annuals like pansies, violas, ornamental cabbages, and snapdragons from October through mid November. Spring blooming bulbs should be planted in early to mid December in our area. Daffodils, Spanish bluebells, summer snowflake (Leucojum), and blue star (Ipheion) are all long lived and deer resistant varieties. October and November are also a great time for dividing and replanting perennials, while trees and shrubs can be purchased and planted throughout the fall and winter. Remember to keep new plantings well watered for the first several weeks after they are planted to help them get established.

Lawn Care

Warm season lawns require little maintenance in fall and winter. Irrigation systems should be turned off as lawns go dormant. Avoid applying any fertilizers at this time of the year as this will only encourage weeds to grow. On the other hand, fall and winter are a good time to apply lime – but only if your soil test results indicated you need it. Lime raises soil pH and is usually recommended for acidic soils, depending on what you are trying to grow. In Pender County, soils range from very acidic to very basic, so submitting soil samples to the NC Department of Agriculture is the only way to know what your soil needs to support healthy plant growth. Soil testing boxes, forms and instructions are available from any Cooperative Extension office, and fall is an excellent time to soil test.

One of the main lawn care chores for this time of the year is weed control. Cool season weeds such as annual bluegrass and chickweed come up in the fall and live through the winter. If you find lots of small weeds coming up in your yard, spraying a weed killer now will greatly reduce the amount of weeds in your yard next spring. Contact Cooperative Extension for recommendations on which herbicides to use for your grass type and problem weeds.

Learn More!

To find out more about caring for your lawn and landscape throughout the year contact Pender County Cooperative Extension by calling 259-1235, visit our office located at 801 S. Walker St. in Burgaw, open Mon – Fri, 8am -5pm, or visit us online anytime at http://pender.ces.ncsu.edu/, where you can submit questions and get answers via email by using our new ‘Ask an Expert’ widget.  

Online resources to learn more:

• Composting - August Pender Gardener Article
• Mulching - July Pender Gardener Article
• Soil Testing - January Pender Gardener Article
• Lawn Care - NCSU TurfFiles website
• Perennials
• Ornamental Grasses - Sept Pender Gardener Article
• Fall Planted Bulbs - Sept Pender Gardener Article
• Trees
• Shrubs