Prepping the Garden for Fall/Garden Style nw

Hi everybody, Debbie here with GardenStyle. So here we are, we're about to approach October. I cannot believe how fast the summer went by. And I'll get into that here in just a minute, as to why I haven't been around in a while. But hard to believe we've got trees turning here already. You're already starting to see lots of signs of fall coming. For the first time this coming week, our overnight temperatures are going to be going down into the 40s. So that's a sure signal it's time to get our gardens ready for old man winter. Believe it or not. So I'm going to go over some of the basic things that you folks probably should be doing now to start getting ready for wintertime. Prepping the gardens, getting some trimming done, planting bulbs, lots of planting that we can still do, being we're here in Zone 8 in the Northwest. The soil is plenty warm enough, so this is a perfect time to start planting certain things like trees and shrubs, especially your foundation plants, things that you look at all year round. And the cool part about doing the majority of your planting, especially for conifers, any of your broadleaf evergreens, anything like that, fall is the best time to put them in the ground. It's even better than spring. And that way they have all winter long to get their roots established. So by the time you get to summer the following year, you're not babying them quite as much and they can actually get through the summer a lot easier than they would if they were planted in the spring. It's only because they have six to eight months to get their roots in. So you might not see a whole lot of growth or things going on on top, but I can guarantee you that here in the Northwest, when our ground doesn't freeze, there's all kinds of action going on underneath. And that's your roots getting in and getting established. It definitely helps having Mother Nature help us out by keeping things watered. And that's definitely not going to be an issue here in the next month or so. Now, depending on where you live, here in my zone, in Zone 8, we can usually expect our first frost usually by the end of October, beginning of November. And I'm not seeing us getting close to that yet. The 40s is definitely my signal at nighttime that it's time to do things like cleaning up the annuals out of your pots. I know my annuals from this last summer are looking pretty tired. They're worn out. It's time to start tearing them out. I'm not going to be replacing any of them this year. I'm just going to let the pots lay. I usually put a fine layer of compost on the tops of all my containers and hold them over until the following spring. And then I'll add new soil to them as I go to plant some of my new annuals. But I am going to be busy doing things like trimming my hydrangeas, for example. Now, I've been through them once already this past month. I've trimmed off all the old blooms. But now I'm going to cut them down even further. And that's usually a pretty safe thing to do. Regardless of what type of hydrangea you have, if you do the majority of your trimming in the fall, especially right after they're done blooming, you're pretty safe to get blooms the following year. You just have to be careful with certain varieties of hydrangeas that you're not cutting all the way down into the wood. You know, don't cut them down to six inches above the ground. That'd be crazy. What I do is I take about a third of the shrub down. And then by the following year, you don't have all that trimming and cleaning up to do in the springtime. So hydrangeas, for sure, are one of the items that I like to get trimmed and ready to go before wintertime. Now, things like your rosebushes, I recommend you don't touch them. Leave them alone. What I have done with my rosebushes is I let them go to bud, which means when all the flowers fall off, you start to see the little round bulbous part of it, which is usually where they like to make their seeds. Leave those on the plants, as that kind of sends them a signal to start slowing down and going to sleep and start to go dormant for the wintertime. I try not to do any trimming right now on any of my trees or shrubs, because you're going to encourage that new growth. We've still got a week coming up here where we're going to be in the upper 60s, low 70s. And that just encourages growth. You don't want all that new, brand new growth getting exposed to that first frost, which comes in about three or four weeks. It also tells them it's time to go dormant. So no more trimming. Save that for early spring. But things like your hydrangeas, a lot of your deciduous type shrubs, they're going to go dormant anyway. So you're not going to see a whole lot of new growth coming out of them, which is why I just recommend taking a third off rather than packing them all the way to the ground. Save that for the early spring when you know they're actively growing again and they can make up for it real quickly. I also like to get a lot of that type of cleanup and stuff done right now. So it cuts down on diseases, especially funguses, that sort of thing. If you have plants that have had a fungus problem, like I have some perennials, for instance, they got powdery mildew over the summertime. Those types of things I like to trim down and I like to dispose of those diseased parts. So if you have plants with diseases like that, rather than treating them, you might as well just go ahead and cut them down, especially with perennials. My bee balm this year got it bad. Real bad case of powdery mildew, didn't matter how much I treated them. And honestly, when you run into plants like that, that seemed to catch, you know, powdery mildew or some sort of fungus year after year, it just might be time to replace them and get a variety that's a little more resistant to those types of things. I always make a note of that when I'm having issues over and over again every year with plants that just continue to keep getting diseases, especially funguses, which is a big thing that we deal with here in the Northwest. So it's some other things that I'm doing is I'm starting to walk the garden. I'm looking for exposed roots or anything that might be exposed above the ground, and I'm starting to cover those with a light coating of mulch. Now, I use a fine bark mulch in all of my beds, but you can certainly use a fine leaf mulch, you know, start mowing the leaves that are sitting on your lawn, which, by the way, you don't want to let them sit on your lawn. If you've got a lot of deciduous trees, make sure to mow up those leaves, chop them up and use them as mulch, throw them back into the garden and cover the root zones of your plants. Now, of course, if you have a fine bark mulch or something like that, you don't want them going all the way up to the stem of the plant. Leave a little more room there so they have room to breathe. But for the most part, that mulch acts like a lovely little blanket during the wintertime and will help protect your root zones. It also dissipates the water so they're not sitting in water. Just mulch is a good thing all the way around. So that's something else I'm looking to do out in the garden. Any kind of hardscaping, I'm actually going to have a load of new gravel brought in for all my pathways and everything and freshen them up. Of course, I'm continuing to yank out annuals and plants that I know aren't going to make it through the winter. And just start raking and cleaning up the beds. And that way, little critters and funguses and things like that don't have places to hide during the wintertime. Now, some other things you can do to prep for winter is, of course, check all your tools. Make sure your tools are clean before you put them away. Sharpen them. That sort of thing. Things just start to slow down. Now, we're going a whole week and a half here without any rain whatsoever. So don't forget the water. Just because it's cooler at night doesn't necessarily mean that everything is getting the water that it needs. You don't have to water as often. Hallelujah. I'm really grateful for the break there. But I am coming out after two or three days and just looking in the driest areas of the garden. You guys know what those areas are. They're getting full sun all day long. Make sure they're still being watered. Try not to let them dry out and let them get stressed out before we start slowing down and going into the winter months. But as far as planting goes, I highly recommend that any trees or shrubs that you've been wanting to put into the garden, now is the time. Get into your nursery and purchase them. A lot of your nurseries have a lot of things on clearance or on sale because they want to clean them out too. They don't want to have to overwinter all of these plants. I know at my own nursery we're looking to clean house as much as possible so we can get down to the core plants that we can carry through the wintertime. So you can find some awesome bargains out there right now. On trees, shrubs and of course perennials. Now spring bulbs have already started rolling in as well as garlic, shallots. Those are all things you can start planting now for a harvest next season. So again, go visit your nurseries, get the tulips, your daffodils, hyacinths, garlic, all those sorts of things are really good items that you can start putting in the ground right now. And take advantage of this beautiful weather that we've got coming up this coming week. Because before you know it, it's going to be pouring rain. We won't be able to get outside quite as often. Now, a little explanation as to why I haven't been here. I've actually taken the last two or three months off. Had some family issues I had to deal with. My mother, who's currently living with me right now, she's 88 years old. She's been in and out of the hospital. She's had to be in rehab. So that's taken a lot of extra time and just decided, let's just take a couple, two or three months off from the videos. Let's take care of mom. But mom's doing great. She's doing better now than she ever has. So that's really good news. And it was well worth it. I've also been quite busy at the nursery. We, for those of you who've been following me for a while, we lost our greenhouse this last winter to a real heavy snow. It only took six inches of real wet, heavy snow and the poor thing just collapsed. It was like a hoop house. But now we have this beautiful new greenhouse, which I am about to take you on a tour with. I'm here at home right now, but I'm going to be buzzing out to the nursery real quick and give you a visual as to what our new greenhouse looks like. We finally got it completed this week. Tomorrow we're in the process of putting all the gravel into it. It was built on a slope, so we've had to build it up in the back so that it's level. But I'm thrilled that that's almost done and then we're going to slowly start migrating our most tender plants into the greenhouse and tuck them in for the winter. So anxious to show you that. I lost my kitty this last summer and that's never going to be fun. He was in with us for quite a while and we finally, finally decided to go to kitty heaven. So I've been mourning that this past week. This was just about a week ago when we lost him. Just the sweetest cat ever. But you know how it is when you lose a pet. It just takes a little while to get used to that void that we have in our family. So anyway, enough of that. What else can we do in the garden to prepare for winter? Old Man Winter. Well, of course, any containers that you may have, especially terracotta containers, you want to make sure to empty out all the soil, clean them and put them away. Do not leave them outside during the wintertime. Clay and terracotta pots just don't hold up very well. I have bird baths here throughout all my gardens. There are glazed bird baths, so I make sure to empty them out. I clean them and flip them upside down. And that way, when it rains, they're not going to fill up with water again. And if they freeze, that's when they start to crack. All that water starts to expand during the wintertime when it gets really cold. So make sure to pay attention to your bird baths, anything glazed like that. Just flip them upside down. I have glazed pots throughout my entire outdoors here. Glazed pots everywhere. And as soon as I empty them out, then they should be fine. They should hold up just fine. Any house plants, tender plants that you might still have sitting outside, I recommend you get them in now, especially as we're starting to get into the 40s. Now's the time to find that perfect spot inside the house and start pulling them indoors. Of course, I'm going to be taking down cushions and putting away the umbrellas and, you know, getting things ready for wintertime. And most importantly, don't want to forget this. Don't forget the birdies. From now through wintertime, they start to get really hungry as the food supply starts to dwindle. There's not as many berries and nuts and things out there for them to dig themselves into. So take care of the birdies. Clean the feeders. We have hummingbirds that stay with us year round, little rufous hummingbirds. So I'm always sure to clean their little feeders and make sure that they have plenty of nectar to get them through the wintertime. All right, you guys, let's go see the greenhouse. So I made it down here to the nursery and I'll kind of flash you some pictures of before, during and after and then show you the finished product here for our brand new greenhouse, which we're very excited about. We're finally getting the gravel put in today. And I'm going to do a quick flip around here so you can see it. And we'll probably get Chance in the picture as well. There she is in all her glory. And I'm thrilled because this particular one also has roll up sides so you can ventilate it during the summertime. So we're just about there. All we got to do now, let's get the gravel moved, fill in the back back here. And the next video, I'll show you the finished product. After this, we put weed block down, bring in the benches, bring in the plants and get them hunkered in for winter. So a couple of the things I wanted to mention before I sign off here is perennials especially. I'm going to flip around my camera here in my own garden and show you some of the things that I do to prep my perennials for the fall. So, for instance, things are definitely starting to slow down, but these are some things that I start to do. Rather than cutting things back like this, this is a Hellenium, I let them go to seed. And I'm not in any real big hurry to start cutting them back. I just like to let things die back. But in this case, for instance, the Bee Balm I was telling you about, it's just covered in powdery mildew. So these are the types of things that I'm going to cut all the way down to the ground and clean that up. I've got a big patch of them right here. But something else I also wanted to mention were things like Echinacea. I'm letting them just go to seed. The birds absolutely love them during the wintertime. Same with little Black-Eyed Susans you see there, Rebecchias, those I'll start letting go to seed. But further down, I get a lot of questions regarding Dahlias. Now, I never pull my Dahlia YouTubers out. But the secret behind Dahlias, look at this. This is what I love about Dahlias, is they just keep blooming their ever-loving hearts out. Look at that. All the way till the first frost. So that kind of gives you a hint. They're looking a little sad, but I let them stand until the first frost, till they're completely died, you know, died down to the ground. I'll cut off all the extra debris. And I'm blessed with a lot of pine needles in my yard. So I use those as a mulch and I just put a big pile of them on the top and they survive the winter just fine. But I also mounded up a lot of these bulbs, the Dahlia bulbs, for good drainage. And that's really the ticket to getting your tubers to survive during a northwest winter is keeping them from getting too wet and then starting to rot. So mound them up a little bit for really good drainage. Let them die back after the first frost. And then I clean them up and put a nice layer of pine needles and mulch on top. As you can see, things like the Gara, I've got lots of geraniums and one of my favorites down here, asters, are the ones that just keep on blooming until the first frost. So I don't bother them at all. I'll wait until they die back and then I'll cut them back at that point. Or just wait until the spring before I cut anything back. These guys are starting to lean out over towards the lawn. So most likely I'll be cutting them back, but I just let them go to seed. You can see there some of these are already starting to do that. And enjoy the flowers for as long as I possibly can. OK, you guys, so that's about it for my garden prep for fall. The only thing I haven't mentioned yet is your lawn. You want to give it one last feeding before wintertime. This is the perfect time to start thatching and, you know, pulling plugs to refresh the lawn and get more air down into the roots as well as food. So that's what I'll be doing this coming week is getting the lawn prepared so that it greens up real nicely next spring. Other than that, you know, things are starting to wind down a little bit. I don't have to water quite as much, which is fabulous. I'm just going to keep up with a few weeds, start raking up the gardens a little bit, and of course, do some edging. I want to do one last sharp edge along all the beds before wintertime so I don't have a ton of grass creeping in during the wintertime. I swear the grass grows year round here, especially in the winter when it's getting plenty of water. All right, you guys, it's good to be back. It's a stunning day today. It's probably going to get up into the upper 60s, low 70s. It was 48 degrees this morning when I left the house, so on goes the fleece. Getting warmed up already. But I love the change of seasons. And hopefully my next video, I can show you some more as to what's going on here in the yard. Meanwhile, if you hang in there at the end of this video, I'm going to add some pictures of some of my favorite things during this last summer so you can get an idea what some of my containers look like and what the garden looked like during the summer, being I wasn't here to talk to you guys. Meanwhile, hope you have a fabulous October and we'll talk soon. Bye for now.