Lawn and garden prep tips
Have you ever sent a birthday card to someone after their big day? Considering there’s a whole “belated” birthday card category, there must be a lot of us who do that.
In the garden, there are deadlines for the big days — like bulb planting and steps for growing a greatlooking lawn. What they have in common with missed birthdays is that both require our immediate attention.
Here are our top steps to take now for both a great-looking lawn and early spring flower garden so you can be relaxed and ready for a successful start to gardening season next year. Lawn If you want a guarantee that your efforts will produce the bestlooking lawn, lay sod. In the remaining weeks of fall weather, sod will put down new roots and prepare itself for our long Canadian winter.
Grass is a cold-season crop, which is why we do not recommend that you lay it mid-summer. It is now a bit late to start grass seed — there is not enough time for it to germinate, put down root and anchor itself for the winter. But if you do spread grass seed now, some of it will likely survive the winter and come up next spring.
Fertilize all grass, new and established, any time now using a slowrelease, fall formula. Summer bulbs The plants that grow from a fleshy root, like dahlias, gladiolas, tuberous begonias and canna lilies, need to be removed from their containers or the ground where they’ve been growing. Shake off loose soil, wash the roots of the giant tubers and allow to dry in the sun for a few days.
Store these roots in a paper leaf bag with clean straw or shredded newspaper for the winter. Place them in the coolest, darkest part of your house, but keep them frostfree until late winter (for tuberous begonias) or early spring (for all but the gladiolas) when you will bring them upstairs and start them in the warmth of your living quarters. Gladiolas get planted directly in the garden soil in May. Holland bulbs There are two reasons why you should plant springblooming Holland bulbs now:
There is only shipment of bulbs that arrives at your retailer. Once they are gone, they are gone.
Some bulbs need several weeks to put down roots before the hard frost of late fall. Daffodils, narcissus and jonquils are in the “plant now” category. Tulips, frankly, are so indestructible that you can plant them as late you want.
Many bulbs fall into an “in between” category that can be planted later. Hyacinths, crocus, scilla and many of the smaller bulbs will perform well next spring planted any time between now and early November.
Be sure, with spring-flowering bulbs, that you plant them when the ground is well-drained — none enjoy wet feet. We recommend that you dig in generous quantities of compost and play sand to loosen clay-based soils. Clay is nutrientrich, but the soil particles are so dense that water cannot move through it efficiently. The results can be rotten bulbs and a no-show come spring.
We do not recommend that you add fertilizer when you plant bulbs. Nutrients are packed into each bulb, enough to get each one off to a good start come spring, unlike a seed with limited nutrient resources due to its size. This is part of the miracle that makes bulb-growing so much fun.
If deer, squirrels, or other vermin enjoy eating or otherwise destroying your spring flowering bulbs, we recommend that you stick with the tried and true: daffodils, narcissus, and jonquils. They are mildly toxic and have a sharp taste that most problem pests will leave alone. We cannot speak for the squirrels, though. Squirrels have no rules.