It’s right time to give our gardens a good looking-over

With September here, now is a great time to take a critical look at our gardens since your trees and bushes are at their fullest, the flowers are blooming and everything is at its best.

Check and see if the trees and shrubs have grown and are now shading the flowers below them. Which perennials need to be separated this year, and where is the best spot to move them? Do any trees or shrubs need pruning? Did the flowers bloom and grow like we thought they would, or because of either too much sun or not enough sun, did they not meet our expectations? Should we move plants that grew taller than the others around them, making the arrangement now look unbalanced? Did some of the plants grow and cover our adorable yard art? Should we move the art or the plant?

These are just some of the questions we should be asking as we look at our gardens. Marking plants that should be either moved or separated will help later when we can move them during cooler weather. Deciding if we should trim trees or shrubs depends on if they look nice being that full, or if they would look better if they were trimmed a bit. We must remove any damaged branches to promote a healthier plant for next year. Now is a good time to cut back any leftover bulb branches that have turned brown so the bulb will prepare for winter.

We can also plant those dramatic flowering kale and fall flowering mums for the coming fall color we will need as the summer annuals start dying back. There are lots of varieties to choose from. such as “Silver Mound” artemisia (Artemisia schmidtiana) and “Silver Dust” dusty miller (Senecio cineraria). Do not forget those colorful, hardy chrysanthemums that come in beautiful purple, burgundy, yellow and white shades. Then there are the interesting flowering cabbage and ornamental kale you can use for unique shape additions to the flower garden. The classic fall color scheme of red-yellow-orange makes for a powerful celebration of the harvest season.

Orange and yellow nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus), lemon yellow French marigolds (Tagetes patula “Lemon Drop”) and reddish-purple plumed celosia (Celosia argentea var. cristata), are some examples that will set your annual flower gardens ablaze in autumn splendor.

Feel free to be creative and let your love of fall colors and shapes determine your fall garden design. This will allow your garden to continue to be colorful and unique until the snow starts flying.

In the garden this week

We will be busy harvesting vegetables and dead-heading those spectacular annuals again so they are at their best.

We should start deep-watering trees that really need water, such as aspens, willows, birch and poplars. Remember to deep-water evergreens and other deciduous trees so they will better survive the winter and be healthier in spring.

We can start augmenting our garden soil areas where we already have harvested with clean grass clippings and disease free leaves so it can start degrading into food for the soil for next year’s bountiful garden.

We need to keep a sharp eye out for diseased plants and get rid of any bugs that might be eating our plants so they have time to recover for the winter cold. Having a strong, healthy plant going into winter will give it a head start on being a beautiful, strong and growing plant in spring.

Pulling those pesky weeds is another constant in the universe, so keep pulling; your plants will love you for it. Also, the weeds will not be competing for the water your plants so desperately need to keep healthy.