September Southern Garden Checklist

Fall Planting:

• Evaluate your landscape for fall interest. Consider adding some ornamental grasses, fall blooming perennials and trees and shrubs with colorful fall foliage or fruit.
• Plant fall blooming bulbs such as Colchicum, Sternbergia and nerine lily as soon as they are available. Properly prepare the soil and add a slow-release fertilizer such as Milorganite® at planting.
• Fill voids and replace weatherworn annuals in gardens and containers with pansies, ornamental kale and other cool weather annuals for the fall and winter garden.

Fall Care:

• Sow seeds of hardy annuals like calendula and sweet alyssum now for a jumpstart on next spring’s floral display. Planting now also gives them time to get established before colder temperatures arrive.
• Dig and divide spring blooming perennials that have outgrown their location, failed to flower, flop open or died out in the center.
• Keep falling leaves off groundcovers and perennial plants with this simple technique Cover plantings with netting to catch the falling leaves. Drag it off or roll it up to keep the leaves in the netting as you clear the planting. Then add the leaves to the compost pile.
• Keep watering as needed. Make new plantings and moisture loving plants a priority.

Vegetable Garden:

• Create beautiful and edible fall garden containers. Bright Lights, Ruby Red and many other Swiss chard cultivars have colorful stems to brighten any fall combination.
• Plant beet, carrot, kale, lettuce, spinach, turnip and radish seeds as well as onion sets. Add transplants of lettuce, Swiss chard, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and cabbage to the garden.

Pest Control:

• Black and orange bugs congregated on the sunny side of your house in fall are likely boxelder bugs. They are not harmful to plants and people, but certainly are annoying.