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A
Few Fall
Landscape
Reminders
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The gentle autumn weather has
treated us to a particularly long and colorful
display of fall foliage, and with the added visual
treat of even some of the hardier annual flowers
still blooming just a few weeks before Halloween,
it’s been a fall filled with exceptional landscape
color. This being an election year, some landscapes
are also filling up with those colorful
electioneering signs, indicating either the
homeowner’s preference in candidates for a
particular office or that homeowner’s inability to
tell a politically zealous friend, “Yes, I do mind
if you put a sign in my yard.”
A new football coach at
Nebraska is normally enough to distract Nebraskans
from their fall landscape chores for at least one
football season, but this year a major presidential
campaign and a worldwide financial crisis have
occurred at the same time. If you’ve been thinking
a lot about your landscape this fall, you probably
don’t own a television or radio, or don’t subscribe
to a newspaper. For the rest of you, here are a few
reminders of some fairly important fall landscape
chores. |
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Previous Articles
It's
Finally Spring - March 13
Spring Garden Calendar-March 20
No
Garden Left Behind-March 27
Planting Trees for a Cooler Earth in a Warmer
WyoBraska-April 3
Viburnums - Shrubs for Wyobraska Springs-April 10
Want A Water Conserving Lawn? You might already have
one-
April 17
Creating Long
Term
Tree-lationships April 24
Bigger, Bolder, Brighter,
Better—and Back In The Landscape May 01 & 08
Hardy Shrub
Roses
May 15
Another Look
at Native Plants
May 22
No Child
Left Inside
May 29
June
is Tree Care Month June 05
Summer Blooming Shrubs
June 12
Roses Are
Red.....
June 19
The Plants They will be Talking About Next Year at
the Garden Walk
June 26
Busy Summertime Gardens
July 03
Cutting Your Lawn Down to Size
July 10
July 17
Insect Paranoia
If It Will Grow In Wyoming...
July 24
Rain Gardens
July31
WyoBraska Native Grass & Wildflower Lawn
August 7
A Real WyoBraska Peach?
(Fruit Trees) August 14
Fall is for Planting
August 21
A Recipe for Enjoying Autumn Landscapes August 28
Seeing Red in your Landscape
September 4
Four Questions to Ask A Plant
September 11
September Plants
September 18
Mulch, Nature's Winter Blanket
September 25
Welcome to Hardiness Zone 5
October 2
The
Changing Fall Landscape
October 9
2007 Articles
2006 Articles |
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One final mowing
Lawns will do very little
growing after late October, but if you are like most
homeowners, when the lawn slows down sometime in
early October, you start to skip the regular weekly
mowings, and sometimes skip right up to March or
April. One final mowing in early November will
usually be the last required. Keep the mower
setting high—longer grass will help protect the
crowns of the plant located right at soil level from
drying winter winds—and also help insulate the root
system. I suggest that you pick up the clippings on
this final mowing, because they may also include a
lot of leaves. A good mower will usually do a good
job of picking up that last batch of leaves that
blew over from your neighbor’s tree two days after
you raked your lawn. By the way, if you have a
compost pile the mixture of leaves and grass
clippings will turn into a rich compost for your
garden or landscape by spring. Mulch your
vegetable garden with it this fall and turn it under
early in the spring, or simply start a little
compost pipe. If you a putting it in a compost
pile, mix in a little dirt to get it started
composting even faster. By the way, you are tying
up carbon in the soil when you do this—every little
bit helps.
Continue to water if it is
dry
It seems like howmeowners are
turning off their sprinkler systems earlier every
year. Many sprinkler systems are now shut off in
early October. I think that is too early to stop
watering. Dry soils freeze harder (get colder) and
deeper than moist soils. Tree and shrub roots
forced to overwinter in dry soil have a much greater
chance of sustaining freezing damage than do roots
that are in moist soil. Especially if November
weather is warm, dry, and windy be sure to water
your lawn and landscape beds a couple of times
during the month. Continue watering as needed until
the soil freezes—usually sometime in early December.
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Mulch
It’s always a good idea to
check your landscape in November to see if
everything that needs mulch is covered before
winter. Mulch on landscape beds should be at least
two inches think in order to be most effective. If
your mulch depth is less than that consider adding
an inch or two before winter. Avid gardeners may
have some tender perennials or hybrid tea roses that
require supplemental mulching before winter. This
should not be done too soon—usually around
Thanksgiving is the right time. Chopped leaves make
an excellent mulch for this task. Save a bag or two
of leaves for this task, and if you’ve already sent
your leaves to the landfill, beg, borrow, or steal a
bag or two from the curb. Be sure to get leaves,
though, and not the neighbor’s garbage.
(Do not mulch put any extra
mulch around hardy shrub roses, they don’t need it.)
Prune a few perennials
Some gardening experts
recommend pruning certain perennials back in the
fall. The notable candidate is Russian sage. I
like to leave most perennial stalks in the garden
for their winter interest. But I have to agree that
Russian sage does not add much to a winter scene,
and so I have begun to cut mine back in the fall.
Asiatic lilies are another possibility. There
generally is little harm that can be done to
perennials by cutting back dead stems in the fall,
so if others look unsightly to you, go ahead. When
cutting perennials back in the fall, leave at least
8-12 inches of stem—do not cut them back to the
ground.
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