Emily's Gardening Almanac Timely Tips from a Professional Gardening Expert

October Gardening Tips

• Keep falling leaves cleaned up. You may add them to your compost pile.

• Replace your annuals with vibrant pansies. Pansies will tolerate the winter months and provide you with a wonderful show of color in early spring.

• You can also plant snapdragons now for early spring blooms. Plant them in a protected area as a hard freeze may damage the plants.

• Late in the month is a good time to transplant shrubs that are in the wrong location. Keep as much of the root system intact as possible. Prune any dead or damaged stems.

• After the first killing frost, remove dead or yellowed foliage from perennials. Clean up your perennial beds and apply clean mulch. This will reduce the outbreak of diseases.

• Late October is a good time to plant peonies. You will need to cut the foliage back to reduce the spread of disease.

• Stop deadheading your spent flowers on your roses. Remove the petals with your hands to allow the rose hips to form. This helps trigger the rose into winter dormancy.

• Clean up your rose bed. Remove any leaves or flowers that may be on the ground.

• Do not shear your shrubs. It is too late to shear. The only pruning you should be doing now is to remove dead or damaged stems and branches.

• Remove weeds from your planting areas. Insects such as spider mites can overwinter in weeds.

• Check your narrow leaf evergreens for bagworms. Remove and destroy these bags. Eggs overwinter in the bags and hatch next spring.

• Dig up your caladium, dahlia, and canna bulbs. Clean the bulbs and cover with dry peat moss. Store the bulbs in a cool dry place until spring.

• If you want to force bulbs, such as paperwhite and amaryllis, for the holidays, plan now. Allow about six weeks from the time you plant the bulbs until the flowers open. Space your plantings so that you have blooms from Thanksgiving until New Years.

• If the weather has cooled, you can begin to plant your spring flowering bulbs. If not, wait until November.

• Keep falling leaves out of your water garden, especially if you have fish. Decaying leaves can rob fish of the oxygen in the water.

• After a killing frost is a good time to apply new mulch to all your planting beds.

• If you removed your bird feeder during the summer, now is the time to put the birdfeeder back out.

Visit the following web site for more gardening information and helpful tips:

Extension's Successful Gardener^sm

For informaton concerning this or other publications please contact Emily Revels, Extension Agent, Horticulture, at (910) 321-6870.

Created by Susan Johnson, System Administrator, July 2005