The In-Between Season by Mauricia Taggart LaBlanc of Taggart’s Garden Center
Ahh September. The month it finally starts getting cooler nights, and things start looking a bit more like fall. Around the neighborhood, you start seeing more and more fall flowers such as pansies and mums, the gardens are getting their fall crops, and the yards are getting tended to for winter. Things are going smoothly in our world, and life is looking good for this in-between season.
In the neighborhoods, after summer flowers have gotten long in the tooth and overgrown, it’s time to start filling in with things that will last the colder nights into the winter months. Pansies are the most popular choice, often because they can handle the colder nights and will bloom all winter, even up through the snow. Mums are the next most common choice because of their visibility and vivid colors. Coming in a range of pinks, purples, yellows, bronzes, oranges, reds, and whites, mums are a great choice for adding a lot of color to your homes that last from when they start blooming in September to when they go out of bloom around Halloween or after, depending on the variety. There are a few other foliage plants that are often brought in for the fall season, such as millet, purple fountain grass, ornamental kale, and even crotons. Most of these will not last through the winter, but the fall color and texture that they bring to the landscape are often seen as worth it to many people.
In the garden, we see beautiful new rows of things like fall beans, cold crops, root vegetables, and maybe even a few summer tomatoes or squash holding on. As the days grow shorter, we have perfected the garden harvest by now and are trying to get some fall staples to flourish. These fall veggies are something that a lot of gardeners look forward to in the colder days. The stored tubers and canned vegetables from the summer months will be a delightful treat through the winter, but often these fresh vegetables are what cooks and growers alike look forward to from the fall garden. Beans are grown and usually harvested from October into November; cold crops are grown and harvested from October into November as well. Root vegetables are grown and harvested multiple times throughout the fall, and leafy greens are harvested as they get big enough to eat. When the threats of the first frost move through, harvesting all the green tomatoes will save them from splitting, and they can be stored in a dry, cool place and will continue to ripen, sometimes even through Valentine’s Day.
As for your yard, most of the time, we recommend just ignoring it through the winter months, unless we have a super-dry winter. Some places will recommend a winterizer or winter-time fertilizer, but what we have found is that in this area, Bermuda grass is a variety that goes dormant early in the cold season. Because of this, the fertilizer that could be applied will sit there and encourage growth for weeds, weedy grasses, and fungal growth. We recommend that you just let it go dormant and make sure that there is some kind of moisture that goes into the soil every couple of weeks to keep it alive. If we have another dry winter, please remember to water your grass and perennials once every 10-14 days to keep them healthy.
This beautiful month is often defined by football, apples, hayrides, and harvest. By bringing these warm, fuzzy feelings to our planted spaces, we are able to enjoy the wildlife and greenspace of our homes throughout many seasons, not just the growing seasons of spring and summer.
