Fabulous Fall Weather
September 2018 by Shelley Corey, Owner of The Mum Farm
There’s nothing short of spectacular about our fall season. I’m sure a lot of you agree that it is the best season of all. The down vests will be coming out of hiding and anyone that truly knows me, knows the flannel shirts are soon to be a part of my daily apparel! The smell of chili or mushroom stew simmering on the stove, warm apple pies, so much to look forward to. The gardens start to wind down, the mums continue their spectacular show and if you were wise enough to plant a few of the flowering cabbage and kale, you’re in for a treat of color right up till Christmas time.
If you tend towards procrastination…you still have time to pick up some mum plants, pumpkins, straw bales and decorate for fall. Don’t think that Halloween is the ending date for your display, with this years' delayed bloom of mum plants due to the extreme heat of summer, mums should still be in bloom till mid November, given that the temperatures don’t drop below 27 degrees! How fabulous to still enjoy an autumn display until close to Thanksgiving.
Granted, 98% of all the mums I sell will be used as fall annuals, but they are perennial given the right conditions. You still have time to plant a few of those mum plants in your gardens and try your luck at overwintering them! Make sure you mark them with a tag, a stick, or marker so that you know where you planted them. When they begin to come up in late May, you might have forgotten where you planted them! You will not see them start to grow where the old stem was, they come up as a ring of new growth, however far the roots grew into the surrounding soil this fall. Look closely, because they are often mistaken for weeds….they are that prolific. Mums being the perennials that we hope for is all dependent on our winter weather, truly not the mum’s fault!
Fallen leaves make a wonderful weed smothering mulch, but they will also smother everything else. So it’s really best to get most of the leaves raked up and out to the street for pickup. I don’t recommend leaves as a winter mulch for mums given their smothering capabilities… mums will certainly NOT overwinter under a heavy layer of leaves. A layer of evergreen boughs with a covering of leaves would make a much better winter covering.
Remember to empty those summer pots out of soil, so that they don’t crack and break with the freeze-thaw cycles we experience during our winters. Most of the time,most of the potting soil can be reused for the following year, once you’ve removed a lot of the old roots and possibly added some more fresh soil.
It also will help to jog your memory next spring, if you make some notes now as to the summer plants you grew…how they performed, how many you planted…if you need more or even if you need less for the pots or the area that you planted. Gardening definitely works our muscles and our brains! That's why gardeners never seem to grow old…
It has been a total joy growing flowers to beautiful your world. Soon it's time for me to sit down and flip through the pages of the catalogs and find some new and interesting plants to entice you with for next spring! Stay healthy, be happy and smile….it’s time for us gardeners to rest!