Did you know there’s still time to enjoy and enhance your home landscape? Pull out your fading annuals that have bloomed so vigorously all summer and replace them with mums, ornamental grasses or pansies. If the plant you’re pulling out is disease-free, consider chopping it up and burying it in the hole it occupied all summer. It will improve your soil and you can impress your friends and family by telling them that you compost “in situ!” Plus, you’ll be keeping perfectly good material out of the landfill and saving cash on yard waste bags and stickers. Just don’t do this with peonies or roses.
Pay attention to any problems and tackle them now. If you notice that slugs are a problem, especially around your hostas, fill a tuna can with beer and sink it into the ground where you see leaf damage. And speaking of time well spent now for a better gardening season next year, keep weeding!
Every weed that you pull now will save you from many to pull in 2025. Weeds are going to seed, so get rid of them before the seeds settle in your garden beds. Remember that not every green plant is welcome in our garden beds.
If you put any of your houseplants outside for the summer, start thinking about bringing them inside. Move them from your garden bed to the porch or next to your house to help them adjust to being indoors again where it is darker, drier and warmer. My amaryllis just loves its summer vacation under my crab apple!
Our first frost may come later this month, lots to do, lots to do!
One more thing… The Naperville Garden Club invites you to join us at our meeting on September 25. The Growing Place will teach us how to brighten our fall home landscape with new plantings. We meet at Grace United Methodist Church at 8:45AM for catered refreshments, business meeting and program. Paid reservations ($20) are due September 18. Call or text Sandy to RSVP (630-251-0577). We look forward to seeing you!
