Your summer container gardens probably looked beautiful a few months ago, but by October, those once-colorful petunias, begonias, and other warm-weather flowers may be looking tired. Fortunately, you don’t have to pack away your planters or spend a fortune replacing everything. With a few strategic changes, those same pots can provide beautiful color throughout fall…
garden tips
How to Keep Deer From Browsing Shrubs Through Winter
You spent spring planting new shrubs, summer keeping them watered, and fall making sure they’re ready for colder weather. Then, one winter morning, you look outside and discover that deer have eaten half the branches off your favorite plants. Unfortunately, winter browsing can undo months or even years of gardening work in a surprisingly short…
The Best Pansy Planting Tips for Chilly Weather
When summer flowers start fading and temperatures drop, many gardeners assume their colorful displays are finished until spring. However, pansies thrive in cooler conditions, making them one of the best options for keeping flower beds, porch containers, and window boxes looking cheerful through fall and even winter. The trick is knowing when to plant them…
Fall Rose Care Mistakes That Can Hurt Next Year’s Blooms
Your roses may be producing their final flowers of the season, but what you do in the garden this fall could determine how well they perform next spring. Many gardeners assume that cutting everything back, adding fertilizer, and tidying up flower beds will give their roses a head start. Unfortunately, some of those well-intentioned chores…
How to Clean Birdbaths Before Freezing Temperatures Arrive
As fall temperatures begin dropping, gardeners are busy preparing flower beds, protecting tender plants, and putting away outdoor equipment. However, one backyard feature often gets overlooked during seasonal cleanup: the birdbath. That shallow basin that attracted robins, cardinals, and other feathered visitors throughout summer needs attention before freezing temperatures arrive. Learning how to clean birdbaths…
Why Garden Hoses Should Be Drained Before Cold Weather
When temperatures start dropping, most gardeners focus on protecting their plants, covering delicate shrubs, and putting away gardening tools. However, there’s one simple fall maintenance task that’s easy to overlook: draining your garden hose. Leaving water trapped inside a hose during freezing weather can damage the hose itself and potentially contribute to expensive plumbing problems….
The Best Way to Store Empty Pots Before Freezing Nights
Those empty flowerpots sitting beside the garage may look like one fall chore you can safely postpone until spring, but freezing weather can turn an expensive container into a pile of cracked pottery. The problem isn’t simply cold temperatures; moisture that gets into porous materials can freeze, expand, and damage the pot as temperatures fluctuate….
How to Prevent Weeds From Taking Over Fall Garden Beds
By October, it is tempting to look at a fading garden and declare weed season officially over. Unfortunately, chickweed, henbit, dandelions, bindweed, and other winter annual or perennial weeds may have very different plans, and ignoring them now can mean considerably more work next spring. The University of Illinois notes that fall is an especially…
The Right Fertilizer Timing for Cool-Season Lawns
If your lawn struggled through summer heat, your first instinct may be to grab a bag of fertilizer as soon as the weather cools down. That’s not necessarily wrong, but cool-season lawn fertilizer timing matters almost as much as what’s inside the bag. Grasses such as tall fescue, Kentucky bluegrass, perennial ryegrass, and fine fescue…
How to Overseed Thin Grass Before Winter Dormancy
A lawn that looks thin after a long summer doesn’t necessarily need to be torn out and started over. If plenty of healthy turf remains, overseeding thin grass can fill bare patches, improve density, and help crowd out future weeds for considerably less money than installing new sod. Timing matters, though, because grass seedlings need…