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October:
 

Time to plant the garlic!  And last call for planting spring blooming bulbs!  This is my favorite time of year to move perennials and shrubs to new and "better" locations in the garden.  Lower light, less heat, and less watering needs makes fall a perfect time to transplant!

To-do in the Garden:

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• Let the weedwacker be your friend!  An easy way to clean up overgrown areas is to weedwack to the ground any unwanted plants, put down layers of newspaper (pretty thickly) and mulch heavily.   

• Wrap your tender new trees with a trunk protector for the winter.  This will help prevent sun-scald and also buck rub (from deer antlers).  

• Make sure you have your deer fencing up.  The deer are on the move during hunting season, and they end up even in areas where you don't usually find them.   

• Repeat!!  Bulb season!!  Get those bulbs in the ground!  Daffodils, tulips, allium (deer resistant!), and don't forget your garlic!!  I plant bulbs as long as I can work the ground, so take advantage of late season sales on bulbs!

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It's not too late to prune: 

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• Fall is a great time to prune overgrown shrubs.  The leaves are gone, so you can better see the scaffolding and structure of a given tree or shrub. 

• A good rule of thumb is not to take off more than a third of the shrub during any one season. 

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November:

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We had a bit of an early winter here at Daisy Hollow Farm...and we haven't even finished our garden clean-up yet.  In fact, our Calendula were in full bloom when the first snowfall and freezing weather came.  The poor blossoms froze under the snow.

To-do in the Garden:

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• Time to clean out the gardens before the snow comes!  We are busy raking and removing dead plant matter and debris from the gardens with one eye to the sky watching for snow.  We take a hedgetrimmer to all of our perennials as it is much quicker than cutting everything back by hand!

• Wrap your tender new trees with a trunk protector for the winter.  This will help prevent sun-scald, freeze/thaw, and also buck rub (from deer antlers).  Which reminds me, I have a Japanese Maple 'Bloodgood' Maple that had some freeze/thaw damage to it's trunk, so it needs a bit of babying to get it through the winter.

• Make sure you have your deer fencing up.  The deer are on the move during hunting season and they end up in areas where you may not usually see them.

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Repeat!! It's not too late to prune: 

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• Fall is a great time to prune overgrown shrubs.  The leaves are gone, so you can better see the scaffolding and structure of a given tree or shrub. 

• A good rule of thumb is not to take off more than a third of the shrub during any one season. 

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December:

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Time to rest!  Smile, dream of next spring, and watch your garden laying dormant under your careful administrations! 

To-do in the Garden:

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• Sometimes we will have warmish weather into December, I've planted Daffodil bulbs on Christmas eve!  (That was the winter of 2015, and the daffodil bulbs were a Christmas gift to my favorite gardening buddy!)

• But, mostly it's time to rest from the gardens and busy ourselves with other long-neglected activities.  Because, seriously, who wants to go around dusting bookshelves and fixing holes in walls from over-zealous kids when there are bulbs to plant and shrubs to prune?

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