It's Autumn Planting Time
Last weekend I stopped at my favorite nursery. It was their eighth anniversary party, with sale plants, poor little ailing plants were offered up for adoption, you could buy one plant - ANY plant, even a really expensive one - at half price. I expected to have to walk to the plant area from a parking spot way down the road. Instead - to my amazement - I was practically the only person there.
I guess that's what happens when you schedule a gardening sale immediately following a killing frost. Most people looked at the remains of their gardens last week and decided that it was time to call it quits.
Most people seem to be afraid to plant now, for fear the approaching cold will kill a new plant before they even get to see it flower. Many people don't realize that fall is the best possible time for planting anything but tender perennials and annuals.
If you plant in spring, the new plant will send out some roots, and then get to work on justifying your purchase by sending up nice foliage and flowers. If you plant in fall, that plant may look like it's just sitting there doing nothing. But underground it is sending out roots that will guarantee you a good, strong plant when next year rolls around. Much stronger than the spring-planted one who interrupted its root system creation to make flowers for you.
If we were smart, we would all be crowding the nurseries now instead of in spring.. But it's hard to resist that glimpse of growing possibilities after a long winter - and it's easy to dismiss fall planting because the gardens (and you) are tired.
Most of us will give at least one grand last hurrah when our bulb orders arrive, rushing to get them into the ground for a great spring display. Bulbs do exactly what perennials and trees do - spend the winter building their root systems. Then, after many months underground, they send up beacons of hope in spring. Somehow we understand that with bulbs, even if we forget it with everything else.
If you haven't got your bulb orders in yet, there's still time - but few reputable companies will ship after mid-November.
Things to plant now
A good plan of attack with bulbs is to wait until that killing frost comes to you. Then pull up the frost-blackened annuals and tender perennials, and dig up any tender plants you may have. Rake out the beds to get rid of any debris and then step back and look. You now have space for bulbs.
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