What is on your "to do" list?

I was just wondering where every one is on "closing out" this years garden. Since so much of mine seems only a bit past its glory, I haven't begun doing much cleaning up. I am still enjoying the beauty. I have set a deadline for myself of this weekend to get in the plants that will survive the winter, indoors. I only have a few of those because I have already brought in most of them.

Along with bringing plants in, I also need to move the bags of potting soil, empty pots, tools, fertilizer, gravel, etc., etc. that are sitting on my screen porch waiting to go to the greenhouse/shed out back. I first have to organize and spray down spider webs, dirt and things out of shed. My friend is coming on Saturday to help with the shed. Hopefully her presence will keep me motivated enough to get most everything done.

After that I have about 8 or so small packages of bulbs that I have bought locally and a BIG order coming from one of the Nursery web sites. At this point, I have a question about amending the soil in a particular bed. I bought a product that claims to help aerate clay soil. It has directions on how to do it, but I need to know whether to use it this fall and let it work in the ground, or to use it next spring before I begin plantings things there? Hmmmm, reading further it says to add amendment and then go ahead and plant. So.......would there be any benefit to doinog it one season over the other?

I suppose the same could go for compost also. Is it applied a certain time period before planting, or do you say, amend it one day and then plant the next? I was very lucky that in my large front bed my hubby worked very hard with cow manure mixed in to the soil and things are thriving there. Hmmmmmm.....I am answering my own questions as I write this. With the cow manure we added it same day as we planted.
The small area in the back yard that definitely needs amending didn't produce as well and I want to use the compost on it when it is ready and also use the amendment that I bought.

Any helpful hints are gladly accepted. Most of you have been gardening longer than myself and have a lot more experience and knowledge. Thanks everyone in advance.

Ruby

Weeding mostly. I moved into my new place in the spring so I have a pretty good idea what stuff I like and what stuff to weed out. Lately I have been digging up a big patch of mint and spreading a lot of mulch. Unfortunately I am still paying the mortgage on the "old place" so my garden budget is pretty much zero.

I am also gearing up for a season of winter sowing. I grew a LOT of plants two winters ago. I have been collecting and prepping seeds. I also signed up for a seed swap on the Winter Sowing board and snuck in a small order for some seeds via mail order. I am hoping that this will divert my attention away from all the end of the year sales.

- Brent

They are predicting snow flurries for Friday!!! Ugh!!!!

I have all of my 7 house plants inside. The things that I want to get done is cut back my Butterfly bushes, we get a lot of very heavy wet snow so cutting them part way down keeps them from getting damanged from the weight of the snow.

I need to scoop all of the Water hyancinthus & water lettuce out of the pond, and add them to the compost pile. Clean the pump and check the water fall so all the water will run into the main pond and not out the sides.

Wrap up my topiary evergreen and 2 hydrangeas with burlap for winter protection.

Cut back the perennials so I don't have a mess in the spring.

No planting bulbs this fall, I was afraid that would be biting off more then I could handle.

Ruby... I use compost as I plant, when I dig a hole I add compost. Also mulch with it, You can use more attractive mulch over top of the compost if you wish.

One rule that I go by is; if you don't find a lot of earth worms when you dig, you need more compost.

Chris

I'm still planting. I have 5 shrubs and a heuchera from the ArborFest sale last Saturday still to plant. I also have quite a bit of transplanting I'd like to complete - daylilies (some are first-year seedlings) and hostas mostly. I also have some hosta seedlings and rooted shrub cuttings to pot up and give to my petsitter who's a newbie gardener and has no real landscaping yet. I finally finished the bulb planting Tuesday; but I have loads of Irises I separated that need a new home. All the potted cannas need to be taken up. I'm overwintering them for the first time this year. I generally don't fool with plants that have to be overwintered; but this year buried their pots in the ground so all I have to do is pull up the pots. I hope it works as easily as it sounds.

Chris, that advice about finding the earthworms sounds good. This fall is the first time I've had real compost to spread and put in planting holes.

Mickgene, I found that using compost did wonders for my flowerbeds, I have clay soil so it needed a lot of improvement, everything except meats and dairy go into the compost, I have a paper shreader and that also goes into the compost. I even bring home the shreaded paper from the office.

My earthworm population is growing along with my plants!

TONS of stuff to do this fall! Spent the whole day yesterday bringing in our Begonias and tropicals from the deck in anticipation of the frost tonight - good thing we did because it's below 32 NOW! Still have plants to get in the ground but with the rain we've received in the last weekend I can't spend much time in the garden until it dries out a little. We've been busy planting trees and shrubs in a new 'arboretum' we're starting and need to get it mulched. Deer don't usually cause us any huge headaches, but they're already discovered the new planting, disrupted a few things and chewed down a few conifers :( Picture of the field where we're planting - doesn't show much except the scale of the project and our conifer bed on the left that was planted three years ago (unfortunately we hadn't moved the trailer with hay before taking the picture).

Debbie

These pictures really stink - it was way too bright earlier this week to take decent pictures, but this is the new bed I've been working on. We had a couple of trees taken out of this area in the spring - one died, one I hated - and needed to fill the area and perk it up.

A closer view of the Heucheras, Heucherellas and Tiarellas in the center of this area.

This is next on my To Do list - want to yank all the purple Petasites in the background and fill it up with Hostas and Ferns.

I am so sore today I can hardly move. I finally finished digging a new bed out front and planting it yesterday. I also dug massive clumps of garden phlox and Autumn Joy sedum for dividing - that's what has me so sore today. My back is killing me. Oh, and I moved the plants that need to go inside for the winter last night since the thermometer was heading toward freezing.

I have finished the new path a made using one of those concrete forms that look like stones except for brushing some more sand between the stones. Thanks to the recent rains, the buckets of sand have standing water in them. The path runs from the patio on the side of the house (which is actually our "back" yard) to the path behind the kitchen. It looks darned nice if I do say so myself.

To do yet: dig the weeds and grass out of the slope along the driveway and plant lamium and some daylilies along the slope. Set up my little greenhouse I got earlier this summer on sale. Plant the tiger lily bulbs I got on sale at Bluestone. Finish gathering and drying seeds I'm saving. Move a shrub that was planted a couple of years ago and is obviously NOT dwarf. LOL Gather the pears before the deer decide they're ripe enough to eat.

Hart, I have a little easier method of dividing my plants that you might want to try. Instead of digging up the huge clump I take a cheap serrated knife with a nice size blade, it has some flex to it also. And cut right through the clump,sort of like a pie. I use a garden fork to pry up the sections I want to remove. And leave the portion in the ground I want to keep and put compost were the rest of the plant was removed. I find the plant recovers nicely.

My back just can't take digging up the whole plant.

Chris

Both were too deep to cut with a knife. I ended up chopping the phlox into sections with the shovel because it was so huge, but couldn't get leverage where the sedum was located to do that with it.

I'm completely removing both from the beds where they were planted and moving the divisions to other beds.

Wow, Hart they must have been some huge plants. How long have they been growing there. And what were you feeding them?

The sedum had been there for several years, but the phlox were only planted three years ago. I'd already cut off some small clumps around the edges to plant in another bed earlier this spring.

I feed everything with Plant Tone about once a month starting in early spring, a couple of sprayings of high phosphorus fertilizer for root growth and a couple of sprayings of Ironite over the season.

The phlox are Robert Poore - very pretty fuschia blooms that are highly scented and bloom for a long time. Pretty resistant to powdery mildew too.