Don’t Forget To Do Your Monthly Garden Chores

This September and October is a great time to check on your citrus and vegetable plants.

August 

Watch for damage to your lawn from sod webworms. You’ll first notice rapidly thinning patches; a closer look reveals the grass blades appear to have been chewed. Spot-treat damaged areas with a lawn insecticide specified for use on sod webworms.

Give your citrus trees their last dose of fertilizer for the year, to give the new growth a chance to harden off before
cold weather.

If you fertilize any later, you’re risking damage to new growth from a potential early freeze.

Your summer vegetable garden has probably produced all it’s going to. Remove plant debris, which can harbor insects and disease, and get a soil test done to see whether you need to add nutrients. Cover your cleaned bed with mulch and go shopping for seeds to plant in September.

September  

Once the weather begins to cool, plant seeds for fall vegetables such as beets, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, greens and turnips.

Start cool-weather herbs from seed on a covered porch. The late summer sun is too strong to plant them in full sun, which they will need later to keep going through winter.

Planting in pots makes it easy to move them when the time is right.

Prune shrubby perennials that are looking puny and fill in with new plants that will bloom through fall, including plumbago, firebush and pineapple sage.