By Claudette Sims, Halton Master Gardener
Rethink
This is a great time to rethink your garden design. Add keystone plants that support biodiversity. Add a variety of flower shapes and colours and strive for continuous bloom across the seasons. Create appealing structural layers by adding native grasses, perennials, sedges, evergreens, shrubs, and trees. Garden with plant communities that match your particular sun/soil/moisture conditions. Grow Native! has lots of garden designs to inspire you!
Perennials
Divide or transplant spring and early summer flowering perennials, e.g., iris, peony, phlox, native wood poppy, and Canada anemone as the weather cools. Soak the area around the plant the day before to make digging easier. Water the new divisions well into the fall. Other perennials can be transplanted or divided if needed when flowers fade.
Large drifts of plants will attract and support more pollinators than single stems.
— Halton Master Gardener Claudette Sims
Veggies
Remove plants that have stopped producing and sow the bed with a “green manure“ cover crop such as winter peas or annual ryegrass. Seed cool-loving crops such as spinach, radishes, pak choy, and mustard greens. When the weather cools, gather ripening fruit such as tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. Leave veggies such as leeks, onions, lettuce, broccoli, and rapini until needed; they can withstand light frost. Gather seeds from ripening crops such as dill, peas, peppers, and tomatoes for next year.
Pests
During garden clean-up, leave some stems of kale, broccoli, or other brassicas as winter food for hungry rabbits; doing so may reduce damage to valuable ornamentals during the cold months.
Houseplants
Transition houseplants to a shadier location and monitor weather forecasts. If temperatures fall below 10°C, bring them inside. Read about how to bring in plants, not problems, on our Halton Master Gardeners website.
Lawn
Choose a rainy day to overseed the lawn, then cover seeds with a top dressing of fine compost or manure. Half the height of the blades of grass should still be visible. Fall feeding with a slow-release mineral or organic fertilizer will increase root growth for an early spring green-up. Dig or cut off weeds at ground level. Rake fallen tree leaves into flower beds. Landscape Ontario has more great lawn care suggestions.
Diseased foliage
Prune out and remove any diseased foliage. Dispose of diseased plant material in the garbage. Removing branches to improve air circulation can help reduce the spread of disease.
