If there’s one task that quietly separates the gardeners who eat home-grown garlic next summer from the ones buying the…
Every October, garden centers roll out their bulb displays and everyone rushes home to jam tulips in the ground the…
Dahlias have been showing off all summer, and if yours are anything like mine, they’re still going strong right now.…
If you’ve walked past a flower bed this week and spotted a cluster of pink or lavender blooms shooting straight…
If there’s one task that quietly separates the gardeners who eat home-grown garlic next summer from the ones buying the sad papery bulbs at the grocery store, it’s this: mid-October, give or take a couple weeks depending on your zone, is go time for planting garlic. Not spring. Spring garlic planting is a consolation prize…
Every October, garden centers roll out their bulb displays and everyone rushes home to jam tulips in the ground the same weekend. I get it, there’s something satisfying about checking a task off the list. But if you plant too early, you’re setting yourself up for leggy, confused sprouts poking up before winter even arrives,…
Dahlias have been showing off all summer, and if yours are anything like mine, they’re still going strong right now. That’s the tricky part. Everything looks fine until one night it isn’t, and a surprise frost turns those gorgeous tubers to mush underground before you even had a chance to save them. Late September is…
If you’ve walked past a flower bed this week and spotted a cluster of pink or lavender blooms shooting straight out of bare dirt, with zero leaves anywhere in sight, you’ve met colchicum. Also called autumn crocus, also (delightfully) called naked ladies, this bulb does the one thing almost no other plant does: it blooms…
If you moved your houseplants outside for the summer, congratulations, they probably look amazing right now. Bigger leaves, better color, that smug “I’ve been on vacation” glow. The problem is that vacation is ending whether they like it or not, and mid-September is exactly when you need to start planning the move back indoors, not…
If your bearded irises bloomed sparse and sad this past spring, or if the clump looks like a tangled mess of woody rhizomes fighting for space, September is basically begging you to fix it. This is the sweet spot window — soil’s still warm enough for roots to establish, but the brutal heat of summer…
