September Gardening Tips

& Maintenance Reminders

Back to Monthly Tips    Back to Home

Click on one of the Bookmark Links Below

to View Tips Categories

Lawn  /  Landscape  /  Annuals & Perennials  /  house plants

garden  /  pest control

lawn

• Keep Mower blades sharp....frayed grass blades cause rapid spread of disease

• Water lawns only in the morning or afternoon and avoid late evening watering. September is known to be one of the drier summer months and it's good to kick start your lawn growth and activity for the fall season by providing adequate water.   

• Avoid leaving excessive clippings on the lawn's surface after mowing.

• To gain the greening and lush benefits of fertilizer applications, utilize Ironite to apply to the lawn area as a nutrient supplement. . Click Here to visit Ironite's website for detailed information on it's many benefits and features.

• Apply Natural Guard's Soil Activator to your to promote a host of benefits to your lawn's overall health. For more detailed information on this product and it's many benefits, click on "Lawn Info"  on our "Lots of Gardening Info" page on this website.

• Dalis Grass is on the rise this summer due to the excessive rainfall that's been occurring. Spot spray with Fertilome Dallis Grass / Crabgrass killer to eliminate weed grasses in the lawn. Remember, this products needs to be applied twice appx. 7-10 days apart to fully kill out these weedy grasses. Also, avoid applying in hot days over 85 degrees and pick non rainy days. Early mornings are a great time to apply the solution to weed grasses.

• Do not mow lawns low due to excessive drying and scalding common during the hot seasons. Fescues prefer to be mowed at a height of 3-3.5".

• As you prepare for fall, begin to plan on your next fall lawn feediing utilizing a well balance lawn fertilizer such as Fertilome's Lawn Food plus Iron or as an added benefit, consider applying Fertilome All Season Lawn Food including a pre-emergent herbicide designed to provide you a long lasting control of germinating braodleaf and weed grasses seeds. One of the most important benefits of this pre-emergent  'Barricade' is it's prevention of germinating fall cool season weeds, such as Chickweek,  that germinate in the fall and survive the winter months to begin their reign in your lawn next year.

landscape

• The fall season has a wide variety of pruning chores at hand. Shrubs should be managed to keep shapes appropriate for the fall season as well as to ensure that you have your shrubs going into next year's growth season well manicured.

• On your fall coloring shrubs such as Dwarf Nandina and Euonymus Burning Bush, manage selective pruning only to ensure plenty of fall foliage for that showy show of fall leaf color. Manage all heavy pruning early next spring on these varieties.

• If you haven't fertilized your landscape trees and shrubs since spring, fall is a great time to manage your next overall fertilizing to enter fall's growing season. Utilize one of Fertilome's many quality well balanced fertilizers. Click here to view a wide variety of Fertilome's products that we commonly suggest to our customers. Fertilome Tree & Shrub food, Azalea food, and Gardener's Special is three of our most common fertilizers.

• Fertilize your roses monthly with Fertilome Rose Food to promote continual growth and flowering. There is still plenty of blooming season left on most roses, so manage any pruning as needed to keep your roses active and blooming for the next 6 weeks or so.

• Weed control can be easy if you prepare yourself with the right products. A small 1-2 gallon compression pump sprayer and some Fertilome KillZAll is all you need to take control of your landscape weed problems. Fertilome Kill-Z-All is a non selective herbicide which is safe to use around your trees, shrubs, and perennials, as long as you don't spray it directly onto their foliage. This product doesn't harm or damaged plants thru the soil, but has to work thru the foliage of a weed or grass to kill it's entire root system. It's the most effective when you start early and manage a weekly walk thru of your garden to spray grassy and broadleaf weeds when they are small. If managed regularly, you'll find your time invested in weed control to be minimal. Same herbicide as Round Up, but costs less!

• Watering is a must this time of year. Unless you have a landscape irrigation system that is automated, you need to manage frequent irrigating to your home's landscape. Many homeowners feel that this is a chore at hand, but make it your inspection and garden involvement time where you can analyze what's occurring in  your garden. There's nothing better than hand manual watering by utilizing a water hose and hose end nozzle. This type of watering allows you to direct the water exactly where you want it and is more water conservative than broad coverage sprinklers. When watering with sprinklers, most people simply do not water enough and do not get the deep saturation needed directly at each plant's root system.

• As you approach the fall season, look for any needed landscape renovations possibly utilizing some new shrub or tree additions. Fall is a great time to install trees, shrubs, and ground covers due to the lower temperatures and three seasons of root growth in fall, winter, and spring before the next hot summer months. It's well known to gardener's that fall is one of the best times to plant.

• When installing new plants or when you simply need to revive and strengthen a particular week tree or shrub, apply Fertilome Root Stimulator to your tree or shrubs root system to enhance root growth and overall health and stability.

annuals & perennials

•  Fall chores can include cutting back of summer scorched or fizzled out for the season as well as the removal of  annuals that have began declining in their performance. Many perennials are going dormant such as Daylilies, Rudbeckia, Coreopsis, and can be simply cut off to remove that brownish looking foliage.

• Apply Fertilome Gardener's Special water soluble fertilizer to your fall seasonal flowers to promote continued heavy blooming throughout the fall season.

• For those flower beds not mulched and suffering from summer's recent heat, mulch flower beds with Pine Bark Humus for summer heat and moisture control to minimize watering.

• Consider your fall seasonal color options utilizing Mums, Asters, Ornamental Kale & Cabbage, and of course, the popular fall Pansies. The combination of these great fall color selections can add wondrous colors to your home's landscape.

• For your fall seasonal flowers or for your summer flowers that are still looking good and providing lots of color, keep them hopping and blooming heavy with regular applications of water soluble Fertilome Gardener's Special fertilizer.

• Remove old Hosta & Daylily bloom stalks this time of year.  While you deadhead the old blooms, simply cut off any of hte old bad looking foliage for a cleaner fall look.

house plants

• It's common for house plants to develop insect problems when residing inside the home or when temporarily placed in outdoor conditions on porches or patios. Treat your house plants with a insecticide, such as Safer Killing Soap or Fertilome All Pupose Indoor/Outdoor Insect Spray. Both of these are safe and easy to use around the house. Also, ask about Fertilome's Insecticide granules to place in the soil area of houseplants highly prone to scale such as Weeping Fig or Ficus trees.

• House plants need to be fertilized monthly during the spring thru fall months. We recommend utilizing Fertilome Gardener's Special water soluble fertilizer as an all purpose fertilizer for those house plants you're wanting to flourish. 

• Don't hesitate to prune houseplants removing damaged or diseased foliage and to prune to make more compact and to control size. Follow up pruning and clean up chores with Fertilome Gardener's Special fertilizer.

garden

• A great all purpose fungicide to use for controlling various types of diseases in the garden is Fertilome's Lawn & Garden Fungicide.

• Use Fertilome Gardeners Special as your garden's #1 fertilizer. One of Evergreen's favorite recommendations for your garden as well as perennials, annuals, and flowering shrubs. Click here to view our page of recommended Fertilome products.

• Experience Fertilome's Air-O-Matic Sprayer that's one of the easier and most versatile hose end sprayers that you'll ever use. Simply put concentrated insecticides or fungicides into it's container and turn the dial to the proper teaspoon or tablespoon mark and spray away. No wasted concentrated chemical. Simply spray and store away for quick use and calibration.

• If your garden is congested with a multitude of weeds and unwanted grasses, utilize Fertilome Kill-Z-All which is a herbicide that you can spray over the surface of the unwanted grasses adn weeds to kill out without harming the soil as you prepare for upcoming vegetable crops.

• An important first step is to determine when to turn the soil. If the soil is still sticky and clumps together, then tilling may cause soil compaction, drainage, and aeration problems later on in the season. If the soil crumbles when you work it around in your hands, then it's okay to till. Till the soil once, turning under any cover crop or residues left from the fall. Then add manure, lime, and other organic matter and work in well to avoid harming the tender roots of plants as they grow. Chemical fertilizers, that your soil test also may recommend, are best applied right before planting. Chemical fertilizers work quickly, but if they are applied too early in the season they may leach out of the soil and lose their effectiveness.

• Keep those tomato plants staked and thinned to control excessive growth habits which cause over crowding. Thin out and remove excessive growth suckers.

• Apply Fertilome Yield Booster & Blossom End Rot  spray to tomato and pepper plants to promote improve yield & to prevent blossom end rot on tomato and pepper at time of ripening.

• Apply Fertilome Tomato & Pepper Set spray to tomato and pepper plants to improve blossom set for increased tomato and pepper production. 

Pest Control

• For a one time treatment of Lacebug, Scale, Aphids, Adelgids, and other various ornamental pests on Azaleas, Rhododendron, Holly, Euonymus, and other evergreens and flowering shrubs, apply a soil drench of Bayer Tree & Shrub Advanced Insect Control insecticide that provides a year of system insect control.

• Utilize Fertilome  all purpose Kill-A-Bug II insect control for a broad range of garden and ornamental pest. This utilizes a natural derived insecticide called pyrethrins that provides a quick kill of various insects without worrying about dangerous toxic non-organic insecticides.

• Apply Fertilome Kill-A-Bug II insecticide granules to lawn and landscapes to control unwanted soil insects such as spiders, ants, crickets, and other troublesome pests.

• Apply Fertilome Carbyl liquid garden insecticide formally known as liquid Sevin. A safe use insecticide that can be used on garden plants for up to 7 days from harvest.

• Borer control is best to be prevented other than cured once borers have entered the tree. Over the counter insecticides perform limited control to borer infested trees, so treat your landscape trees & shrubs highly prone to shrubs with Bayer Advanced Tree & Shrub Insect Control.  Trees & shrubs that should be considered for preventative treatment are the following......(Trees) Dogwoods, Flowering Cherries, Birch  (Shrubs) Rhododendron & Otto Lukens Laurel.

• Apply Fertilome Kill-A-Bug or or Fertilome Malathion to kill out the beginning stages of bagworms on Junipers, Cypress, Hemlocks, Arborvitae, Crytomeria, and other forms of evergreens.

• Spider mites are a common hot season insect that's more difficult to manage than many other garden insects. They thrive on various broadleaf and coniferous evergreens such as Laurel, Hemlocks, Holly, etc. Spray Ortho Orthonex insecticide containing a systemic insecticide required for the tougher controlled spider mites. For control of infestations, make several repeated applications on 2 week intervals.

Back to Monthly Tips    Back to Home

Back to Home