Here is something a little different from a real estate website! We aren’t professional gardeners! But, I myself love gardening. These ideas are from one of my favorite local Wasatch Front gardening stores. Cactus and Tropicals.
They have an area of plants, trees and bushes that are are good to plant here in our area. they also have knowledgeable employees available to ask questions. They sell planters and things for planting in, and specialty gift items that are fun to look at too!
Getting your garden ready tips follow:
- You will wake up to several days of frost by the end of the October. Protect tender garden plants and fruit from light freezes by covering them with blankets, sheets, plastic, or cardboard. Several commercial frost cloths are also available. You just need to keep the moisture off the leaves and the temperature just a couple of degrees warmer. Before a hard frost, when night temperatures will stay at freezing for several hours, harvest tender plants and fruits. Fried green tomatoes can be an especially nice late fall treat; pick, wash, slice, dip in whipped egg, dip in corn meal, and fry in your favorite oil for 1-2 minutes.
- For more hardy plants like root crops, you can leave them in the ground until you are ready to use them. Root crops include carrots, turnips, potatoes, beets, winter radishes, and parsnips. If you remove the greenery and cover them with straw, mulch, or soil you can store them in the ground for another month. For more information on extended in ground storage see the Colorado Extension Service Factsheet.
- Save yourself some spring clean up by removing dead plant debris from annual and vegetable beds after a hard freeze. In areas where tree and shrub roots won’t be damaged, recently frozen vegetation, leaves, and compost can be roto-tilled into the soil.
- This is a great time to plant cool season annuals like pansies and primrose. Warm soils keep the roots growing and cool air keeps them blooming. Hand water in generous amounts after planting and during extended dry periods until established.
- Sow seeds of self sowing annuals like poppies and cosmos.
- Continue planting bulbs such as tulips, daffodils, crocus and others until the ground freezes, usually in November. A general rule of thumb is to plant the bulb two to three times as deep as the widest part of the bulb. If the tulip is 1.5 inches wide, then it should be planted 3 to 4.5 inches deep. Restrain from fertilizing except with bulb food as bulbs are very sensitive to salt damage. Bulb foods have a different chemistry and lower amounts of nutrition that are specifically formulated for bulbs.
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Sources: cactusandtropicals.com, Colorado Extension services
