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Index : Miscellaneous Gardening Topics
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- 12. September Gardening Activities - Top
- September is a transition month here in the desert Southwest. Temperatures begin to moderate and gardeners plan and prepare for our upcoming fall planting season. Here are some of the important activities gardeners need to attend to this month:
Help Summer - stressed plants recover by pruning off and dead or dried stems and branches. Cut back just above a healthy side branch or side shoot. Don’t put pruning paint on the cuts, let them heal naturally. Geraniums (Geraniums) should be cut back heavily to stimulate new shoots and encourage Winter flowering. Remove spent blooms on roses and prune lightly to stimulate Fall flowering.
To encourage new growth, fertilize summer-stressed plants with a water soluble plant food. You can also use a timed-release granular fertilizer high in nitrogen to stimulate leafy growth. After fertilizing, continue watering on a regular basis. For container soils that shed water, add a few drops of liquid dishwashing detergent in a gallon of water and slowly soak the area. The detergent will allow the water to be absorbed into the soil. Keep plants well watered until they recover with the cooler temperatures of Autumn.
Plant flowering bulbs later this month, including; Amaryllis (Amaryllis), Narcissus (Narcissus), Gladiolus (Gladiolus), Iris (Iris), Freesia (Freesia), and Ranunculus (Ranunculus). Choose a location with plenty of morning and mid-day sun, but is shaded in the afternoon. Prepare a bed for planting by mixing in plenty of desert or garden compost, composted manure or peat moss. At the same time mix in 2 lbs. of 6-6-6 or similar analysis fertilizer per 100 square feet of bulb bed area. Plant bulbs at the depth and spacing indicated on the package label.
After planting firm soil around the bulbs and water the planting bed thoroughly. Continue watering as needed to keep the soil moist around the bulbs, but not wet! Cover the bulb bed with a layer of organic mulch such as ground wood much, compost or peat moss. This will help hold in moisture and insulate the soil from heat and cold.
Kill Summer annual weeds before they mature. Summer weeds such as Spurge (Spruge), Pigweed (Pigweed) and Puncturevine (Puncturevine) produce an abundance of seeds that disperse to grow a new crop of weeds. By killing them now, before their seeds mature and fall to the ground, you can greatly reduce the population of weeds in your yard and garden.
Annual weeds can be killed by spraying them with a number of weed control produces for broadleaf weeds available at area garden stores. Weeds can also be killed by simply pulling or cutting off the above ground portions with a garden hoe. Unlike perennial weeds, annual types will not grow back from the roots. Just be sure to eradicate these summer annual weeds before they set seed.
Sharpen lawn mower blades dulled by a Summer’s worth of mowing. A dull mower blade tears and frays the grass blades instead of cutting them off cleanly. These shredded tips then dry out, leaving an unsightly brown ting to the lawn.
For best results, sharpening should be done at a hardware store or lawn mower shop. They can provide the proper honing and balancing of the blade, which is important for proper operation of your mower.
Besides making your lawn look better, cleanly cut grass blades loose less moisture than torn blades, keeping your lawn healthier and more vigorous.
Written by John Begeman, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the University of Arizona,
520-626-5161. - Updated: September 3, 2006
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