While keeping busy with late summer gardening tasks, take time to appreciate summer’s bounty before we slide into autumn.
Breathe in the early morning fragrance, admire the fruits of your labour and photograph your yard so that you can repeat the good decisions next year and tweak the less successful.
With the chill of autumn coming, it is wise to stop fertilizing roses and perennials because you do not want to encourage lush growth that will not survive the winter’s cold.
Hungry annuals will still appreciate their regular feeding. Continue to deadhead annuals and perennials to encourage an extended bloom season unless you are intending to save seeds for next year. Remember that seeds from hybrid varieties cannot be successfully saved.
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September will be the best time to transplant peonies. Other perennials, shrubs and trees can also be moved in the fall as they enter dormancy.
This month, also take time to admire the neighbouring vistas, join a local garden tour or check out agricultural events across the Prairies. It can be a great learning experience to see what can be grown in your area.
Agricultural societies and garden clubs are holding their bench and flower shows, so you may want to enter your prized petunias, strawberry preserves or broccoli.
Take time to investigate a specialty garden such as the Piper Creek Trial Garden for dahlias south of Red Deer. Regional research stations or universities often offer an open house, plant sale or agricultural field day. In addition, support local farmers markets and U-pick operations.
“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”
— Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting
