We here at Wise Nurseries are excited to bring you the first of many newsletters to come! Our newsletters will keep you posted on seasonal garden and yard tips, along with what’s going on at the Garden Center.
November is the month you will want to prepare for winter in your yard. If you have any perennials, citrus, bananas or tender, tropical plants, mulch them heavily after the leaves have fallen off any surrounding trees, but before the first heavy frost. This way, you don’t have to be worried about cleaning leaves off your freshly spread mulch or pine straw. This method will make life easier for you, especially if you are putting out a large amount of pine straw or mulch to get your place ready for the holidays.
Do not trim your perennials back until they are well frost bit. Keep dead heading your mums as they brown out, and they will continue to bloom until first frost. If you cover them during the first few light frosts (depending on the weather this year), you can keep them blooming until a hard freeze.
As far as pruning evergreen shrubs that are still overgrown, it is a good idea at this point to NOT trim them until spring. Trimming now will promote tender new growth that will get frost bit and severely damaged during a freeze. The prime time to trim deciduous plants and trees will come later in the winter.
If you did not put a time-released fertilizer in the ground when you planted pansies, cabbage and other winter annuals, you will need to feed them at least bi-weekly with a liquid fertilizer such as Miracle Grow or fish emulsion. It is too late in the season to put out granular fertilizers around shrubs and trees. If you have an evergreen that shows signs of malnutrition, you can try giving it doses of liquid fertilizer, but you will get the best results if you wait until spring and give it something much more substantial.
It is not too late to plant winter annuals such as snapdragons, pansies, cabbages and kale. The ground is still warm enough to see good growth before it gets too cold. Remember that these annuals will flower throughout the entire winter. However, the earlier you get them in the ground, the larger they will grow because the ground is still warm.
There is a misperception that spring is the best time to plant, but actually fall and winter is the BEST time to plant hardwood shrubs and trees. The plants are going dormant and therefore they are the LEAST TEMPERMENTAL if transplanted during this time of year. It makes getting them acclimated to their new home less work for you and healthier for the plants. Their water needs are minimal during this time of year, and they will be able to wake up and start to take in their new home come spring.
As far as getting some color in the landscape besides your winter annuals, sasanquas and camellias bloom in fall and winter. (They are technically Camellia sasanquas and Camellia japonicas, but we have shortened them to just “sasanquas” and “camellias.”) Now is a great time to get out to the Garden Center and actually see what the blooms look like. Sasanquas bloom fall to winter and camellias bloom winter to spring. They do like a little shade, or at least a break from the afternoon sun, but if you must plant in full sun, sasanquas will perform better than camellias. If you create a balance of both, then you can have blooms throughout the entire fall and winter.
Other than that, irrigation systems should be running about twice a week at this point. It is VITAL that before the first freeze, you change the starting time to mid-day instead of early morning. Otherwise you might wake up to an “ice land” in your yard. Once we get our first frost, go to once a week or none depending on how much rain we get. If you have any faucet mounted irrigation timers in the yard, you might want to start thinking of taking them off before a freeze comes. You can still manually turn on the drip or irrigation as needed.
We thank you for your subscription to our newsletter. We are excited about the new program, and look forward to keeping you updated and successful in your landscape. At Wise Nurseries, successful customers are a key factor in our business. We want our customers to feel special and have a personal relationship with us as their plant/landscape specialist. After all, your yard is our yard, and our home is your home.
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