It's Labor Day weekend, your cue to go out and buy plants, and not just mothers, who many plant for the color of autumn. Sure, enjoy chrysanthemums, but do more this year.
Mainers usually buy their garden plants before Memorial Day. Reflecting on the lack of enthusiasm on our site last gardening season, we closed all winter and can't wait to get out again. So we go to the nursery, we are immediately drawn to everything that blooms and those are the plants we buy.
However, this buying pattern results in gardens dominated by spring flowering shrubs and perennials. These gardens look boring in September and October. Just before the cooler but still beautiful months, we still have plenty of time to go out and enjoy our gardens.
A very different group of plants, autumn blooms, are now appearing in local nurseries: aster, coneflower and brown-eyed Susan are the most common, but hibiscus, lobelia, ligularia, helenium), helianthus, eupatorium, joe-pye - Weeds (some experts prefer to replace the word "plant" with the less harmful word "grass"), coreopsis, chelon (turtle), actea (sword) and late flowering heuchera, as well as some grasses with attractive flower heads.
Add shrubs like Hydrangeas paniculata grandiflora (PeeGee) and shrubs whose leaves take on bright colors in the fall (like blueberries) and the options are plentiful.
I just listed what I remember from a recent kindergarten visit. You will likely get a longer range on your travels.
Gardeners may be reluctant to buy and plant now, wondering, wait, isn't spring the traditional planting period? Do newly planted trees, shrubs and perennials have enough time to acclimate before the ground freezes and hits the frost?
In fact, fall may be a better time to plant than spring. When the air temperature drops, the soil temperature, which is more important for newly planted specimens, stays warm until the topsoil freezes. Warm soil allows for faster root development. When the spring thaw comes, new plants sprout.
Cooler air temperatures allow the new plants and planter to avoid heat stress.
The following paragraph is marked with an asterisk because climate change has made it difficult to predict precipitation cycles based on the past. But historically, Maine receives beneficial fall rainfall from the remnants of tropical storms landing in the south. And even if that pattern changes, we can at least expect more reliable rainfall than in the summer months.
Another benefit of planting this time of year is that insects and weeds are less likely to disturb new plants.
it's science.Here are two practical reasons for planting in the fall. First, gardeners now have more time, at least before the leaves fall off and need to be cut. Whatever you plant in your garden is now a spring savior.
Secondly, you can often find great deals. Nurseries are eager to sell their stocks and save staff the hassle of safely storing plants and shrubs for the winter and keeping them alive until spring. However, with the horticulture boom caused by the pandemic, many plant species are in short supply. During my late August purchases, only one nursery offered a nursery-level sale on perennials and shrubs, while others offered special prices on only a few species.
We are Mainer natives, read a little, so we took advantage of that discount.
Tom Atwell is a freelance writer who works in the gardens of Cape Elizabeth. He can be contacted at: [email protected]
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