October is the time to prepare your garden for winter while taking advantage of the cool weather and warm soil to plant, divide and protect. This week, I’m sharing 10 essential gardening tasks to tackle this month, from shielding young trees from deer and preparing frost blankets to planting garlic, spring-flowering bulbs and perennials.
With the first frosts approaching and the growing season winding down, now is your opportunity to get ahead of the work that will help your garden weather the winter and get off to a strong start next spring. A little preparation now can make a big difference later.
I’m sharing 10 essential tasks for your October gardening checklist.
I recognize that while I am in zone 8a, I have listeners from all over. But the things that I am talking about are projects that you should do no matter where you live. It’s just a difference in timing. You’re either going to need to do these things before I do if you live in the northern part of the country, or if you live south of me, you can put it off another few weeks or so.
1. Address Deer Rutting
Deer rutting season takes place during fall, and it’s when bucks may destroy your small-caliper trees. Why? Bucks remove the velvet from their newly grown antlers and mark their territory by rubbing their antlers on the bark of trees —usually trees that are 4 inches or smaller in diameter.
They rub on the trunk from between a foot high to four feet high. And they do some serious damage, to the point that it can kill your tree if they make their way all the way around the trunk, which they often do.
A buck outside my office window. Bucks will rub their antlers against young trees during the rutting season, killing the trees in the process.
When the cambium — the transport system for water and nutrients — is removed all the way around the trunk, the tree dies. Once that’s done, it’s too late. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.
To head off this problem, you should protect the trunks before the rutting season begins. I want you to be proactively ready for this. That means putting protection in place by October 1, if not earlier.
Deer rut damage on a young tree.
I protect young trees using corrugated drainage pipe, the kind that connects to downspouts. It’s not expensive, and you can take it down after the rutting season and reuse it next year.
I slice down lengthwise and pry the pipe open, and I install it around the trunk. The only thing I don’t really like about this is it’s very stiff plastic, and that cut edge is pretty sharp. You don’t want that sharp edge to damage the bark you are trying to protect. To give the pipe more flexibility, score the pipe on the opposite side of the cut.
The pipe should cover the tree from the ground up to about 4 feet high.
Rigid corrugated plastic tubes can be used to protect young trees from deer rutting.
2. Winterize Your Lawn
My lawn is ever shrinking as I add more native plant beds. But for the lawn I still have, I appreciate keeping it up and ensuring the turfgrass is healthy throughout the year.
When you should feed grass depends on the type of grass that you have. The time to fertilize is during the active growth period.
Warm-season grasses include Bermuda, zoysia and St. Augustine. Cool-season grasses include fescue and bluegrass.
The warm season grasses go dormant after the height of summer when things start to cool down. They will turn brown. Meanwhile, cool season grasses may stay green year-round, but the growth will slow down in the wintertime and is most active in spring and fall.
The point of winterizing your lawn, no matter what kind of grass you have, is not to induce new growth. The idea is for the nutrients to fortify the roots so the grass is hardy throughout the winter and those nutrients are stored so when the soil temperature starts to warm up in the early springtime, the nutrients are there to kick the grass into growth.
By providing the nutrients sometime in late summer or early fall, you are providing what the grass needs to store the carbohydrates and the energy so that it continues to work on the roots. The roots are still actively growing even in the colder parts of the year because the soil is still warm, and that’s a good thing.
The growth isn’t being induced if you use a non-burning, slow-release, organically derived source of nitrogen fertilizer. The reason I said all of those terms is that you don’t want a synthetic, soluble fertilizer going down when the grass is going into dormancy. You don’t want to stimulate new growth because that’s not doing your lawn any favors. What you’re looking for is a slow release of the nutrients down in the root level, not a quick release that is going to kick that grass into growth as it’s trying to wind down.
A synthetic fertilizer is almost always soluble, meaning that when it comes in contact with water, it releases its nutrients pretty much all at once, and that’s why you don’t want that.
The roots are still actively growing even in the colder parts of the year because the soil is still warm.
3. Get Frost Blankets Ready
If you’re a food grower and you have a cool-season vegetable garden, you should prepare for frosts so you can extend the growing season.
Cool-season vegetables are frost tolerant, but if it gets too cold, they can be damaged or die back.
Rather than scrambling to prepare on the day that the temperature is going to drop very cold, have your frost blankets ready to go well before they will be needed. Those frost blankets may be out of stock or back-ordered if you wait, and then it will be too late.
Frost blankets are designed to let light, air and water in, and retain some heat. But the thicker the weave or the heavier the frost cloth or fleece, the greater amount of warmth emanating from the soil around your plants is retained. So it’s important that the frost blanket doesn’t contact your plants. It should be suspended above the plants. You can achieve this easily using flexible PVC pipes, in 10-foot lengths, curved into an arch.
Secure the cloth’s perimeter all the way around with rocks or bricks so cold air doesn’t get under. Then roll back the cloth the next morning so the plants don’t overheat.
This will prolong the life of your plants for a greater harvest.
Frost blankets protect your plants from the cold, but they should not come in direct contact with plants. PVC hoops can be installed to keep the cloth above plants.
4. Dig Up Dahlia Tubers
The Dahlia Society recommends that you should dig up your tubers in the fall.
The main reason that you dig up your dahlias is to remove them from the freezing temperature because they can’t handle that much cold. That will rot the tubers.
If your soil does not freeze in the winter, you can experiment with leaving dahlia tubers in place. Though I advise putting down a thick layer of mulch over the soil just to be on the safe side.
A rotted dahlia tuber on the left an an intact tuber on the right.
If you live in a warm climate, an argument to be made for digging them up anyway is because if you leave those tubers in the ground, depending on the variety that you have, they can send up a lot of new shoots.
Each eye on a tuber is a new shoot. If you have too many shoots coming up from the tubers, that can create additional problems. Dahlias are very susceptible to powdery mildew, and if you have too much crowding going on that can exacerbate powdery mildew.
You can simply cut back some of those extra shoots, down to just a couple of shoots per tuber rather than 20. Cut back most of them so that you reduce the competition and all the energy will go into the remaining shoots that you left standing.
If you do dig them up, then you’re storing them. They like a cool environment, but not a cold environment. A cool environment would be like 43 degrees Fahrenheit in a climate-controlled area. Maybe put them in some storage boxes, maybe some plastic dollar store storage boxes with some sawdust or wrapped in newspaper. And then you would bring them out and replant them when the soil temperature is around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and that’s generally around April 15th where I am.
Dahlia tubers are just something special, so digging them up is oftentimes worth the effort to know that you’re going to get those back in the ground, and they’re going to continue to produce the following year.
At a minimum, apply a nice layer of mulch over the top to help keep that soil surface warmer. But digging them up and replanting them would give you more reliable, better blooms the following spring.
The eyes on dahlia tubers will each grow to be a stem.
5. Divide Perennials
If you like free plants like I do, fall is a great time of year for you.
There are two schools of thought on dividing perennials, one that advocates working in the spring and another that says to do it in the fall. I’m in the school that loves to do it in the fall, because that’s when the plants are starting to go dormant.
Hostas, irises, garden phlox, beebalm, shasta daisies and coneflowers are a handful of examples of perennials that can be divided in fall.
This is the perfect time to divide and replant because the stress of summer heat has passed but the soil is still warm. The roots of transplanted divisions will settle right into their new homes, and the tops were going to die back anyway.
Plants dug up in early spring will focus on reestablishing their roots before putting on a show aboveground.
Hostas can easily be divided in fall for free plants.
6. Leave the Leaves
Leave the leaves. It’s a concept that you’ve heard hopefully a lot, and for good reason. I know that we look at leaves falling in autumn, and then we go, “Ugh, I’ve got a big job getting those off the lawn, and bagged up or blown off” or whatever you do with your leaves.
Yes, if too many leaves accumulate on your lawn over the fall and into the wintertime, that can get heavy, and that can create a layer that can do some potential damage to your lawn.
It would take about a two-inch layer of leaves to be something that you might start worrying about. The alternative is you could lightly rake these off or lightly blow them off. But there’s a lot of wildlife that is overwintering in those leaves, namely caterpillars, which is the primary food source for birds come early next spring when they need to feed their babies. They’re getting the vast majority of the protein that is needed for those little chicks from the caterpillars that are overwintering in those leaves.
But it’s not just the caterpillars. It’s lady beetles, lacewings, lightning bugs, lizards, snakes, frogs, turtles. It’s a lot of things. And I love all wildlife, and I would hate for any one of those to be threatened by my careless actions of being really rough with the leaves.
Fall leaves are host to a variety of beneficial insects, including lady beetles.
Just move the leaves to the side if you want to get them off your lawn, and leave the leaves in place. That’s a good compromise.
A few years ago, I took on a mission to go around to the subdivisions near where I live to collect the bagged leaves that landscapers had left at the curb for trash trucks to pick up and take to a landfill.
These leaves were not going to be composted — they were really headed for the landfill. So I rescue these bags and take them to my home and unbag the leaves as well as the beneficial insects inside the bags, including ladybeetles and lacewings — which are known as aphid lions for their voracious appetite for pest insects.
I used to shred a few bags of leaves to make shredded leaf mulch for my vegetable beds. But I don’t even do that anymore because I don’t want to harm the wildlife that I freed from the bags. Instead, I use whole leaves as mulch on my native plant beds.
I couldn’t stretch my arms far enough to get all 350 bags of leaves in this picture, but I think you can see how happy they make me.
7. Plant Garlic
October or November is the time to plant garlic, though here in the Atlanta area, I can get away with planting as late as December and people south of me can wait until January. Dig a furrow and plant cloves 2 inches deep. Apply light mulch like straw. Since the soil is still warm, the cloves will begin to develop roots. Then after the garlic cloves overwinter, they will bulb up as the soil gets warm in spring and summer and will be ready to harvest around late June or July.
After harvesting garlic and allowing the bulbs to cure, set some aside for planting the following year’s crop.
Summer’s garlic is planted in fall.
8. Plant Spring-Flowering Bulbs
A few years ago, I planted a bulb lawn with spring-flowering bulbs. The flowers provide pollen and nectar for insects that are looking for food sources early in the year.
I planted daffodils ‘Tête-à-Tête,’ dwarf iris, Muscari, crocus and fritillary. They don’t all bloom at the same time, but you get a lot of overlap, so you get multiple blooms at once. But generally, the daffodils steal the show.
A bulb auger makes planting holes quickly.
The bulb lawn is gorgeous, and most of these spring flowering bulbs are not attractive to deer.
I used a heavy-duty drill and sturdy auger to make planting holes in the hard red clay soil in the midst of a lot of roots. If your soil is friable, you can use a trowel.
My flowering bulb lawn in spring.
9. Save Seeds from Native Perennials
Hopefully, many of you are getting into planting more native perennials and saving the seed from them, because I am telling you: It is so rewarding.
All of our other ornamental flowering perennials that we have scattered about our yards, they’re usually putting on their shows in the summertime, and then they’re waning. They’re done as we come into late summer and definitely into fall. But many of the native perennial flowers are coming on strong as the other ones are fading away.
Come October or so, their seed heads are drying out, their flowers are done for the most part, and then the seeds are ready to be harvested. Depending on the type of seed head that you’ve got, the seeds can just be tapped out, like the coneflower (Echinacea).
Purple coneflowers are beloved ornamental native plants. Once the flowers are spent, the mature seeds can be easily shaken out of the seed heads.
Photo credit: Brendan J. O’Reilly
Other seed heads, you can cover with organza bags, and when the seeds mature, the seeds will fall off and be contained in those bags until you are ready to collect them.
Organza bags can also be used when blooms are still in their glory to prevent cross-pollination of plants that you want to maintain without genetic changes.
Native seeds in organza bags.
10. Plant!
Fall is for planting because the soil is warm and the air is cool.
There’s no stress on the top growth, and there’s warm soil temperatures to promote the root growth, and that’s the best way to establish that newly planted or transplanted tree or shrub or perennial in October or November or even December. Plus, it’s pleasant to do at that time of year. You’re not killing yourself in the heat.
When planting a shrub or tree, the hole should be two to three times wider than the root ball. The depth of the hole should be not quite the depth of the root ball, so about a third of the root ball is going to be above ground once the hole is backfilled.
The planting hole should be two to three times wider than the root ball.
When you backfill, you’d rather have the water running off the shoulders and away rather than creating a bowl in which all the water is going into that hole and then potentially rotting the roots.
Backfill using native soil, not compost or bagged soil that will promote growth. When adding non-native soil, the roots will enjoy that good fluffy soil and not venture out into the hard, less-fertile native soil. And therefore, as university studies have proven, the plants don’t establish as well because the roots don’t continue to grow out into the native soil.
Water in, then add mulch. Mulch will add warmth to the soil and protection — you never want exposed soil.
I use a shovel handle to help me gauge that I’m not planting the base of a tree or shrub lower than 20-25% above the surrounding soil. I’ll taper the soil away from the trunk, so water will drain away, preventing the risk of drowning roots.
I hope you found my October gardening checklist helpful. If you haven’t listened yet, you can do so now by clicking the Play button on the green bar near the top of this post.
What would you add to the October gardening checklist? Let us know in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Episode 286: Naturalizing Bulb Lawns
Episode 387: Leave the Leaves for Wildlife and the Climate
joegardenerTV YouTube: How to Protect Trees from Deer Rut Damage
Fall Gardening Masterclass – Get access to the webinar replay for $20.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy™: Popular courses on gardening fundamentals; managing pests, diseases & weeds; seed starting and more.
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joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Seed Starting: Everything you need to know to start your own plants from seed — indoors and out.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Beginning Gardener Fundamentals: Essential principles to know to create a thriving garden.
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joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Pests, Diseases & Weeds: Learn the proactive steps to take to manage pests, diseases and weeds for a more successful garden with a lot less frustration. Just $47 for lifetime access!
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Perfect Soil Recipe Master Class: Learn how to create the perfect soil environment for thriving plants.
Slow release organic fertilizer
Clips for securing frost cloth
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