David Hillock’s September Gardening and Lawn Care Tips
Landscape:
- Fall Specials: Look out for fall specials at garden centers and nurseries as it’s a prime time for planting ornamentals.
- Spring Bulbs: Choose and purchase spring flowering bulbs as soon as they become available.
- Cool-Season Annuals: Plant cool-season annuals like pansies, ornamental cabbage or kale, snapdragons, and dusty miller when temperatures start to cool.
- Tree Webworms: Monitor and manage any late infestations of tree webworms.
- Twig Girdlers: Control twig girdler insects if you notice many small branches of elms, pecans, or persimmons being uniformly girdled and falling to the ground.
- Tropical Houseplants: Begin reducing light on outside tropical houseplants by placing them under shade trees before bringing them indoors for the winter.
Vegetables:
- Cool-Season Vegetables: You have all of September to plant cool-season vegetables such as spinach, leaf lettuce, mustard, and radishes. Plant rutabagas, Swiss chard, garlic, and turnips by mid-September.
Lawn:
- Fertilizer: Apply the last nitrogen fertilizer of the year on warm-season grasses no later than September 15th.
- Winter Broadleaf Weeds: Control emerging winter broadleaf weeds like dandelions with a 2, 4-D type herbicide.
- Pre-Emergent Control: Apply pre-emergent control for winter-annual weeds (henbit, chickweed, annual bluegrass, etc.) by the second week of September. Note: Avoid treating areas that will be seeded in the fall.
- Bermudagrass to Fescue: Continue the bermudagrass spray program with glyphosate products for areas being converted to tall fescue this fall.
- Seeding Cool-Season Lawns: Seed bluegrass, fescue, or ryegrass in shady areas from mid- to late-September for the best results in establishing cool-season lawns.
- White Grubs: Check for white grub damage this month and apply an appropriate soil insecticide if necessary, ensuring to water the product into the soil.
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