Fall Clean-Up

04 Nov Fall Clean-Up

Buy.Sell.Create.Dwell

The next few days are supposed to be simply beautiful in Northeast Ohio. Which means, it is a perfect time to assess your yard, and start your fall clean-up! This could be something that you love to do, and find very therapeutic. Or maybe you dread this, hope the snow magically makes all the fall foliage go away, and somehow your yard will look nice and clean in the spring. Either way, we have you covered with some easy tips to help make your fall clean-up as easy as possible.

Supplies.
First things first, have the right supplies. If you don’t compost, lawn bags work great. They are heavy duty, cheap and get the job done. Make sure you have garden gloves. With fallen leaves and heavy rain there are mold spores and gross grimy things all over. Garden gloves help protect your hands. A great trick to quickly cut-down
your perennials, is using an old serrated knife. Just grab your plants from the top and slice away! Finally, a rake makes cleaning out garden beds a breeze.

What to cut?
Now that you are ready, with supplies in hand, it can be tricky to figure out what to cut and what not to cut. Here are a few simple green thumb rules that help take the guessing out of gardening.

• Any annual, pull out and toss.
• Perennials (come-up year after year), cut down to an inch or two. This helps the plants to come back fuller the following spring.
• Do not cut down anything with a woody stem. These plants thrive when you leave the stems for the following year.
• Grasses look great over the winter and should be cut down as the green growth appears in the spring.

Thinking ahead.
Looking at a garden that has been cut-down can be kind of depressing. To add some winter interest, you can leave your Sedum and Astilbe up throughout the fall and winter. This keeps a bit of life in your garden. Cut it down in the spring before it starts to pop-up again. Another current gardening trend is painting your dried Hydrangea blooms red for the holidays. Hydrangea’s are a woody perennial that can be left-up for the winter.

Fall is also great time to plant bulbs that will bloom the following spring. When purchasing bulbs, make sure that you check the package and see what is the best time to plant, based on your gardening zone. In Northeast Ohio, a good gauge is to plant your bulbs right before the first frost. This way the ground is still soft enough to plant, but you will not have a warm snap that starts the growing process.

For more gardening tips, follow us on Pinterest, Buy.Sell.Create.Dwell/Kurtz&Co.

Enjoy the next few days of sunshine and happy fall clean-up!

Sincerely,

Kurtz & Co.