it is the end of summer and before we know it
fall is going to be upon us there are some simple things that you can do
in your garden and yard space right now to ensure that you have a fantastic fall
and a wonderful spring stay tuned
hey friends welcome to gardening with creekside i am jenny and today we're
just going to have a little chat in the front yard about
things that you can do in your garden in your yard
right now that's going to ensure that you have a gorgeous
fall winter and even next spring and summer so it is no surprise
that it is august in the south and it is hot it is humid
we're all a little weary of the heat and the humidity
and so are our plants so we are obviously standing here in front
of our house in our front yard and one thing that you can start thinking about
right now is your grass because a lot of us
in this area do have fescue grass fescue is a cool weather grass so the
best time to reseed and take care of your grass is in the
fall now if you have hot weather grass
bermuda and zoysia and those kinds of things
you don't care for in the fall you care for it later on in the spring and the
summer but we have fescue one of the things
that you can do right now is you can actually give your
grass a summer revitalizer fertilizer we had to do that actually
for the first time here at the house and the grass
responded beautifully because one of our unnamed children
happened to cut the grass and cut it probably about two inches
below what they were supposed to cut it and they
scalped the grass i mean it was brown it looked horrible jerry about had a
heart attack but with lots of good water and that
summer revitalizer fertilizer it has bounced back and it is gorgeous
you can do that now because it has iron in it and so iron helps green up the
grass it strengthens it because here in a couple of weeks we are going
to cut this grass down really low get rid of the weeds and
we're going to aerate it and plug it with
new um seed so you want to get your root system as
strong as you possibly can so if you want to plant grass fall is
the best time to do it for those cool weather grasses like fescue so
start thinking about that and we're actually going to do an
in-depth video on all the steps that you need to take
to prepare your lawn and exactly how you do that so stay tuned for that but just
be thinking fall if i want to redo my grass that's
the time to do it another thing that you can do right now
is any perennials or annuals that are just looking a little sad and weary go
ahead and clean them up i know we did a video of our day lilies
and so there's this massive hedge that's
actually directly right in front of me and they were absolutely stunning and
gorgeous when they were in full bloom but all those blooms are now those
simple dead looking stalks scapes are what we call them so this is
a great chore for your kids to go to send them outside and have them pull all
the daylily scapes out and then go either throw them away
in the trash or your compost bin or whatever
but by cleaning up your daily lilies and getting rid of all those
scapes it really just tidies everything up and makes it look
very nice so any kind of spent perennials go ahead and trim them up
clean them up and just make them neat and tidy your annuals i know that i have
annuals that are in the ground and contain
containers and they're just sad i mean they're just done
i have some petunias that i have not kept up with it's not the plant's fault
it's jenny's fault and they're looking sad so i am going to
take them out because in my opinion it is far a prettier scene
to have a neat and tidy space with as opposed to dead plants in there
so go ahead and clean them up this is a great time you can go ahead and put out
some fresh mulch you can put out some fresh pine needles
just freshen things up neat and tidy goes a long long way
now if your yard is anything like my yard your annuals may be suffering but
your weeds are not weeds are in all of their glory right
now and that could be a full-time job just
pulling weeds but again having it neat and tidy makes a massive
difference you could have the most minimal
landscape and it'd be neat and tidy and it would be gorgeous
as opposed to having a ton of plants in there
but they're all covered in weeds so a great time to do it is this time we're
right here at dusk this is one of my favorite times to be out in the yard
because it's the end of the day it's quiet maybe your kids are already
in bed or they're watching tv or whatever and you can just kind of
slip outside and have some quiet time outside
or if you're an early bird get up a little bit earlier
go outside spend 30 minutes pick an area that you want to work on
get that area cleaned up then go in get a shower go about your day
and have a fantastic day and you're off to a great start because you feel
accomplished and you've got something done
with all the rain we've been getting lately those weeds are going to come out
a little bit easier and it is far easier to pull a baby weed
as opposed to a ginormous weed so get them while they're young and they will
just come right out of the ground so definitely
take care of those weeds because if you don't and
you let them go to seed then they're going to spread
seeds everywhere and you're going to have even a more massive problem on your
hands so be sure you take care of that now
thinking about fall it is the middle of august and before we know it is going to
be september october november it's it's crazy how time flies these
days but this is the perfect time to be thinking
of do i want to have any new shrubs perennials or trees in my
yard this is the perfect time to start planning and then planting those big
items in your yard because we are in north
carolina and we can plant well into the fall again
september october november even the 1st of december
are great times to plant you plant your trees shrubs and perennials in the fall
that way they can have all winter for their roots to grow and develop because
remember if you come out to the nursery just to
say for example and you buy a hibiscus maybe the
hibiscus is not in full bloom i'm telling you right now
it's not going to be in full bloom and maybe it's starting to look a little
sad it's a little sad because it's that time of year and it has been in all of
its glory and now it's sending its energy
back into its roots so when you're buying those trees and those shrubs and
those perennials you have got to think in the future
i am buying the root system i'm not buying
just the foliage on top i am buying that root system
and when you get that and you take it home and put it in the ground
in the fall it has all winter so that way when it comes back in the spring
the plant is happy it is less stressed when the summer hits with the heat and
it's less work on you because you're not going to have to be out there watering
as constantly as if you were going to plant it in the
middle of the spring or summer so be thinking about that
also one thing that you do not want to do this fall
okay not do not do this this is not the time to prune the majority of
your shrubs so we get people all the time
saying well you know my hydrangea hasn't bloomed for a couple of years or my
camellias never bloom or what's wrong with my gardenias they are just not
blooming and through a series of questions a lot
of times people are pruning these shrubs
in the fall going into the winter so certain types of hydrangeas remember we
did this video about hydrangea 101 and it told you
we told you which ones to prune in the spring and which ones to prune
in the in the late winter and which ones not to prune at all
so some hydrangeas do not need to be pruned at all because they bloom on
old growth so certain hydrangeas your azaleas gardenias camellias
are just among there's more of them but those are kind of the basic ones for us
in the south those all bloom on old growth so
that means if you cut them at any point from
now until when they bloom in the spring you are removing
all of your blooms because their buds their
bloom buds have already been set within the plant and if you go and you trim
that right now you're going to cut off all
your blooms and you're not going to have blooms at all
next year so when in doubt don't touch it
especially if it is a flowering shrub leave it alone
don't touch it and then i guarantee you it will probably have lots of gorgeous
blooms for you in the spring and the summer so that's one thing you
do not want to do but this is just a great time to go
through and be dreaming about um and thinking of projects that you
want to do what is the look that you want for your
garden what is the feel that you want for your garden
and just remember gardening is meant to be fun it is meant to be enjoyable
don't stress about this there are things in life
that cause enough stress on us and gardening should not be one of them
gardening should be fun and relaxing and just a place where you
can go to enjoy and be at peace so don't stress
relax have fun if you have any questions put them in the comments below i will do
my best to answer them but make sure that you like this video
subscribe to gardening with creekside you all have a fantastic day and we
appreciate you so much we'll see you next time bye