Fall Clean-Up - Six Myths of Autumn Gardening

If you're like most gardeners, you greet the concept of fall yard cleanup with a big groan, anticipating the drudgery and backache you'll encounter when you prepare your yard for winter. While it's true, your garden requires attention this time of year, the key to successfully putting the yard to bed lies in timing and how you prepare, not how hard you work at it. Let's dispel some popular myths.

Sorry, but those leaves are a valuable renewable natural resource in your own back yard. Hang on to them by raking them off your lawn (where they prevent the sunlight from reaching the grass blades, causing yellow or brown patches) and onto your garden beds. By next summer, they will have all but disappeared thanks to earth worms, which come up from underground and pull the leaves down into the soil for feeding. Good-bye fallen leaves, hello nitrogen rich worm castings.

It's important to empty your compost bin this time of year so that you can fill it with excess leaves, spent perennial clippings, frost dead annuals and vegetables, etc. If you filled your composter over the past nine to twelve months, it should be ready for the garden. It may not look like the finely textured dark crumbly stuff you buy by the bag at the garden centre, but if it falls apart in your hand after you give a handful a good squeeze, it's ready to dig into your garden. Don't be concerned if you recognize the odd eggshell or grapefruit seed in your compost; these valuable ingredients will continue to break down in your garden over the winter and spring.

Wrong again. Studies by the Horticultural Department at the University of Guelph in have recently indicated that the application of a slow release nitrogen fertilizer in late fall (i.e. any time during the four weeks prior to the first snowfall) will strengthen the lawn for a fast green up in spring and make the turf more resistant to disease problems. Just as bears eat well before winter hibernation, your lawn could use a good meal before it calls it quits for a long winter rest.

Grass which is allowed to grow in excess of 2 1/2 inches long and stay that way through the winter months is prone to disease and "snow mold" (a white, powdery mildew). Long grass blades mat together and lay horizontally under the weight of snow till spring, when excess moisture causes all kinds of problems. Cut your lawn down to two inches high after it has finished growing for the season.

Perennials are so named because they come back from their roots each spring. But perennials benefit greatly from a four to five inch layer of straw or fallen leaves mounded over the plant before the snow flies. This prevents the inevitable heaving of the root mass from the soil due to the freezing and thawing which occurs in late spring.

If you enjoy the colour annual flowers and perennials bring to your yard through the warm summer months, you will love the addition of colour hardy flowering kale and flowering cabbage bring into the pre-winter months