Fall Harvest

 

Fall Harvest

 

It’s almost pumpkin spice time! Regardless of if the weather cooperates with our #fallvibes or not, moving into the autumn months is one of my favorite times of the year. Maybe it’s the new school year, but I’ve always associated this time of year with new starts, new beginnings and potential. It’s also one of my favorite times of year as a gardener. With that in mind, for those with plants on the brain, there are three areas to focus on for the upcoming months: cleaning up your garden, replanting outside, and making sure you are well stocked on houseplants for the winter months to come!

 

Fall and early winter months are ideal times for getting your ‘garden house in order’. Think of it as spring cleaning…only in the fall, and you know, in your garden! This is the time of year we clean up our little nursery, as well as our clients gardens. Prune, round up leaves and other debris (compost ‘em but don’t let them rot in beds!) bring in some fresh soil amendments, and do some general ‘sprucing up’.

 

Rudbeckia, poppies and salvias are your ‘standard cottage garden’ plants to put in the ground this time of year, setting up your garden for guarantee blooms in the months to come. Hardy and tough, these are great additions, and do well when planted in the fall and early winter months.  Plus, these plants will continue to show up in your garden year after year: let poppies go to seed, and rudbeckias and salvias get cut back in the winter so that they can look stunning in the spring.

 

Looking for some indoor plant ideas? Indoor plants aren’t as dependent on seasons as outdoor plants are, though availability does differ based on the time of year. If you are looking to bring some blooms indoors, check out the trusty “Christmas Cactus”, technically a cactus native to Brazil called “Schlumbergera”. They bloom near the end of fall and start of winter, and are a great way to bring some cherry blooms indoors! We love Caladiums, too – though they don’t bloom, they provide great color and are easy to grow.

 

Are you in the ‘I want to grow houseplants but I don’t know where to start” club? There are three plants that you can’t go wrong with. Sansevieria (commonly referred to as ‘snake plant’) comes in all sorts of cool colors and shapes. This plant is super forgiving (couldn’t we all use some more forgiveness?): they are easy to grow, can tolerate a wide range of light conditions and doesn’t need much water. That description could also apply to the Pothos family, too – we love them for their color, hardiness, and Instgramability! Rounding out our list of ‘you can totally grow this indoors’ would be the always popular Philodendrom family: lush, happy, and easy to grow, they are a great addition to your houseplant family. Worried you don’t have enough sunlight in your place to grow houseplants? You can get a “grow light” that replicates the spectrum of light provided at the sun, and you don’t need a special light fixture – there are bulbs available that fit standard lamps, we have seen them at Home Depot for less than $5!

 

We hope you get a chance to enjoy the changing season and all the promise that comes with it. We’ll be having a garden party as part of Country Roads annual Holiday Open House on Saturday November 6^th – join us!

 

Enjoy the pumpkin spices and the sunshine!