September

• One of the best gardening procedures you can practice is good sanitation. Keep dead leaf debris cleaned up, and thrown away. Fungus and insects overwinter in such debris. Do not put this trash in your compost bin.

• In case you aren’t tired of mowing, overseed your warm season grass with annual rye. Rye will die out when Bermuda breaks dormancy in the spring. Meantime, you will have a nice green lawn throughout the cold weather.

• Take cuttings of your favorite tender bedding plants.

• Time to order bulbs. Try something new this year. The Allium family produces spectacular blooms in early to late spring.

• Take down and clean out birdhouses. Remove old nesting materials. If you do not take down your martin house, dust the inside with sulfur and plug holes for the winter.

• If your garden was not up to expectations this year, perhaps you should consider getting samples and have the soil tested. Look for “How to take a soil sample” elsewhere in the MG web site.

• Begin to reduce the amount of light on tropical plants that have been outdoors. Place in the shade. Be sure to treat for insects before bringing into the house. It might be wise to plunge the pot into a bucket of water for about 30 minutes. This eliminates slugs, ants and roaches that may be hiding in the pot.

• Tree wound paintis no longer recommended. Paints have been shown to slow healing and hide emerging disease.

• Keep feeding the Hummingbirds. These tiny creatures need lots of food to store energy for their long fall migration. They won’t all leave until the last of October.

  Growing wildflowers in your backyard

• Those fields of wildflowers look so pretty as we pass by at 70 miles an hour. Think what they would look like in your yard.

• Growing wildflowers takes a little preparation, a little thought and good bed preparation. Wildflowers can be grown in the sun, dry shade, moist shade, desert conditions and woodland conditions.

• Native plants dug in the wild very rarely survive. If one diggs whole plants, conservation of this sometimes rare resource is rapidly depleted. However, collecting a few seeds does little to interrupt nature’s balance.

• Prepare your bed as you would for any garden. A good loam tilled to a fine texture makes a good start. Buy or collect wildflower seeds that are native to this area. Native seeds are heat and drought tolerant. If you have a shady spot, select seeds for either dry or moist shade.

• Mix sand with very small seeds for even distribution. Sow seeds directly on the soil. Do not cover very small seeds. Rake larger seeds lightly into the soil. Soak with a fine spray. Keep seeds moist for 4/5 weeks. A light covering material will hide seeds from the birds.

• Native wildflowers for a sunny spot include: blue flax, coreopsis, Coneflower, some poppies, larkspur, dwarf cornflower, primrose, gallarida, daisy and pinks. For a long blooming period, choose seeds that flower from early spring through late summer.

• There are several good books that identify wildflowers and some discuss their culture. Look for them in your library or at the Garden Center Library. When you learn which flowers you would like to see in your garden, it will be easy to find the seeds.

• Once established, wildflowers require much less maintenance than some other cultivated plants. Most annuals will re-seed and do not require as much cultivation or water. If you decide to go “wild” you may be surprised at the beauty of your native flowers, and will surely be pleased with a less demanding garden.

Contact the Master Gardeners at the Tulsa County Extension for more information.