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fall garden chores

Shrubs for Fall Planting: Choose Formal or Informal!

October 25, 2021

Fall is a great time to plant shrubs, and there are so many choices! One way to narrow your selection and save yourself some frustration in future years is to picture where you want to plant your new shrubs and how you want them to look.

Roles for shrubs
Shrubs can play many roles in your landscape. These include:

  • Foundation plantings
  • Screens for privacy—or to block a view
  • Hedges to define areas within your property or to define property boundaries
  • Serve as a woody groundcover
  • Source of fall color, flowers, and/or fruit
Formal foundation planting with conifers
Informal hydrangea hedge
Shrubs serving as a woody groundcover on a slope
Beautyberry with fall color and fruit
Formal planting of evergreens

Considerations
Once you’ve decided where you want to plant shrubs and for what purpose, consider how they’ll look before you choose. As you think about landscapes you admire, you’ll likely notice how formal or informal they look. Shrubs are often a good indicator of formality.

  • In formal landscapes symmetry and geometric shapes are the rule—shrubs are typically pruned to have clean lines, whether rounded or angular.
  • In informal landscapes, shrub forms are left to more natural shapes.
Improper pruning decreases the number of flower buds

This may seem an unusual first step in choosing a shrub, but the desired appearance of your shrub may affect several aspects of your choice:

  • If your shrub is evergreen or deciduous—most shrubs that take to shearing are evergreen rather than deciduous
  • If your shrub flowers or fruits you will typically want a less formal shape because shearing may remove flower buds—and prevent the flowers and/or fruit that follow—one exception is if you espalier fruit trees to shrub-size plantings (see “Specialty pruning” section in General Pruning link below)
  • The distance you plant your shrubs from structures or other plantings—shearing will limit height and perhaps width of your shrub, depending on if your shrub is planted as a specimen or in a hedge.
Many holly species can be pruned to formal shapes


Choices!
For formal shrubs, think typically evergreen and smaller-leaved. Many dwarf and smaller conifers will grow into pleasing shapes and stay small with little pruning. Although boxwoods are the classic selection for shearing, the devastating appearance of boxwood blight makes this a riskier choice. Some of the evergreen hollies (Ilex spp.) are suitable replacements:

  • Inkberry hollies (Ilex glabra) are native to NC, slow-growing, and tend to grow in a rounded shape that requires little pruning. There are dwarf varieties that grow only to 3 feet tall, and the species typically tops out at 5 to 8 feet.
  • Yaupon hollies ( I . vomitoria) are also NC natives, suitable for shearing, but faster growing, larger, and less hardy—only to USDA hardiness Zone 7a, so not suitable for colder parts of Buncombe County.

Note that Japanese hollies (I. crenata), which tolerate extensive pruning and are often used for topiaries, is an invasive plant and has been reported along the Blue Ridge Parkway in Buncombe County.

For informal landscapes, both evergreen and deciduous shrubs can provide a variety of sizes, shapes, colors, and seasons of interest. In addition to many varieties of hydrangeas and viburnums—some of which are evergreen—there are many lesser-known shrubs that are excellent choices for WNC landscapes. A few that are also native include:

  • American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) has arching branches, is 3 to 8 feet tall and 3 to 6 feet wide. Small flowers attract pollinators in late spring/early summer and distinctive purple berries and yellow foliage make this shrub a stand-out in fall. Some varieties have white or pink berries; all beautyberries are attractive to birds.
  • Carolina allspice/Sweetshrub (Calycanthus floridus) forms rounded shrubs 6 to 12 feet tall and wide with fragrant, showy red flowers in spring are visited by pollinators. Unusual seedpods form in fall.
  • Red chokeberry (Aronia arbutifolia) is typically vase-shaped, 6 to 10 feet tall and 3 to 5 feet wide. It has four-season interest, with white flowers in spring that attract pollinators, shiny green leaves in summer, attractive red fall foliage and red berries that feed birds and mammals, and exfoliating bark during the winter.
    Sweetshrub flowers in early summer
    Red chokeberry has beautiful fall foliage and berries

Planting
Now is the time to plant! Autumn planting encourages strong root growth—cooler temperatures and fall rains make for lower maintenance, too. Give your shrubs a great start by digging a planting hole that is only as deep as the root ball, but 2 to 3 times as wide. Backfill with existing soil rather than other materials. Mulch lightly, keeping the mulch away from the stems, and keep well-watered throughout the winter months. Enjoy!

Article by Debbie Green, Buncombe County Extension Master GardenerSMVolunteer

 

For more information:

Planting and caring for shrubs: https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/extension-gardener-handbook/11-woody-ornamentals

Pruning trees and shrubs: https://chatham.ces.ncsu.edu/2015/02/pruning-trees-and-shrubs-2/

General pruning: https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/general-pruning-techniques

Landscape design: https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/extension-gardener-handbook/19-landscape-design

 

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Categories General Gardening, Shrubs Tags fall garden chores, garden planning, landscape planning, shrubs

What NOT to Do in the Garden

November 22, 2019

Frost has left your yard looking kind of dead. You hear the neighbors blowing leaves and see them busily tidying up—you feel guilty that you’re going out for a hike or sitting inside dreaming of next spring rather than doing yardwork. But you may be doing your landscape a favor by doing less!

Leaves that need to be raked, bagged or not ?

What to do with leaves?
Do you really need to rake up and dispose of leaves?
Leave them! In many cases, you can simply leave them where they fall: in wooded areas, under trees or shrubs, on your vegetable garden, flower beds—in fact, almost anywhere but a lawn, leaves can act as a mulch and eventual soil enrichment.
• Move them where needed. If the leaves are constantly blowing back onto your lawn, or are matting and smothering groundcovers or small plants, move them to other areas where they can break down in peace.
• Shred them with a shredder or lawn mower. Shredding will help leaves stay in place and break down more quickly. Using a mulching mower on your lawn before leaves get too deep will save you from raking there, too.
• The bottom line: If you must rake, save your leaves in a compost pile or in an unobtrusive area of your yard to spread back on your planting beds once they break down.

What about leaf blowers?
If you must move leaves around, consider that these concerns—Electric or gas blowers may:
• Harm beneficial insects, small animals and their habitats
• Damage plants and shrubs
• Create noise and air pollution.

What about pruning?
With the exception of diseased or damaged wood, leave pruning shrubs and trees until late winter—or immediately after bloom in the case of trees and shrubs that bloom on “old” wood.

Evening primrose_Oenothera biennis_seed pods_Andreas Rockstein_CC BY-SA 2.0_Flickr
Consider leaving seed heads for awhile.

What about annual and perennial plants?
Although you may be tempted to cut everything back in the interest of neatness, consider leaving dried seed heads for winter interest, self-sowing, and feeding the birds—at least until the seeds are gone or stems start to break down. One exception, of course, is if plants seed so aggressively that they become nuisances. Consider removing such plants and replacing them with more desirable alternatives.

Enjoy your break from yardwork!
Take time to reflect on what is working well in your garden and what needs rethinking. How does your yard look at this time of year? Does it have good “bones” that make it attractive in all four seasons, or do you need to consider adding some new plants that look good in fall or winter? Do you need to remove failing or overgrown trees or shrubs? Is there too much lawn? You still have time to plant this fall—until the ground is frozen—or start planning for next year!

Take time to evaluate your landscape.

Article by Debbie Green, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer

For more information about fall planting:

https://chatham.ces.ncsu.edu/2017/09/fall-is-the-best-time-to-plant-trees-and-shrubs/

 

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Categories General Gardening Tags compost, fall garden chores, freeze, mulch, pruning, winter garden chores

What to Know Before You Buy That Grass Seed for Your Lawn

September 7, 2019

Is your lawn in need of replacing or repairing? Here in Western North Carolina, we recommend using cool season grasses—and August 15 to September 15 is the best time to plant!

Grass Seed

Seeding after these dates increases the chance of failure caused by winter injury. If you don’t accomplish seeding cool-season grasses in the fall, your best alternative is mid-February to early March.

Recommended grass species:

Tall fescue, Kentucky bluegrass, perennial ryegrass, and fine fescues—such as creeping red, chewings, and hard fescue—are cool-season perennial grasses used for lawns in the mountains. These grasses perform best in spring and fall and have a tendency to show signs of stress in the summer. Recommended rates of seeding for these grasses for new lawns/reseeding are between 1.5 to 2 pounds of seed per thousand square feet for Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass and 6 pounds per thousand square feet for tall fescue.

 Understanding the label:

Grass Seed Label

Much like a label on pesticides you purchase, the label on a bag of grass seed provides invaluable information about:

  • The seed variety or varieties: In the example given, ‘Grand Slam GLR’ is the variety of perennial ryegrass, ‘Midnight’, ‘Everest’ and ‘Bewitched’ are the varieties of Kentucky bluegrass, and ‘Radar’ is the variety of chewings fescue.
  • Purity: Purity is the percent by weight of each seed component (variety or species) in a mixture and is a measure of “seed quantity.” In the example given, 24.06% is pure ‘Midnight’ Kentucky bluegrass, 19.93% is pure ‘Radar’ chewings fescue, 19.73% is pure ‘Grand Slam GLR’ perennial ryegrass, 19.71% is pure ‘Everest’ Kentucky bluegrass, and 15.63% is pure ‘Bewitched’ Kentucky bluegrass.
  • Germination percentage: Germination is expressed on the seed label as the percentage of pure seed that is capable of growth. Germination declines with age of the seed and therefore seed older than 9 months to 1 year may be less viable than fresh seed. The date when the seed was tested for germination is included on the analysis tag as an indication of freshness and to protect the buyer. Purchase only the freshest seed of the highest purity and germination.
  • Date: The date when the seed was officially tested. It is January (01) 2019, in this example.
  • Other crop seed:Crop seed content is the percent by weight of all seeds identified in the bag that are grown as an “agricultural crop.” These must be specified by name if they exceed 5% of the weight of the seed bag. Look for the lowest possible crop seed content. In this example it is 0.08%.
  • Weed seed: The percent by weight of all seeds in the container that have not been identified as pure seed. In the example, this value is 0.0%.
  • Noxious weeds: Expressed on the label as the number per pound or per ounce found in the seed lot. Weeds classified as noxious can vary by state and are difficult to manage even with proper chemical and cultural practices. In this example, none are specified, which is the best!
  • Inert matter: The percent by weight of all material in the seed container that will not grow. This value should be as low as possible because seed cost is based on bag weight—inert material contributes to bag weight but does not contribute any value in term of seed quality or purity. In this example, it is 0.86%.

Know before you buy!

Reading the label will help ensure that you not only get the best value on the seed you buy but that you will minimize the number of unwanted weeds in your lawn!

Article by Bob Wardwell, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer

 For More Information:

Replacing your lawn:

https://www.buncombemastergardener.org/lawn-replacement-lawn-new/

Carolina Lawns: A Guide to Maintaining Quality Turf in the Landscape https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/carolina-lawns

 

 

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Categories Lawns Tags fall garden chores, fescue grass, Kentucky bluegrass, lawn care, lawns, overseeding, seed label, seeds

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