Fall is a good time to plant. The pleasant weather tempts one to be outside. Moisture conditions are usually good. Should spring planting be delayed by cold, wet weather, many valuable weeks of growing time are given to the plants if they have been planted in the fall.
Of course, for the gardeners like me who habitually bite off more than they can chew in the spring, fall planting is a lifesaver. The transplanting and dividing you can do, and the new plants you can put in now, will save that much time next spring when everything happens at once.
Roots Continue To Grow in Winter
The perennial plants you put in now have time to get established, ready to start into active growth next spring. While foliage may be cut down soon by frost, the roots go right on growing, especially during mild periods in winter.
This they cannot do in nursery winter storage rooms. The temperature of the soil in autumn is warmer than the air aboveground, and this favors root growth at a time when little strength is used for top growth.
The Keys To Successful Fall Planting
What you can safely plant in the fall depends greatly on the local climate. The longer the winter season and the colder the minimum temperatures of a place, the less likely are chances of success with fall planting. Good practices regarding timing, watering, and mulching help make the fall planting of perennials a successful venture.
Do fall planting as early as you can get the plants. The same principle applies to transplanting within your garden — do this as soon as time permits. Here are some favorite hardy perennials which can be successfully transplanted in the fall:
Shasta daisies, creeping and summer-blooming phlox, myosotis (forget-me-not), irises, peonies (fall is best for them), pyrethrum, lamb’s-ears (Stachys lanata), veronicas, delphiniums, daylilies, heucheras, hostas, pachysandra, cerastium, columbines, violas, bleeding-hearts (these prefer fall planting),
Mertensia or Virginia bluebells (also prefer fall planting), baptisia, periwinkle (Vinca minor), hardy ferns, hardy candytuft (iberis), trillium, lily-of-the-valley, bloodroot, monarda, platycodon, the August-blooming hardy amaryllis (Lycoris squamigera), eremurus (foxtail lily) and alliums.
Fall is a good time to plant these perennials, also: primroses of all kinds, the hellebores (Christmas and Easter roses), hollyhocks (try the new Powerpuff series), Doronicum caucasicum (for yellow daisy flowers at tulip time), English daisies (Bellis perennis), foxgloves, sweet Williams, and hybrid clematis.
Plant Oriental Poppies Now
Last, but so important they deserve special mention are the Oriental poppies—available in varieties with elegant pastel coloring, or brazen and vibrant orange-red. They do best when transplanted during their autumn growth. This extends from early August into October.
The newer hybrids are one of the best investments you can make for a perennial border. In my garden, and others, there are Oriental poppy varieties.
Transplants Need Moisture
Next in importance after the timing of fall planting is watering. Anything that has been parted from its soil surroundings has suffered a shock and has lost some of its roots. Encourage the plant to send out new roots as quickly as possible, thus helping it to become established before the soil freezes.
As most gardeners know if they would stop to think about it, the usual way to encourage rooting is by providing moisture and lots of it, and that is one of the secrets of fall planting. Keep your new plants watered.
Never let them want water, or precious time will be wasted. And keep up the watering until frost takes over. Even things that are entirely underground (daffodils and lilies, for example) will profit from the watering.
Good Advice About Mulching
The third key to successful fall planting of perennials lies in mulching. This is done to keep the underground parts of the plant growing as long into the winter as possible and to prevent untimely thaws. Hay, leaves, dead plant tops, brush—all make acceptable mulch. Use common sense.
Do not use something fine and packable such as peat moss on top of perennial plant tops like those of Oriental poppies and primroses. Rather, for these, use something light and airy like pine branches or hedge trimmings. A plant smothered is just as dead in the spring as one heaved out by frost. Use the peat, instead of over bulb plantings, like lilies.
Another point about mulches is that they are best put on AFTER, not before, the winter’s opening hard freezes. Since mulch is a form of insulation, it stands to reason that it keeps the heat in the ground as well as the cold out of it.
Some damage from sudden early freezes might be lessened if the ground under a shrub is open to release heat at that critical time. Perhaps you have seen examples of unmulched shrubs that survived such catastrophes better than mulched ones. I have.
When a woody plant has gone dormant, under the sedation of several sharp freezes, it is time to put on the thick mulch.
44659 by Olga Tiemann