The last week of September is the perfect time to dig in and move your plants.
Cooler weather makes working outdoors more comfortable, and fall is the season when trees and shrubs can be moved and added and many summer-blooming perennials such as daylilies, phlox and astilbe divided and shared.
If you have summer-blooming perennials that are past their prime, don’t be shy about cutting them back to ground level and composting their tops. Then decide whether they need to be dug up and divided.
For most perennials such as daylilies, phlox and grasses, you can remove the more vigorous side shoots and toss out the dead, dry center of the plant.
Replant the side growth into soil that has been improved with compost and you’ll see a whole new attitude next spring.
In the vegetable garden, continue to harvest crops, especially those that could be damaged by frost such as tomatoes.
You can harvest green tomatoes to ripen indoors by uprooting the entire tomato plant and hanging it upside down from the rafters of a garage or shed. Tomatoes do not need sunlight to ripen.
Check the blossom-end of each green tomato and if you see a dark, green, star-shaped mark, then the tomato is mature enough to ripen on its own.
The secret to keeping your tomatoes from rotting is to give them good air circulation once you bring them indoors. Do not allow them to touch one another.
Arrange your green tomatoes on a tray or table and harvest them from indoors as they turn red, tossing out any that show brown spots before they pass on their bad habits to the others.
Source: The Olympian
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