The Lazy Landscaper

Spring feels like planting season because that's when everything shows up at the garden center.

But fall has some real advantages.

The air is cooler, which reduces some of the stress on new plants, while the soil can stay warm enough for root growth to continue after the weather starts cooling down. Instead of immediately heading into summer heat, a fall planting gets time to work on establishing roots first.

You still need to give the plant enough time before the ground freezes, and fall planting isn't automatically the right choice for every plant or every situation.

But if you've been putting off a tree, shrub, or perennial project because you think you missed your chance once spring ended, you probably haven't.

Sometimes fall is the better time to do it anyway.

One of the easiest ways to change how a lawn performs is also one of the easiest things to overlook: mower height.

A lot of lawns around Montgomery County contain cool-season grasses such as Kentucky bluegrass and tall fescue. These grasses generally perform better when they're allowed to keep some height, especially when summer gets hot and dry.

There's a reason for that. Taller grass provides more shade over the soil and supports a larger root system. Cutting too aggressively puts additional stress on the plant and can leave thinner areas where weeds have more room to establish.

I understand why people cut low. It looks clean and you assume you'll get a little more time before mowing again.

The grass doesn't really care about that part.

Aeration and overseeding are two different jobs, but there's a good reason you often see them done together.

Core aeration pulls small plugs from the lawn, helping relieve compaction and creating openings where air and water can move into the soil.

If the lawn also needs overseeding, doing it right afterward gives some of that seed better contact with the soil instead of leaving all of it sitting on top of the turf.

Timing matters too. For the cool-season grasses we grow in Pennsylvania, late summer into early fall is an important period for establishment.

So if a lawn needs both, I'd rather take advantage of the same window than treat them like two completely unrelated projects.

A newly planted tree can look great when the job is finished and still struggle a few months later if it isn't watered consistently.

The root system needs time to establish itself in the surrounding soil. During that period, the tree can't handle dry conditions the same way an established tree can.

General watering recommendations are more frequent immediately after planting, then gradually taper as the root system establishes. The exact schedule should also account for rainfall, soil conditions, tree size, and drainage.

What I don't like is the idea of ignoring a new tree for a week and then trying to make up for it by flooding it with water. Consistency is the important part.

Planting day gets most of the attention. What happens over the next several months is what gives the tree a chance to make it.

Marigolds have a reputation for keeping bugs away, which is why you see them planted around vegetable gardens all the time.

There is real research behind marigolds and pest control, but the explanation is a little different from the one people usually hear.

Certain marigolds can help suppress root-knot nematodes in the soil. The effect comes from what's happening around their roots, not because the flowers are giving off some invisible bug-repelling force above the garden.

How they're used matters too. Research has looked at marigolds grown as a cover crop before susceptible plants, rather than just adding a couple around the edge of a garden.

So yes, marigolds can be useful. Just don't expect three plants next to your tomatoes to convince every insect in the yard to leave.

Sweet alyssum is usually planted along the edge of a bed because it's small, inexpensive, and flowers heavily.

There's another reason I like it.

Its flowers attract hoverflies, and hoverfly larvae feed on pests such as aphids and thrips. Research has found higher predator activity in plantings that include alyssum.

That doesn't mean planting a few flowers magically eliminates every pest problem in the garden. It does mean you can design a planting in a way that gives beneficial insects more reasons to stick around.

If I can add a plant that looks good and does something useful at the same time, that's an easy decision.

When you're pruning several shrubs or trees, it's easy to go straight from one plant to another without thinking about the blade.

That blade has been touching fresh plant tissue the entire time.

Pruning tools can carry certain fungal and bacterial pathogens between plants, which is why cleaning them matters, especially if I'm working on something that looks diseased.

A quick cleaning with 70% isopropyl alcohol doesn't add much time to the job. It's just one of those small habits that's easy to skip because nobody sees it in the finished landscape.

I'd rather spend the extra few seconds.

Pines need to be handled differently from a lot of the shrubs and trees people are used to pruning.

Their new growth comes from buds at the ends of the branches. In spring, that new growth appears as soft shoots commonly called candles.

If you cut too far back into older wood where there aren't viable buds, you can be left with a bare section that doesn't simply fill itself back in.

When I'm trying to control the size or shape of a pine, I want to work with that new growth instead. The candles can be shortened while they're still soft in spring, before they harden into mature growth.

It's one of those jobs where knowing how the plant grows changes how you use the shears.

Hydrangeas are one of the plants I'd never prune just because the calendar says it's time to clean things up.

Some varieties bloom on old wood. That means next year's flower buds develop on growth that's already there. Other varieties bloom on new wood produced during the upcoming growing season.

That difference changes when you can safely prune them.

If you cut an old-wood hydrangea back hard in fall or winter, the plant may come back perfectly healthy in spring but barely flower because the buds went into the yard-waste pile months earlier.

Before doing anything major with a hydrangea, figure out what type you have. Five minutes of identification can save you from spending an entire summer wondering where the flowers went.

Winterberry spends most of the growing season looking like a fairly normal green shrub.

Then the leaves fall off.

What's left are clusters of bright red berries along the bare branches, which is why I think this plant gets more interesting when most of the landscape is shutting down for winter.

The berries also provide food for birds during a time of year when fewer options are available.

There is one important thing to know before planting it. Winterberry is dioecious, which means male and female flowers grow on separate plants. If you want berries on the female plants, you need a compatible male nearby for pollination.

That's a small detail, but it's a pretty important one if the berries are the reason you bought the plant.

Little bluestem is one of those plants that's easy to walk past without thinking much about it.

That's partly why I like it.

It has blue-green foliage through summer, turns reddish in fall, and keeps its seed heads into winter. Once it's established, it handles dry conditions well and doesn't need fertilizer to keep doing its thing.

It's also a native grass that provides habitat for wildlife, including native skipper butterflies.

Not every plant in a landscape needs to be the thing everyone notices first. Sometimes you need something dependable that fills space, adds texture, and doesn't create another maintenance job.

Little bluestem is very good at that.

Most of us look at a big oak and think about shade, leaves, acorns, and probably how much raking it's going to create in November.

There's a lot more happening in that tree.

Research from the University of Delaware has found that native oaks support hundreds of species of caterpillars. That matters because caterpillars are an important food source for many birds, especially when they're feeding their young.

So when you're deciding what kind of tree to plant, there's a bigger difference between species than you might think. Two trees might both give you shade, but they don't necessarily provide the same value to everything living around them.

An oak takes a long time to become a big oak. That's also a pretty good reason to plant one sooner rather than later.

Monarch caterpillars eat milkweed. That's their food source.

So if you want a yard that actually supports monarch reproduction, flowers that attract the adult butterflies are only part of the equation. There needs to be milkweed somewhere too.

Pennsylvania has multiple native milkweed species, and they don't all look like the big roadside plants people picture. Butterfly weed, for example, is much more compact and can work well in a regular planting bed.

One thing I'd pay attention to is which milkweed you're buying. Tropical milkweed is commonly sold but isn't native here. If the goal is creating habitat for monarchs in Pennsylvania, I'd stick with one of our native species.

You can still build a bed that looks intentional. It just happens to give monarch caterpillars somewhere to eat too.

Mountain mint probably isn't the first plant most homeowners are going to point at in a nursery.

It deserves a look anyway.

Penn State researchers spent three years tracking pollinator visits to different native plants. Mountain mint recorded 4,286 visits during the trial, more than four times the next closest plant.

The plant itself is fairly understated. It has silvery-green foliage and clusters of small white flowers, and it blooms for a good stretch of the summer. Deer also tend to leave it alone, which is always helpful around here.

If you're building a bed specifically because you want to see more pollinators in the yard, mountain mint has something better than a “pollinator friendly” label on the tag. There's research showing that pollinators actually use it.

A lot of trees get picked for one main reason. Maybe they flower in spring, have great fall color, or just have a shape that works well in a certain part of the yard.

Serviceberry gives you a little bit of everything.

It gets white flowers early in spring, followed by berries around June that birds tend to find pretty quickly. The leaves turn orange and red in fall, and after they drop, the smooth gray bark still looks good through winter.

It's also native to Pennsylvania and usually stays somewhere around 15 to 30 feet tall, so you don't need an enormous property to find a place for one.

If someone wants a smaller native tree but doesn't know where to start, this is one I like talking about.

Go outside and look at the bottom of one of your trees. The trunk shouldn't look like a telephone pole disappearing straight into the ground.

Near the soil, it should start widening where the trunk meets the main roots. That's called the root flare, and it should be visible at or near the soil surface.

I find trees fairly often where that flare has disappeared under several inches of soil or mulch. Sometimes it happened when the tree was planted. Other times mulch was added year after year until the base slowly disappeared.

The frustrating part is that a tree planted too deep usually doesn't fail immediately. It can decline slowly enough that nobody connects the problem to something that happened years earlier.

So check. If you have to dig down several inches before you find where the trunk starts widening, it's worth taking a closer look.

Every spring you'll see citronella plants, lavender, and marigolds sold with some version of the same promise: plant these around your patio and mosquitoes will stay away.

I wish it were that easy.

Some of the oils contained in these plants can have repellent properties. The problem is that having an untouched plant sitting in a pot isn't the same thing as extracting or releasing those oils.

That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with planting them. They can still be great plants for a patio or garden bed. I just wouldn't buy one expecting it to create an invisible mosquito barrier around the table.

If mosquitoes are the problem you're trying to solve, the plant alone probably isn't the solution.

When you remove a branch, it's tempting to cut it as close to the trunk as possible. It looks cleaner when you're finished.

Look closely at where a branch meets the trunk, though, and you'll usually see a slightly raised or swollen area around it. That's the branch collar.

The tree uses that tissue as part of its natural response to the wound. If you cut directly through it just to make the cut look flush, you're removing healthy tissue along with the branch.

I make the cut just outside the collar. You don't want a long stub sticking out, but you don't want to shave the branch completely flat against the trunk either.

The finished cut might not look quite as perfect on day one, but the tree has a much better chance of handling it properly.

A common thing people do while planting is mixing compost or bagged garden soil into the dirt before filling it back in. On paper it makes sense, but in reality it can stunt the root growth of the plant.

The problem is that when you add new soil, it gives a fresh pocket for the roots to grow into, because the soil is full of nutrients and healthy ingredients, but the drawback is that the roots tend to stay in that pocket of new soil instead of growing out and really settling into their environment. Another possible issue that this pocket can create is drainage problems. The new compost or bagged soil will hold water very differently than the native soil; this could cause drainage issues which then could lead to flooding the plant roots and killing the plant.

That's why I normally backfill with the old soil that came out of that hole. This allows the plant to adapt to the native soil on the first day of growth.

Think about it like a broken leg. When the leg is broken, your body has to figure out a new way to walk with the brace. Eventually, it gets used to that way of walking, and when the brace is taken off, you are left with an awkward limp. Your body got used to the new style of walking and not the original way you used to walk. Plants are similar if you plant in the new soil. The plant is used to that new soil and cannot adapt well to the native soil, which in the end can kill it.

A very typical thing to do while mulching around your plants and trees is to pile the mulch high up on the trunk of the tree like a volcano. Most people assume that when mulching a bed or around a tree, it is the proper professional way of doing things.

It isn't.

One of the main issues that this causes is buildup of moisture at the base of the trunk. The tree bark isn't meant to receive all of that consistent dampness. This constant moisture can create a healthy condition for rot along the base of the trunk as well as insects and disease. The other major issue that this causes is that it can often bury the root flare. The root flare is the area at the bottom of the trunk where the tree starts to widen into roots. If that area is too damp or wet, and rot starts to grow there, then the roots start to die, eventually killing the entire tree.

The good news about this problem is that it is an easy fix. When either you or your landscaper is mulching, always spread your mulch around two to three inches deep and leave a good three inches of space from the trunk of the tree or stem of the plant. This gives it breathing room as well as disperses moisture from the base of the plants.

While mulching around trees, think donut, not volcano.