October’s here! As long as the weather has cooled, this is the best month to plant almost everything in your San Diego garden.
It’s Planting Time
Fall is a great time for planting native plants and trees, perennials, cool season annuals, vegetables and many bulbs. This gives roots time to get well established before next summer’s heat. The warm soil and cooler temperatures in fall are perfect for this. You won’t see much plant growth until spring, but by then these fall plantings will be ready to take off! This is also a perfect time to start cool season vegetables.
The California Native Plant Society is having their fall plant sale at Balboa Park on October 15 from 8am to 3pm. This is a great way to learn about native plants and find the best ones for your yard.
Weed, Prune and Mulch Your San Diego Garden
Clean up beds by weeding and removing spent summer vegetable crops and annuals. Trim summer blooming perennials to remove old flowers. Some may rebloom. Don’t trim spring and winter bloomers since they may be setting buds now.
Unless your home compost really heats up, send the fallen leaves from your fruit trees, the summer vegetable plants you’ve removed and anything that shows infection to your local green waste disposal. Otherwise, you may be reintroducing pests and diseases to your garden.
Start an Herb Garden
Although it’s too cool for warm-season herbs like basil, this is a good time to plant cool-season herbs and perennial herbs. Good choices to plant in San Diego gardens now are parsley, thyme, rosemary, sage, winter savory, chervil, dill, oregano, fennel, lemon grass and lemon balm.
Some of these herbs like rosemary, lemon grass, thyme and oregano are perennials. When laying out your garden, think about placing your herbs not only in relationship to their height and size, but also with respect to their water needs and whether they are perennial or annual plants. You can also mix many of your herbs into your other planting beds. It’s so convenient when you need a fresh herb in the kitchen to just run out to the garden and take a cutting.
This is a good time to add 3-6 inches of organic mulch to your San Diego gardens. It will enrich your soil, help stop weeds from growing and keep the ground moist while we wait for winter rains.
San Diego Garden Tips Source
A lot of information for San Diego Garden Tips comes from the Master Gardener Association of San Diego County. They are a great resource for all of your gardening needs including planting, pests, vegetables, and water use. They even have a free hotline where you can get your home gardening and pest control problems answered.