The nice weather we have been having is helping me to get my fall projects done. One of those projects is getting things fertilized for winter. Mid-September through late November is the right time for fall lime and fertilizer on your lawn, garden, trees and shrubs. Lime raises soil pH so that fertilizers work better and should be used on everything except for pH determinant hydrangeas that you want to be blue. If you lime your pH determinant hydrangeas, they will bloom pink instead of blue. Fertilizer on the hand needs to be a little more specific. For your lawn, the right fertilizer matters, high potash fertilizer for fall helps with root development and overall plant strength. Regular lawn fertilizers have a lot of nitrogen, as nitrogen makes grass greener and grow faster. You don’t need that in the fall as you don’t need to force growth as the lawn is becoming dormant. The national brand of winterizer fertilizer is a 32-0-10 fertilizer and is not a good choice for fall. There is far too much nitrogen for your grass, a better choice good old fashion 5-10-5 farm fertilizer. With 5-10-5 the last number potash is equal to the first nitrogen. Don’t be intimidated by fertilizer configuration numbers, it is simply percentages. If a bag of 5-10-5 was one hundred pounds, you would have 5 pounds of nitrogen, 10 pounds of phosphorus and 5 pounds of potash. The 5-10-5 is also the right fertilizer for your garden and any flowering or fruiting trees and shrubs. All of your flowering and fruiting plants want a fertilizer with a phosphorus number at least as great as nitrogen and more is better. I use 5-10-5 in my garden and around my fruit trees and berry bushes, but I also give them a boost with triple super phosphate 0-45-0. This is just a phosphorus supplement to push more blooms and fruit next spring. It is not a complete fertilizer, it has no nitrogen or potash. It is like eating a steak by itself with no vegetables or carbs. So this week I was able to get my lawn limed and fertilized for winter and I’m starting to do my fruit trees, but I can’t fertilize my garden yet because it is still producing. With the extended warm weather, I’m still getting cucumbers and zucchini and my pumpkins are still flowering and growing pumpkins even though the vines look half dead and the leaves are covered with powdery mildew at this point. Almost my entire garden has been covered in pumpkin vines and off of two pumpkin plants we are working on fourteen pumpkins. Vicki hasn’t been able to harvest her carrots and potatoes yet because they are covered by pumpkin vines now. I still have one pepper plant with three peppers that will probably be ready next week. The tomatoes died off early this year and overall they were the only thing that were a disappointment this season. Once the entire garden is done for the season, I will hit it with some 5-10-5 fertilizer as well.  

Another fall project that I have started is pruning. My blueberries produced amazing amounts of berries this season and last week I started cutting them back anywhere from 10 to 30 percent. Now that the leaves are falling and all the strength is being stored in the roots it will help with more berries next year being pruned back, as 100 percent of the roots now only have to sustain 70 to 90 percent off the top. All the extra strength will go to blossom and berry production next spring. I cut back any branches that were criss-crossing inside the bushes and cut the tops back to around eight feet tall. Anything above eight feet and it is too hard to harvest so I like to keep them down to eight feet. If you wanted, you could keep your berry bushes at six feet tall, there is no exact science to it. Shaping trees and shrubs can also be done once the plants become dormant. Next month I will get more into some pruning basics. Maybe we will have a frost by then.