[CFrance]

Originally Posted by Madelaine Amee

I use this time of the year for cleaning up in the garden. I get rid of plants that have not done well, I pull out summer plants that are tired and wilting. I weed, mulch, cut back - but no fertilizer right now; the last thing you want to do is encourage anything to have a growth spurt, right now they need to recover from the summer heat. I use fall/winter plants to fill in the gaps, and Home Depot, Lowes and even WalMart have some good winter annuals to get us through until spring. I will cut back/prune my Crepe Myrtles and I have already pruned a lot of "stuff" off my roses - I grow antique roses so we cut them right back in the late summer and they are coming back nicely. I leave everything else alone and wait until after the frosts to see what has survived the winter.

This is also the best time to plant roses, camellias, bushes, perennials and specimen plants which is why most of the really big garden shows are at this time of the year. Getting them in the ground now gives them a chance to establish roots before the frost.

I had the opportunity to speak with someone from UF/IFAS in Gainesville and he told me Disney uses Black Cow, and I think that is what TV uses too. I keep a couple of bags of Black Cow around and when I am planting I mix it in with the existing soil in the hole. I don't know if it really helps, but it makes me feel good! Actually I think everything just washes through the Florida sand .....................

Good info. Can you name some winter annuals? We're from MI, and there's no such thing! We'll have two spots around the porch that we can plant annuals in.