Close to frost time or late Dec. They even might come up next year too

Grumbles House, Dunnellon - Garden Center
 

To Gardeners - this might interest you. Dunnellon's Historic Village their website is Dunnellon Florida Antiques, Collectables, Gifts, and Home Decor. It is NOT just antiques, they have a great garden center and I believe they have a special open day coming up soon. You can email them at gumbleshouseantiquesandplants@gmail.com for more information.

Here is their web site:
Dunnellon Florida Antiques, Collectables, Gifts, and Home Decor

Thanks for websites!!!! Like to see more questions on gardening, and other information, like entering into winter and what to do etc. Trimming, pulling plants and covering. Whats best for winter, and planning for next spring. And of course pruning

I have been mulling when to do some landscaping. Is it better to not do it now and wait until spring? If so, when does spring really start?
I don't think TV amends the soil when they plant...or do they? Is it possible to simply buy some shrubs, dig a hole, and stick in the new plant? When do you fertilize? Spring?
Clearly, I know nothing.

You will love this forum. I've been on the northern portion of it for years. Then we moved to a condo, and I got into the container gardening part of it. Now I can try out the southern part.

For those who like to garden but don't want the responsibility for the entire landscape... our landscapers are suggesting that we have portions of the landscape prepped for planting so that we can have fun doing some of our own without it being overwhelming.

And Gracie, our plumbago are not doing well either, and we fertilized them with osmocote last spring. They look burned. Our front yard faces directly west. We're thinking of having them moved to the back where they'll get a little more shade, or else putting them under whatever tree we have planted. Everyone's on our side of the street look the same way. the other possibility is that these are builders' plants, and perhaps they might be of a different quality than a landscaper would put in? I don't know. But if you drive around, some look great and some do not.

I have to keep trimming my plumbago's, because they grow so much. Two plants get sun in afternoon only, but I have one that is in sun all day (looks great, but don't trim as often) I find they like water, so I planted them with an extra large hole, and put bark mulch in to absorb water and hold it. Manure pellets also help. They do get hit by frost in winter, but come back

Fall Gardening
 

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.

Florida Winter Annuals
 

To anyone reading this - these are just my personal opinions and are how I handle gardening in this zone/climate, suggest everyone experiments in their own yards. Also, please remember, the annuals on sale in the stores now are grown here in South Florida for our climate.

Florida winter annuals are basically your northern spring time annuals. Look at this climate here (8b-9b) as being an almost complete reversal of gardening up North. Our fall here is like your early May/June weather, cool at night with plenty of dew and warm summer days. I grow Snapdragons, the low growing type - up North I grew the gorgeous tall ones, here they are inclined to fall over, so I stick with the low spreading ones. Petunias. Annual Salvias, basically any annual you find in the store. I grow my herbs in pots on my patio, and start them at this time of the year, and next summer they will be tired and need replacing.

I would suggest two reference books - Month-by-Month Gardening in Florida - written by Tom MacCubbin who is a Floridian; and The Southern Living Garden Book. The month by month gardening book is excellent, as the name suggests he tells you what to plant and also how to garden in Florida by the month - great book. The Southern Living Garden Book is a publication listing just about every plant you could imagine, how to grow, climate, zone etc. If you go over to Barnes & Noble you can sit and read them there to see if they are of any use to you before you purchase. Also, you can buy used on Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more.

Guess I know what will be on my Christmas list :)

This is all great info. Thanks so much, esp. about the part about what's spring up north is fall down here. I will be trying to find those books used online.

How much do you prune back on Crepe Myrtles? And great info you put out there!! Thanks

Pruning Crepe Myrtles
 

I prune to shape only. I have one overhanging my patio area and that is all the shade I have in the summer, so I am trying to get it tall and thick. This particular Myrtle is a white blossom Nachez with three trunks and it grows to about 30ft tall, so I have pruned off the lower branches and taken out a lot of the fine inner branches, leaving it to grow tall and shaped like an open umbrella. I have two others which are bushes, not trees. Those I just take out the fine inner branches to give the bush some shape. I sometimes take off the spent flower seed pods, but it is not necessary, and I never just cut the ends off the branches; and I never, ever, do a Crepe Murder hatchet job on them!

Excellent information on this site Untitled which I believe is from Auburn University in Alabama.

My older friend came to visit yesterday and she was planting winter vegetables or had some already planted. I think some cabbage and some lettuce and I can't remember what else she had growing right now. I hesitated over buying a new tomato plant at Walmart, not sure how they do right now.

Gardener people...what do you suggest?