Your Fall Landscaping To-Do List

It’s officially fall, so you can be forgiven for thinking your landscaping work is all over but for the leaf-blowing. However, the truth of the matter is that it’s time to take a deeper look at your lawn and garden – underground, in fact.

Plants aren’t getting larger right now. In the fall, all the energy expended by plants goes into the root development. It’s a metabolic process.

As the days get shorter and the nights longer, plants begin preparing for winter.  The temperate or warm daytime temperatures combined with the cooler night air makes September and October the ideal times to do your planting and landscaping work.

So, what should be on your fall to-do list? We asked Chicago-area landscaping experts, and here are their top 10 recommendations.

1. Plant!

Fall offers ideal planting conditions for new shrubs, bulbs, perennials, bushes and trees – in fact, anything you want in your yard. Experts say that the energy plants spend on growing taller in the summer gets transferred into developing their root systems in the fall. Autumn planting is the perfect way to make sure your vegetation is well-established for the coming year. 

You give your plant a cool season now. It develops all its roots. It’s got two seasons before it goes into a tough summer.

2. Aerate and fertilize

If you’ve seen grass scattered with what look like little dirt pellets, you’ve probably seen a core-aerated lawn. And now is the time to do it, experts say. You can also turn over the soil in your vegetable gardens.

You might want to call in the professionals on lawn aeration – they have specialized heavy machinery that puts exactly the right-sized holes in turf. But even if you do decide to tackle it yourself, make sure to put aeration on your fall maintenance list.

And speaking of nutrient uptake, take the opportunity this fall to put down fertilizer for plants, lawns and gardens.

September is the month when lawns use the most nitrogen fertilizer. Anytime you can help the plants grow roots, it’s like adding extra money to the savings account.

3. Prepare containers and irrigation systems for cold weather

Go through your yard and garden and conduct winter prep on all containers and irrigation systems. Bring in any containers that can’t withstand our chilly Midwestern winters.

Terra cotta pots typically crack, but even those that can be left out should be completely cleaned of soil or at least have a way for water to drain out so it doesn’t freeze, expand and crack the pot. There should be a hole in the bottom of the container and feet or a riser to give the hole ground clearance.

If you have winterproof containers, you may still need to wrap them in burlap.

It’s also crucial to winterize all irrigation systems, a task particularly important for those with rooftop gardens in the city.

4. Keep the water flowing

Watering your lawn and plants may seem strange in the fall, but the experts encourage you to keep the sprinklers going if we’re not getting enough rain to keep our gardens happy.

Plants need an inch of rain per week, which you can monitor with a rain gauge or a clear container. If the rain is inadequate, water your plants and lawn a bit to pick up the slack.

Making sure everything is hydrated and just have it going in the best shape into the spring.

5. Mulch – carefully

Mulching in gardens and around trees, bushes and shrubs is a fall must-do, experts say.

The mulch is good because it helps regulate soil temperature, leading to healthier and more vigorous plants. Without a mulch covering, new plants can heave up out of the ground and expose portions of the root system to the damaging elements.

The best time to put down mulch in your garden is after your last major leaf cleanup. Putting down mulch too early results in raking and mowing away the product of your hard work.

Similarly, don’t put down too thick of a mulch covering. Mulch should be about 1 to 2 inches deep. Anything over that and you can begin to suffocate plants.

6. Winter prep for your type

Different types of lawns and gardens need different fall and winter preparation strategies. People are increasingly choosing lawns and gardens with native vegetation that might benefit from more of a hands-off approach.

In a prairie-type landscape setting, less is more. Let these prairies stay up all winter and reap the benefits of certain insects. In an ornamental landscape, the plants aren’t native and there can be a detriment if you leave up a lot of leaf litter that had fungus on it.

If you’re not sure which type of landscaping you have, professionals can help devise a fall maintenance plan that works for your specific plants and turf.

7. Remove old vegetable, fruit and annual plants

Experts recommend pulling out all your old fruit and vegetable plants – or at least whatever the rabbits didn’t get a hold of. The same goes for annuals that won’t return next year. All of them should be removed at the end of the season, before the ground gets hard.

You do not want to leave your wilted and frosted-over tomato plants in. There are just so many insects and diseases that can stay within that soil.

8. Tackle weeds, pests and diseases

The professionals say weeding should be done either by hand-pulling or by using safe herbicides before they have a chance to develop the strong roots that you want reserved for desirable plants. Getting rid of pests like slugs – which can damage turfgrass, fruit and leaves if their numbers get too high – should be done in the fall, too, by using bait containing iron phosphate. And fungicide should be applied at least once more before the first frost to stave off any diseases that have taken hold in your garden or lawn.

9. Keep the fauna away

With fall being the ideal time for planting, young trees can be particularly vulnerable to deer, which start to rut (mate) in mid-September.

Deer love to rut on new trees. A lot of times trees can’t grow through that.

Wrapping young trees in burlap or fencing them off so that the deer can’t damage them in their rutting season.

10. Call in the pros

For big jobs, or if you’d just rather spend your fall weekends watching football, going to pumpkin patches and apple-picking, give an arborist, horticulturist or landscaper a call. Full fall cleanups and major overhauls can be tough DIY projects.

When the lawn is so far gone and you’re really trying to bring it back to good shape, it’s just a big project. Sometimes you don’t want to give up a couple of weekends to do your fall cleanup.