Do you remember the Lou Grubb Chevrolet commercial about kids going off to their first day of school? It went something like ” thousands of young people are leaving home today without any i.d. in their wallet …going out on a new adventure in life for the first time! As young people or as my old principal Walter Bright called us “kidos” head back to school please be watchful for all those brightly colored backpacks wandering along the sidewalks and crosswalks of your neighborhoods.

We are also reminded by the buzz of activity around the school yard that Summer is winding down. To gardeners that means the excitement of Fall Gardening is just about at hand. Harper’s hopes we can help you get ready to usher in the Fall Gardening season. We have received some of our garden seeds already, bulbs will begin arriving in a few weeks as will the first geranium cuttings. The first crop of fall vegetable starts have been sown. You can see we’re busy getting ready. Hope this newsletter will give you some tips on what you can be doing to get there yourself!

• Begin tilling in organic matter,gypsum,and organic fertilizers to your garden area. It is vitally important to have the soil well prepared before you plant new vegetables or flowers
• Evaluate landscape plants-how did they survive the summer? Are they worth keeping or would there be better choices-We can help with this process with an “in home” evaluation.
• How is your lawn? A lot of them have struggled this Summer due to Winter Rye grass that lived way too long. There is still time to seed Bermuda or lay new sod if necessary. One thing to consider: If you really enjoy your winter lawn, it is really the turf you have for 9 months of the year. How many of us go out and are active on our Summer lawns anyway. I personally wouldn’t get too worked up over a marginal Summer lawn-we can plant rye grass in a month or so again anyway.
• Get ready or start fertilizing your subtropical plants including citrus now. Take advantage of the warm weather and use the fertilizer to help them recover before cold weather sets in.
• Inspect for insects. We are still seeing lots of caterpillars, mealy bugs, and the like. If you still have eggplant,melons,peppers etc in your garden be sure to keep them bug free. This is about when we start seeing white fly show up as well. Be sure to keep your weeds in control-yes i said weeds, especially spurge, as white fly love to breed there and they multiply fast.