Transitioning from gas-powered lawn equipment to Electric

(Lifted from Margaret at A Way to Garden awaytogarden@gmail.com)

🦚 Identify some areas that can be left “messy,” particularly fallen leaves left in place under native trees and even a brush pile–to act as essential habitat for overwintering beneficials, from moths and butterflies to spiders and more. Leaf litter is prime habitat for many important creatures that can help us with pollination and pest control as adults next year. I don’t rake the looser outer beds at my place, or mow down my meadow till sometime next May, for example. How and why to back off too-tidy cleanup, from Doug Tallamy, author of “Nature’s Best Hope.” (available at the Altadena Main Library)

🦚 Leave especially ornamental or wildlife-friendly plants standing. Don’t act as if you’re vacuuming the living room; clean up beds tactically for maximum enjoyment by you and the birds. (If you also put up bird feeders in fall and winter, here are my basic tips for that.)

🦚 Remove sickly things first. Destroy the debris to minimize next year’s issues with squash bugs, cabbage worms, and other pests and diseases. Like this.

🦚 Stabilize woody plants: Identify any vulnerable limbs, removing broken or dead branches now to make sure winter weather doesn’t worsen things. Pruning 101.

🦚 With the leaves you do need to rake up, start a leaves-only compost pile.  Once crumbly after aging in a heap, they make great mulch, or can be turned into beds to add organic matter. Again, though: leave as many leaves in place as you can.

🦚 Late-season lawncare: Do your heavy raking now—not in spring—and overseed if there’s still time where you live. Here’s why that’s smart (hint: it helps prevent weeds later). Topdress with a half- or three-quarter-inch layer of compost onto thin or trampled areas.

🦚 Protect or store weather-vulnerable pots and the tender plants in them: At a minimum, move pots under cover, where they will dry off (to minimize heave/thaw effects of weather). More tricks on weather-proofing and overwintering pots are in this story, with Ken Druse. How to stash non-hardy plants is at this link (with some extra details below, in the “overwintering tender plants” section).

🦚 Weed! Besides cleaning up around diseased plants, this is a giant “must.” Even if you can’t weed, exactly, deadhead your weeds now and discard the seeds. Fewer seeds now, fewer weeds next year.