As summer crops fade, coolness of fall kicks in

The beginning of September can be a sorry time in the garden. Often when I ask to come see someone's garden the reply is, "Oh, you know, my garden is more of a spring garden."

Spring garden, indeed. The fact is that there is a direct correlation between temperatures above 90, plant health and gardener enthusiasm. It's called burnout.

Besides the heat, with drought, mildew, rust and several insects that are at their peak now, it's no wonder that plants and the people who tend them are looking a little bedraggled.

Fear not though, for cooler weather -- the finest of all garden seasons in the Triad -- is just around the corner.

The great thing about autumn is that you have the bounty and exuberance of the summer meeting up with all those fresh, sweet, cool-season crops.

So if your cucumbers and tomatoes and squash have muddled through the tortuous late days of summer, you can enjoy them with dill, lettuce and peppery mustards.

A pick-me-up for fizzling plants

Many of us have ripped out the roots of our summer crops, but if yours are hanging in there it would do them good to have a little tonic right know.

If you have it, a bit of compost and some aged manure, even the bagged kind, will give plants enough of a boost to see them on a little further.

Scratch the soil in a circle around the plant and apply a liberal top dressing. Absent the compost, try scratching in some fertilizer and watering well. It has been so dry lately that a long, slow soak from the hose will do these plants a world of good.

Another trick if you have compost is to make compost tea. Finished compost is placed in a permeable bag, burlap or an old pillowcase. Immerse it in a bucket of about one part compost to five parts water.

Cover the bucket securely and let it steep for 10 days. Then use the tea to water the flagging plants. Do not use it on leafy crops that you will harvest soon after treating.

It is thought that compost tea gives the soil a charge of beneficial microbes as well as serving as a homemade liquid fertilizer.

Plants tend to overstep their bounds this time of year, and many things can stand to be snipped back.

By now, annuals like zinnias and cosmos tend to be more seed than flower if you haven't kept up with the deadheading.

Sometimes you just have to go in there and give them the big whack back. I have been known to take the hedge trimmers to uncooperative annuals.

Usually cutting them back by half will encourage a new flush of growth and flowers. If you accompany this pruning with a top dressing, you will see a marked improvement in about two weeks -- and better still during the cooler weather to come.

Often when plants get out of bounds, paths develop around them and the whole garden begins to look disorderly. This is especially true around vines and creeping things, but even generally well-behaved plants are flopping and lollygagging at this time of year.

Prune these back or stake them up or both to re-establish the original order in the garden. You might think that I am being a flower fascist, but a degree of order makes the garden a more pleasant place.

I am all for a little exuberance in the garden, but after a certain line is crossed, you no longer have a garden.

After things are tidied, apply a few inches of mulch to the paths to reaffirm the garden's definition. Nothing makes a garden come together like a fresh coat of mulch. It's like framing a picture.

This is an excellent time to dig spots that may be sitting idle after a summer crop has finished. Digging a spade's depth to prepare for new crops is good practice, aerating the soil and opening it to receive tender seeds and thin new roots.

When breaking the soil, it is important to try to retain the strata. You don't want to flip full shovels, bringing the bottom soil to the top.

This brings clay subsoil to the top and creates a crust at the surface that you want to avoid. Simply plunging the spade, wiggling it and chopping the clumps is the best practice.

There is no need to lift the soil at all. Rake a layer of compost, soil conditioner or composted manure into the top few inches of the soil.

There are all sorts of leafy greens and cold hardy root crops that can go into the vegetable garden now, but if you have had enough of all that consider sowing a cover crop such as clover to keep your soil intact until your enthusiasm sprouts in the spring.

Question of the week

Hi David: At the back of my property I have a wooded area where I have been throwing garden and kitchen stuff to start a compost area. There have been a couple of avocado pits. They sprouted, and I now have two trees that are about a foot high. What do I do with them? -- Martin E. Fiedler

Dear Martin: Before video games, adults would amuse children by poking three toothpicks into an avocado pit and balancing the bottom half in a glass of water. The pit would eventually sprout roots and begin to grow, to the amazement of all. But, hey, that kind of stuff is way too boring now. You could probably watch the whole process on You Tube and save yourself the trouble. You have a potentially attractive young tree on your hands, but it is not cold-hardy, and it needs lots of light to thrive. You could carefully dig them up, pot the plants and move them inside for the winter. Put them in a deep pot and use good potting soil. They need the brightest spot your house has to offer. Don't start looking up guacamole recipes just yet, though. It will take your tree at least 10 years to bear fruit. Even then, it will not likely be very tasty because the best varieties are grafted, not raised from seed. Perhaps another round on the compost pile is in order?

■ If you have a gardening question or story idea, write to David Bare in care of Features, Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27101-3159, or send e-mail to his attention to gardening@wsjournal.com.