Planting:

Fall is the time to plant permanent landscape plants, bare roots, fruit trees, ornamentals and flowers. Visit a Grangetto’s location near you to find the best planting mix for your plants. Gardner & Bloome Soil Building Compost is BUY 3, GET 1 FREE THIS MONTH!

• Plant trees, shrubs and vines.
• Choose plants for fall and winter color in your garden.
• Continue to shop for spring-blooming bulbs.
• Plant lilies as soon as you get them home.
• Buy daffodils, grape hyacinths, ranunculus, anemones and Dutch irises; keep them in a cool, dry place until planting time
• Purchase hyacinth, tulip, and crocus bulbs; pre-chill them in the refrigerator.
• Plant cool-season flowers for winter and spring bloom. These include calendula, cineraria, dianthus, delphiniums, Iceland poppies, nemesia, pansies, snapdragon, stock and wildflowers.
• Plant cineraria for late winter and early spring bloom
• Plant cool-season vegetables and year-round vegetables, including carrots and some perennial vegetables.
• Plant garlic. Plant cloves base-down (pointy side up) 1-3 inches deep and 3-5 inches apart.

FALL IS FOR PLANTING WILDFLOWERS! Grangetto’s carries a wide variety of wild flower seed such as, California Poppies, Lupines, and California Blue Bells. Try one of our most popular STOVER® varieties, Hummingbird and Butterfly Mixture.

Now is a good time to plant or repair lawns. Whether you are starting a new lawn or repairing thin areas of your existing turf, these brands are available in different sizes to fit your growing area.

• Grangetto’s Tall or Dwarf Fescue Seed
• Marathon I or Marathon II Lawn Seed
• Top with Kellogg Topper to keep seed bed moist
  

For over-seeding your warm-season lawn

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Fertilizing:

Fertilize your fruit trees with Best Triple 15 or GroPower Plus 5-3-1. For ornamentals use GroPower Flower ‘N’ Bloom 3-12-12.

Feed your cool-season lawn. Use Best Nitra King, a 19-4-4 cool season fertilizer with Iron to keep it green.

Feed fuchsias.

Continue to treat blue hydrangeas with aluminum sulfate. Use Growmore Hydranea Blueing Formula.

Stop fertilizing chrysanthemums and just enjoy the blooms.

Fertilize poinsettias with a complete fertilizer high in bloom ingredients.

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Maintenance:

Give roses up to 1 inch of water twice a week unless it rains.

Prevent insect damage on your trees with Bayer Tree & Shrub Concentrate.

Use Monterey Garden Insect Spray to combat caterpillars and other listed pests on fruit trees, vegetables and ornamentals. It is OMRI listed for Organic Use too!

Fall is the time to prevent weeds. Use Green Light Crabgrass Preventer, Green Light Amaze or try DeWitt Weed Barrier Fabric.

Continue cleaning dead leaves and debris. Use Flexrake Lawn or Shrub Rakes to make cleaning easy.

Thin out sweet peas and pinch them back to force branching.

Divide, trim, and mulch plants that tend to grow in a clump and that need to be divided, including Kahili ginger, clivia, iris, daylily, moraea, bird of paradise, gazanias, and perennials like Shasta daisies.

Cut back zonal and ivy geraniums; finish pruning Martha Washingtons.

Divide hardy water lilies.

Divide belladonna lilies.

Dig up, divide and replant perennials; put unwanted ones in the mulch pile.

Cut off runners from strawberries, gather them in bunches, and pre-chill them for November planting.

It is time to reduce your watering. Adjust irrigation timers. Remember, we live in an area where our microclimate changes from very cold to warm very rapidly, even in winter…. Just keep that in mind. Santa Ana winds are very common during the fall, usually beginning this month.

Now is a perfect time to start planning on how you are going to save water in your landscape, if you haven’t already.  Installing or retrofitting an existing irrigation system to utilize the most up-to-date technology will help you save water. Grangetto’s can help you make the SMART WATER CHOICE in your landscape. Call us or stop by your favorite location so we can help!

With the rain, comes the need for erosion control. Some useful materials are straw wattles, straw mats, silt fence, jute netting, sand bags, tarps, drain grates & boxes, rain boots and suits.

Finish pulling out faded annual flowers and cleaning pots and beds for fall.

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