Connecticut Garden Journal: For fall cleanup, remove diseased plants, leave the rest

As the days shorten and weather cools, somewhat, it's time for some fall garden chores. One of the rules that's changed is around perennial flower garden cleanup.

Traditionally, we'd cut back and remove the dying foliage of perennial flowers such as daylilies, peonies, echinacea and rudbeckia. While the look of a cleaned garden might be appealing, it's not the best for the ecology around your yard. The seed heads of many perennials, such as echinacea, rudbeckia and salvia, are important bird food. Also, beneficial insects and pollinators overwinter in the dead stems and leaves and will be ready to emerge in spring to help our plants. The one exception I'd make is if the flowers were heavily diseased. Then it makes sense to remove them from the garden.

You might be noticing some spring flowering shrubs, such as forsythia, lilac and weigela, blooming again! This is unusual, but can happen with weather stress and warm falls. This year many shrubs lost their leaves early due to fungal blight diseases. That, combined with the warm autumn, has tricked the plants into blooming. This won't harm the shrubs, but you'll have fewer flowers in spring.

Other tasks for fall include chopping and dropping healthy vegetable and annual flower plants once they go by, instead of removing them. But remove diseased plants such as tomatoes. Add chopped leaves, grass clippings or straw to bare beds to protect the soil in winter. Leave asparagus ferns until early winter and add lime to asparagus beds to raised the pH to around 7 based on a soil test.

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