{"id":4739,"date":"2026-09-17T11:18:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T19:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=4739"},"modified":"2026-09-17T11:18:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T19:18:14","slug":"second-season-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/second-season-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Second Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Labor Day is long past, and we are officially in early fall, gardening\u2019s \u201csecond season\u201d. In most places, September and early October are a great time for outdoor work. Plants that go into the ground now have a good chance of establishing roots before cold weather sets in, giving them a head start on next year\u2019s growing season.
\n\tI have been taking advantage of the \u201csecond season\u201d in my garden and have the bruises to show for it. Why? Because the \u201csecond season\u201d is short, and procrastination is not an option. Going all in is the best way to accomplish garden goals during the golden hours when your less horticulturally inclined neighbors are watching football or putting up the Halloween decorations.
\n\tThe flip side of \u201csecond season\u201d opportunities is that they can be overwhelming as the season\u2019s professional, social and family obligations also pile up. My garden suffered at the end of summer due to rainy weekends and a long weekend away. The nefarious stilt grass, which looks a little like small bamboo and acts like a big thug, took advantage and infiltrated many of the beds. Not to be outdone by stilt grass, lawn grass, with its tenacious, wiry roots, did its best to creep from the lawn, where it is welcome, into the beds, where it is not. Spurred on by the abundant rain, other, more desirable plants, like the new lambs\u2019 ears and the old daylilies, grew into very large clumps that beg to be divided. The fall-blooming clematis\u2014otherwise known as Clematis terniflora, or, less formally, as the white-flowered plague\u2014began blooming. The fragrant flowers attract pollinators and are lovely to look at. They give way to seed heads fully capable of populating the entire eastern United States with deeply rooted highly aggressive clematis vines. I dig them out whenever I see them, but the effort is like the myth of Sisyphus, with the clematis playing the role of the boulder.
\n\tThe lovely roses of Sharon, most of which I inherited from an earlier owner of this property, have nearly finished blooming and will self-seed with wild abandon if they are not pruned hard in the next few days. This involves loppers, a pruning saw and many, many degradable lawn and leaf bags. This year there is no time to waste. Next year I swear that I will invest in a small chipper shredder to take care of the pruned branches and provide a significant amount of free mulch for the garden.
\n\tIf you are in the same situation, with limited time and lots of garden chores, you also must operate with the knowledge that daylight minutes are diminishing, and sunny weekends are never guaranteed. It is important to prioritize. Keep those spring-flowering bulbs in a cool place for now and plant any new specimens that have languished in your holding area or entranced you at the garden center recently. Remember to water them regularly to maximize the chances of root establishment and winter survival.
\n\tPrune any plants, shrubs or small trees that self-seed prolifically like my roses of Sharon. This not only saves you the trouble of grubbing out hundreds of unwanted seedlings, but it will make those plants healthier. Leggy, unpruned flowering shrubs will produce fewer flowers next season.
\n\tKeep weeding, even if you are facing what appears to be an insurmountable task. Stubborn weeds and invasive grasses tend to sink deep roots. A large garden fork makes the task of uprooting the marauders easier on your knees and back. Sometimes beds can get so overgrown that the best thing to do is remove the plants you want to keep, making sure that their root balls are clean, and digging up the rest of the bed or border. Once you have gotten rid of all the undesirables, add some fresh topsoil and re-install your chosen plants, after dividing the ones that have gotten too big for the space.
\n\tOf course, that technique is labor intensive and only works with perennials and biennials, not larger shrubs. The alternative is to get out all the weeds that you can, divide the plants that are the most overgrown or crowded, and then put down a layer of newspaper or light cardboard around the plants, covering that layer with several inches of mulch. Your leftover Amazon boxes are perfect for this application.
\n\tThat technique can be a godsend, except in areas that are home to existing plantings of spring-flowering bulbs, in which case the cardboard\/mulch covering might not break down before daffodil shoots emerge in late winter or early spring. The best solution for those areas is thorough weeding, crossed fingers and a good supply of non-prescription pain remedies.
\n\tAnd remember, gardening is as much about process as about end results. Do what you can, revel in good weather while it is still with us and enjoy your space. Garden-related guilt is far worse than even the most pernicious weeds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Labor Day is long past, and we are officially in early fall, gardening\u2019s \u201csecond season\u201d. In most places, September and early October are a great time for outdoor work. Plants that go into the ground now have a good chance of establishing roots before cold weather sets in, giving them a head start on next … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3,1],"tags":[2910,1491,267,792,81],"class_list":["post-4739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-summer","category-uncategorized","tag-second-season","tag-clematis-terniflora","tag-fall-gardening","tag-garden-clean-up","tag-pruning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4739"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4740,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739\/revisions\/4740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}