- April 26, 2024
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September is a busy month preparing for the fall garden, and Robert and Linda DuLong are busy fertilizing their Persian lime, Meyer lemon and tangelo trees, azaleas, bougainvilleas and roses.
They moved to Palm Coast eight years ago from Phoenix, N.Y., a village in the Syracuse area. Having lived along the Oswego River, they purchased a home here on a fresh water canal on a quiet cul-de-sac in the Pine Lakes area. They are nearly surrounded by trees: The adjacent lot to the west and the property across the canal are preserve land.
Linda remembers as a young girl planting pansies, marigolds and snapdragons with her Aunt Grace, who was a landscape architect. A retired respiratory care practitioner, Linda can be found puttering in the garden some days even before the sun rises! She is a member of The Garden Club at Palm Coast and is presently on the board of directors. Some of her favorite plants are begonias, orchids, her 5-foot pencil cactus and a passion vine seen from the kitchen window, which attracts the zebra longwing butterfly.
Their yard has little grass. A 100-yard island garden along the western property line is planted with azaleas, plumbago, hibiscus, bougainvillea, night blooming jasmine, crape myrtle, golden dew drop, powder puff bush and angel trumpet, with numerous colorful annuals and perennials like agapanthus, pentas, coleus, and black and blue salvia. They have several significant trees on their lot, including a large weeping bottlebrush, two Jerusalem thorn, a Southern magnolia and a 12-foot holly.
Robert, now a folk art artisan, enjoys enhancing their garden with functional, whimsical, wood-crafted birdfeeders, planters and statues. He has also built a trellis for the wisteria, a pergola for the trumpet vine and a large, hanging, staghorn fern basket. Robert has helped Linda in the garden by adding a butterfly garden on the sunny back slope planted with milkweed, salvias, black-eyed Susan and firebush.
He purchased a bag of rain lilies at the garden club's Flower Show and Plant Sale and planted them in a wildflower bed and was amazed at the sea of pink blooms that emerged after a rain. He recently installed a small pond complete with a fountain, koi and gambusia fish.
Robert's imaginative mind is always creating. His latest fabrications are pelican planters, which are perfect to grow any container plant.
September garden chores
Now is the time to remove plants that have suffered from summer's heat, refresh mulch, and fertilize citrus, azaleas and palms with a slow-release fertilizer. Continue to check your ornamentals for sucking insects like scale, aphids and mealy bugs and thoroughly spray with a horticultural oil every 10 days. Also an application of Bayer Advanced Tree and Shrub with imidacloprid, a fast-acting systemic, will help fight sucking insects.
The flowering plants that can be added to brighten your landscape are African daisy, alyssum, asters, digitalis, hardy mums, marigolds and salvia. You can cut back summer annuals such as wax begonias, coleus and impatiens to get new growth and bushier plants. If you have poinsettias in the ground, prune about 1 foot of the top growth before Sept. 10 for better flowers.
Cool season crops to plant in the vegetable garden now are beans, beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, cucumber, spinach and squash.
