by Ron Kujawski

* Cut back stems on all perennials infected by powdery mildew. Dig a hole and bury the plant residue. I don't know if that will guarantee your plants will be free of powdery mildew next year, but the exercise will do wonders for your physique.

* Collect your tomato stakes and wooden planter boxes; wash the soil from them and brush the surfaces with copper naphthenate (e.g. Cuprinol). Copper naphthenate is a wood preservative, one that can be used safely around plants.

* Wash your flower pots while you are in fall cleaning mode. I place my pots in a large garbage can filled with soapy water and let them soak for a day before scrubbing them with a short-handled brush. 

* Begin potting up freesia bulbs and continue planting them every few weeks into December for a succession of exceptionally fragrant flowers right through the winter. The soil has to be kept moist at all times, but do not water too heavily. The plants will do best if placed in a sunny window.  Keep them cool at night.

* Note the particular intensity of color in the garden at this time of year. The lower angle of the sun, coupled with lower humidity, intensifies the colors of asters, mums, and other fall flowers. If you're missing out on this incredible experience, there's still time to plant fall-blooming perennials.

* Shhhh! Don't wake the cacti! They're resting. Really!  Cacti and succulents go into a rest period during fall and winter. So, keep their soil on the dry side, and don't feed them again until next spring. 

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I can always tell how good a book on the basics of gardening is going to be by reading the chapter on building a compost pile. If the description is more than two pages long and suggests an expenditure of more than two dollars, don't buy the book. Look! It's this simple: a heap of dead vegetation will rot, creating humus, a dark, soil-like mass of organic matter. It's a law of Nature! So, just pile up leaves, lawn clippings and other dead plant stuff and leave it alone until it rots. In a year, you'll have humus. If you want to complicate the procedure, enclose the pile with walls of cement block, lumber, fencing or other building material remnants. To introduce the tiny critters, i.e., fungi and bacteria, which bring about vegetative decay, a few shovelfuls of soil are spread over the top of each six-inch layer of vegetation.  In effect, you are creating a layer cake of compost.

Ron Kujawski began gardening at an early age on his family's onion farm in upstate New York. Although now retired, he spent most of his career teaching at the UMass Extension Service. He serves on Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Horticulture Advisory Committee. His book, Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook, is available here.