Who doesn’t love Fall in Oklahoma!

Nights are cool. Days are pleasant. Every day trees are adding reds and yellows to the landscape. What a wonderful time of year!

With the first freeze for central Oklahoma forecasted for this week, warm-season lawns will fade quickly. While at the same time, cool-season lawns are adding rich greens to the landscape. Fescue and rye lawns will continue to flourish through November and into December as long as nighttime temperatures stay in the 40s and daytime are in the 50-70s.

The change of seasons also means lawn and landscape tasks are becoming less frequent.

But there are several important activities that need attention in November:

Seasonal Color Planting – If you have not removed your summer color and replaced them with pansies and kale, now is the time to do it. Assuming the weather forecast for the next few nights, any remaining summer color will be done for the season. Because soil temperatures stay warm through November, you still have time to plant pansies. Blog: Coming Soon to a Landscape Near You — Fall Seasonal Color!

Now is the perfect time to add pansies to your fall landscape.

Plants that produce berries, such as nandina, add bright colors and interest to the fall and winter landscape.

The bright colors of summer loving annuals will be a faded memory if we receive a freeze this week.

Perennial Tip: If you have mums in pots this fall, don’t throw them away when they are finished. Instead, add them to your landscape. These mums, used as a perennial, where in pots last fall.

Pyracantha is another fall berrying plant. There are varieties with orange, yellow or red berries.

The blue berries of Hollywood Junipers add interest to the fall and winter landscape.

Spring Bulbs – November through early December is the best time to plant spring flowering bulbs such as daffodils, hyacinths, and tulips. I have never heard anyone in March say they wish they hadn’t planted bulbs last fall. But every year I hear someone say how much they wish they would have taken the time to plant bulbs last fall. Blog: Plan now. Plant next month. Enjoy next spring!

Lawn Mowing – Warm season lawns, Bermuda and Zoyia, most likely have had their last mowing or will have it this week. But, cool season lawns, fescue and rye, will continue to grow and flourish. Continue to mow fescue and rye on a regular schedule. The best height to maintain your cool season lawn in the fall is around 3”.

Many Bermuda lawns are still green. If we receive a heavy frost before they go dormant, expect to see lawns with leopard type spots.

Autumn Blaze Maples have started adding dynamic reds to the landscape. It is one of the first maples to turn in the fall while the October Glory Maple is one of the last.

Ash trees add bright yellows to the early fall landscape.

Leaf Removal – It is important to keep leaves cleaned up. Allowing them to decay on the lawn promotes fungus and disease. If you have a cool season lawn, it is critical to keep the leaves removed. Fescue and rye need light. Allowing leaves to remain on the lawn for extended periods of time will kill areas of your lawn. My favorite way to remove leaves from my fescue lawn is to mulch mow every 5-7 days. I find that mulching small amounts of leaves back into the lawn improves my soil structure. I only rake and bag leaves when they are too thick to mulch mow.

A great way to manage leaf clean up is to mulch mow the leaves every 4-5 days.

Weed Control – This month is a good month to control broadleaf weeds in your warm season and establish cool-season lawns. Dandelions and other broadleaves are typically small at this point and easier to kill. If you overseeded your lawn with fescue or rye this fall, do not apply any weed control products until the new grass is well-established and has been mowed a few times.

If you have not applied a pre-emergent to your lawn this fall, please do so as soon as possible. And if you applied a fall pre-emergent in August or September, a second pre-emergent should be applied any time from late October to early December for the best prevention of winter weeds. A clean start next spring is the result of two timely fall applications. Blog: Why a 2nd Pre-Emergent is Important!

Autumn Blaze Maples, one of the first maples to turn in the fall, started adding bright reds to the landscape this week.

Irrigation – In the last week, the metro area received 1.5” to 2” of much needed rainfall. While we are very thankful for the rainfall, it has been a dry fall, and we are not where we want to be heading into winter. November is typically one of the driest months of the year.

Lack of moisture is a major cause of winter damage on trees and shrubs. Particularly, your evergreens need moisture even when the landscape is dormant.

With cooler temperatures and shorter days, you may not need to water as often. But it is too early to stop watering all together.

This time of year, I will either set my irrigation to run every 4 days or leave it on every other day and turn it off for a few days when we receive at least a ½” rainfall.

If your irrigation backflow device is located below ground, inside your garage/house, or has winter protection (heat tape, insulated bag, and cover) you do not need to winterize your system for the winter. Continue to use the system as needed on nice days throughout the winter.

If your system’s backflow is not protected from freezing temperatures, consider adding heat tape, an insulated bag and cover. This will allow you to protect your landscape investment by watering as needed this winter. You can also take it one step further and install a rain/freeze system that will shut the system off when it is too cold, or we have had rain.

Key Point – Most landscape winter damage occurs when the top few inches of soil are dry when temperatures are below freezing.

Irrigation systems are required to have a backflow device installed to prevent irrigation water from re-entering the city water supply. Without freeze protection, your system needs to be shut down for the winter.

The traditional way to protect your backflow from freezing is to wrap it with heat tape and cover with an insulated bag and mock rock. With freeze protection you can continue to use your system as needed through the winter.

Lawn Fertilizer – Fescue and rye lawns need one more fertilizer application this fall. Fall is the best time of the year to fertilize cool-season lawns. Bermuda lawns do not need any more fertilizer this year. A good lawn care program will fertilize cool-season and warm-season turf on a different schedule making sure they each receive fertilizer at the correct times of the season.

If you didn’t prune the spent blooms off your reblooming hydrangeas after they faded, the dried out, spent blooms of late summer turn bright pinkish-red colors in the fall.

Fertilizing Trees and Shrubs – Once your area has received a freeze it is time to apply a good balanced fertilizer to your trees and shrubs. Our soil temperatures remain above 40 degrees most of the winter and plant roots remain active. Because nitrogen leaches from the soil it needs to be replaced. My experience has found that a late fertilizer application to feed the roots will aid the health and beauty of your plants next spring.

Seeding Fescue – The best time to overseed fescue is September through October. If you have not seeded this year and need to, even though we are into November, you can still see some success seeding now. Remember the keys are good seed-to-soil contact and keeping the seed moist until it comes up. With cooler temperatures, you can expect it to take a little longer to see results than the typical two weeks, and depending on temperatures in November and December, the results may not be seen until spring.