Ask most homeowners when to plant and they will say spring. Ask a crew that has dug in this soil for thirty years and they will say the second half of October.
The reason is underground. In October the soil is still carrying summer heat while the air has finally let go of it. Roots keep growing in warm soil long after the top of a plant has stopped putting on leaves. Put a shrub in now and it spends the whole mild winter building a root system with nothing else to do. Put the same shrub in during April and it has about six weeks before it has to survive its first Gulf South July on roots it has barely started.
What goes in now
- Trees and large shrubs. Anything that will need to find its own water later. Live oaks, magnolias, hollies, wax myrtle, viburnum.
- Perennial beds. Autumn planting means a full root run before the first hot spell.
- Cool season colour. Pansies, violas, snapdragons and dianthus go in from mid October and carry the beds through to March.
- Bulbs that want a chill. Into the ground once night temperatures settle.
- Sod, if the yard needs it. Warm season turf will root in October. It will not root in January.
What waits
Anything tender waits. Tropical colour, citrus in the ground rather than a pot, and most warm season annuals will sit and sulk, and a hard night in January can take them out entirely. There is no prize for planting them eight weeks early.
Big regrading jobs also wait, but only until the ground firms up. Autumn soil here is often too wet to work without tearing a lawn apart. That is a December and January job.
If we tell you to wait until October, it is not because we are busy. It is because the same plant put in during the right month needs half the water and half the fuss for the next two years.
The one thing people get wrong
Autumn planting fails when it is watered like spring planting. The air is cool, so it feels like the plant needs less, and people back off. Underground the plant is working hard. Keep the water going, deeply and less often, until the ground genuinely cools. Then stop.
If you are not sure what your soil is doing, we will come and look. It usually takes twenty minutes and a spade to answer the question properly.