I’ve been looking on the sunny side this summer, which hasn’t been hard. Plenty of sunny.

Plenty of rainy, too.

Whacking and weeding weekly through the hottest months of the year is great exercise, right? (Don’t answer that.)

Related News/Archive

• Summer crops can satisfy Florida locavores
  

  More than a Year ago

• A St. Petersburg couple learns no-impact living can have a big impact
  

  More than a Year ago

• The Swan Project: Girls, please meet social etiquette and good manners
  

  More than a Year ago

• 100 to love: The Tampa Bay area’s best restaurants
  

  More than a Year ago

• A ‘lazy gardener’ grows the groceries for next to nothing
  

  7 Months Ago

No hurricanes, no drought — really, I’m not complaining. But, come Sunday . . . hello, autumn!

I look forward to the end of steamy days and the beginning of my favorite time of year for growing vegetables. I plant lettuce (so easy and SUCH a money saver), beans and a few tomatoes. This year, I’m also looking for katuk, a leafy shrub with delicious, protein-rich leaves. I discovered it in Tanja Vidovic’s North Tampa garden back in February and it has been on my mind ever since.

I learn so much from gardeners like Tanja that I asked them to share their favorite fall veggie-growing tips. They had lots, so expect another batch next month.

I was touched by all the people who took time to write down and email me their best advice. When I said as much to Joe Parr, director of horticulture at Busch Gardens, he answered, “Gardeners ARE the best! Tell everyone!”

So I am. And you are.

Let’s start at the beginning

This early in the season, keep a close eye on seedlings. If they don’t come up, you have time to plant more! This is also a great time to root plants from cuttings.

Good plants to start now: broccoli, green beans, strawberries, tomatoes.

Tanja Vidovic, urban farmer, North Tampa (Tanja can introduce you to tasty, Florida-friendly perennial vegetables you’ve never heard of. She’ll host a garden tour and plant exchange at 10 a.m. Oct. 4. For details, email tanjarose26@yahoo.com or visit the Tampa Gardening Swap group on Facebook.)

Grow easy, grow collards

Plant a few collards among your full-sun flowers. They don’t need fertilizer and they grow for months. If they get bugs, sprinkle flour on the leaves and the bugs will take off!

Peggy Sherman, Forest Hills, Tampa

Dig in to good dirt with raised beds

Healthy soil is absolutely essential! Start now. Pick a sunny spot. Cover it with a sheet of black plastic to smother existing weeds and cook weed seeds. Wait a couple of months, then pile on 4 inches of compost or composted manure and work it into the soil.

In the meantime, use raised beds to start a garden now. Use 10-inch-wide planks or bricks to form the frame. Cover the existing dirt with a few layers of newspaper as a barrier against weeds and fill with healthy soil or a soilless mixture.

Joe Parr, director of horticulture for Busch Gardens and Adventure Island, Temple Terrace gardener

Now read this: no weeds with a layer of newspaper

I haven’t pulled a weed in 20 years. Here’s my secret: A single layer of newspaper.

Lay strips of newspaper between rows of seedlings so no soil can be seen. Pile organic material, such as coastal hay, on top of the paper to weigh it down. Your plants grow; weed seeds die.

Fun tip: Balance a broom straw perpendicular to your watermelon stem. When the straw turns and points to the stem, the watermelon is ripe. (A partial turn means it’s not quite ready.)

Robert Bowden, executive director of Harry P. Leu Botanical Gardens, Orlando; author of Guide to Florida Fruit and Vegetable Gardening

Know before you grow

Don’t trust the planting guides on the backs of packaged seeds. They’re usually not accurate for us. Instead, consult the Extension Service Almanac. (In the Tampa Bay area, do a Google search for “Hillsborough extension almanac” (or other such regional search) and the month you’re interested in.)

Plant above-ground crops now and root crops and greens last. You’ll be surprised by the veggies that can take cold weather — even a freeze. Those include lettuce, collards, carrots, radishes and onions.

Add dolomite, also known as “agricultural limestone,” to your soil. It provides calcium and magnesium, which are essential to a healthy garden.

Always water in the morning, NEVER in the evening. This will help prevent fungus.

Greg Shell, owner of Shell’s Feed Garden Supply Inc., Tampa, Odessa gardener

Sow your own way

Start your own seedlings. Plant large seeds like corn, squash and beans directly in the soil. Start smaller seeds in little pots and transplant when they’re 3 inches tall.

Using seeds allows you to choose from countless varieties: spicy carrots, oak leaf-shaped lettuce or squash that looks like a UFO. Find them in printed or online seed catalogs.

Brittany Hickman, urban farmer who blogs at SunnySpotGardens.com, Forest Hills, Tampa

UF/IFAS proves invaluable

If you’re not sure what to plant, or how to grow vegetables in Florida, the University of Florida/IFAS provides lots of free information in a searchable database at edis.ifas.ufl.edu.

Lynn Barber, UF/IFAS extension agent, Lithia gardener

If you’ve got fall veggie-growing tips to share, email pcarnathan49@gmail.com. Join the chat at Diggin Florida Dirt on Facebook. Follow @DigginPenny on Twitter and more local gardening stories at digginfladirt.com.

The fall garden is just as beautiful as spring’s, and has every bit as many chores needing attention. Happily, autumn weather is drier and sunnier than spring, with an energizing zing in the air that makes you want to dig into your garden or lawn. Working outdoors will also help you store up some much needed vitamin D from the sun to combat the low-light blues of the oncoming winter. If you have a moody teenager, it might be good therapy to set them to raking leaves! So here are a few tips as we say goodbye to summer and start preparing for fall and beyond.

Lawn

Most homeowners think spring is the season for lawn care but fall is actually better. Apply fertilizer between now and November rather than in spring. You can also reduce compaction by renting a core aerator to cut plugs from the turf now.

September to early October is the time to overseed. Buy seed dated this year that contains at least 50 percent combined fine fescues and bluegrasses, the best grass types for Southern New England. Use a shade mix if your lawn gets three to six hours of sun a day. Any lawn getting less sun than that needs to be overseeded every fall just to look decent.

Whether you are patching, overseeding, or starting a new lawn, the basic procedures are the same. A spreader will help seeds achieve even distribution. For seeding large areas, rent a slice-seeder to plant your seeds at the proper depth. After planting, keep the seeds moist until they sprout. Fall rains should help with this.

Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff/file

Plant hardy spring bulbs like daffodils in October.

Bulbs

You’ll get better price and selection if you order them now through the mail. I use Brent and Becky’s Bulbs, (877-661-2852; www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com) and John Scheepers Flower Bulbs (860-567-0838, www.johnscheepers.com). In October plant hardy spring bulbs like tulips and daffodils with a shovel and lift non-hardy summer bulbs like gladioli and dahlias with a garden fork for indoor winter storage.

Cutting down the garden

You can postpone this until next spring to provide cover and food for birds. But always remove the top growth of disease-prone plants such as tomatoes, peonies, bearded iris, hollyhocks, and phlox and bag these. Cut the garden down now in stages, removing the ugly stuff first and leaving plants that still have presentable seed heads and foliage like ornamental grass. But eventually you will want to cut it all down because it begins to look like debris.

You can compost cuttings from your garden.

Composting

This is the easy way to dispose of garden debris without having to bag it and set it on the curb. Simply make a free-standing 3-foot-high pile in some unseen corner of your property (not leaning against a tree or building, which could rot). Then just let it break down and return to nature.

What should you compost? Leaves, grass cuttings, chipped brush, pine needles, weeds that have not gone to seed, vegetable and fruit wastes from garden or table, perennials tops you’ve cut back, dying potted plants and annuals along with their root balls, coffee grounds, eggshells, tea bags, shredded paper and cardboard, including newspaper, paper towels, and paper plants and bags.

Do not compost dairy products, meat, fat, or grease, cooked foods with sauces, bones, peanut butter, mature weed seeds, kitty litter or pet manure, whole branches, diseased plants, or weeds that spread by roots and runners, including vines. I put woody branches in a different pile for burning in spring. Or you can chip them for mulch if you have a chipper.

Leaves

You don’t have to rake these unless they’re thick enough to suffocate what’s underneath. Leave them between trees and shrubs and on empty planting beds, where they can serve as natural fertilizer. But rake or blow leaves from lawns and evergreen ground covers into a 3-foot-tall pile in an out-of-the-way spot and let nature take its course. They will decompose into a 1-foot-tall pile of leaf compost, called leaf mold, in about 15 months. Naturally weed-free, this is a much better garden mulch than pine bark since it is loaded with nutrients.

Irrigation

Unhook and drain garden hoses completely, roll them up, and store them off the ground. If you have an automatic irrigation system, shut down the timer. If the timer has a digital display, switch to “rain” on the controller. If it has a dial, like an analog clock face, or a pump is wired to the timer, turn off the power to save electricity.

Inside the house is a shut-off for each exterior faucet, usually just on the other side of the basement wall from the outside faucet. Shut off each of these from inside the basement, then open the outside faucet to drain any remaining water. Back inside, look for the vent on the bottom of each valve. Put a bucket under each and then unscrew with pliers. Remove the half-inch metal cap and the “O” ring inside the bottom of the shut-off, using a pin to break the vacuum. Water will drain out from that 5-foot section of pipe between the inside and the outside faucet; otherwise it can freeze and burst inside the wall, causing damage.

Cleanup

Prune climbing roses and fasten them to their supports so they don’t get whipped around in winter winds. Clean and store garden furniture, stakes, cages, and seasonal temporary trellises. Many pots are now good-looking plastic that can survive the winter, even if they remain filled with soil. High-fired stoneware will not break either. If you want to ensure the safety of expensive terra cotta pots, dump their soil in the compost pile, wash and sterilize them with a 10 percent bleach solution and let them dry in the sun before storing them (upside down if stored outdoors). Store pesticides and fertilizer in a dry, locked area that’s labeled for dangerous chemicals.

Pests

Deer are the biggest outdoor pest in some areas. Start spraying evergreens now with a deer repellent or wrap individual shrubs in the kind of black netting used to keep birds off berry bushes. Protect young fruit trees from gnawing mice by wrapping the base of the trunks with commercial tree wrap or 18-inch-tall metal tree guards. If you notice swarms of identical small white moths attracted to porch lights in early winter, you probably have winter moths. Their immature inchworms can cause a lot of damage in spring so contract now, before arborists get busy, for spraying the biological pesticide Spinosad next April.

For the birds

Setting up a winter bird feeder in front of your favorite window is a great way to stay in touch with the outdoors while staying warm indoors. Fill it with black-oil sunflower seeds to attract pretty red cardinals.

After a long, hot, dry summer, flower gardens are looking bedraggled. But not Christy Hodges’ Coppell property.

Foliage is dense, with barely a square inch of uncovered soil. While some summer blooms are fading, bees harvest nectar from Turk’s-caps, salvias and roses.

The sound of dripping water from three fountains provides a relaxing background, and a gentle floral note with herbal overtones scents the air.

Hodges’ landscape is a model English garden, except that it is planted with Texas natives and other drought-tolerant species.

Hodges’ heavily mulched garden uses little water and looks good throughout the typically hot summer. It is one of five houses and two community gardens on display at Coppell’s annual Texas SmartScape Tour from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday.

“The tour was started to just educate residents on planting native and adaptive plants,” says Jen Ferguson, the Keep Coppell Beautiful community programs coordinator. “There are ecological benefits, water benefits.”

Residents with drought-tolerant yards and gardens use 50 to 60 percent less water than the traditional broad lawn and foundation plantings, and such practices decrease their water bills, Ferguson says.

The city gets cleaner storm water run-off because native plants need less fertilizer, if any, and fewer pesticides, she says.

Hodges didn’t have any of these benefits in mind when she began planting gardens around her house 28 years ago. She and her husband, Gary, moved to a new house surrounded by bare dirt.

“I started off thinking about herbs,” she says. “They’re my passion.” She went to the library for books and soon was fascinated by herbs’ medicinal uses, scents and culinary advantages.

She found a photo of a traditional English garden featuring a tiered fountain in the middle with herbs planted around it in quadrants. Hodges used the photograph as her guide to develop her own landscape. Much of the original effort still exists, the centerpiece of the backyard.

Eventually Hodges discovered something that should have been obvious: Traditional English plants will not grow in North Texas. They need cool temperatures and lots of water, not exactly staples in Texas.

“I had lots of failures,” she says.

Hodges, 58, kept experimenting, looking for plants that would give her the cottage-garden look but would survive Texas summers.

The gardener, who loves roses, found antique varieties adapted to the Texas climate. They need little water to bloom and require less care than, for instance, most hybrid teas.

“I’m not a designer,” Hodges says. “I’m a collector. I want one of everything.”

She and her friends take road trips, looking for just the right species. She goes on garden tours and is a regular at local nurseries. Her favorite plants, however, come from friends. “The best sources are pass-along plants. I have so many memories of the different plants.”

Today her garden is an eclectic mixture. Bright-yellow esperanza blooms next to agave. A desert willow provides an accent near traditional boxwood. About 100 roses grow throughout the beds.

Last year, Hodges and her 65-year-old husband expanded the front garden by usurping half the remaining lawn for new beds. What lawn remained they planted in buffalo grass, a native prairie variety that survives on little water and infrequent mowing.

“My husband hates mowing. He has allergies,” Hodges says. “I think we’ve only mowed maybe six times” since its installation.

In addition to the native plants, Hodges has adopted other gardening habits that lessen water use. She has barrels that collect rain from the roof. She also heavily mulches the landscape beds, and she composts.

“I got a big double rotating composter for Christmas. I was so excited,” she says.

Hodges’ abundantly flowering garden has attracted attention. Neighbors stop by to ask about the new plants in the yard, and drivers slow down and sometimes stop to admire the plantings.

“I’ll be squatting in the garden,” she says, “and people will stop and say they come this way just to see the garden.”

Karel Holloway is a Terrell freelance writer.

garden@dallasnews.com

Tour details

The annual Coppell SmartScape Tour is 9 a.m. to noon Saturday. Maps will be available beginning at 8:30 a.m. at Coppell’s Helping Hands Garden, 255 Parkway Blvd. The second community garden is Ground Delivery Garden, 450 S. Denton Tap Road.

The map shows five homes, city gardens and medians the city landscaped to save water, says Jen Ferguson, Keep Coppell Beautiful community programs coordinator. A bike map also is available Saturday.