Hey there. Thank you for joining me today for episode two of my new podcast, which airs on October 2nd, 2025. I'm Colleen Dieter, a landscape consultant at ATXGardens.com. Some of my customers told me that they wish they could get alerts or reminders from me about what to do in their yards, and I figured a podcast would be a good way to keep everyone in the loop about what's happening in our Central Texas gardens.

Today's episode is all about what to do in your garden in the first half of October.

But first, this episode is sponsored by my landscape consulting business, ATXGardens.com. I help my customers by alleviating their anxieties about their yards. During a consultation, you can ask me anything about what to plant, how to care for your soil, tree problems, lawn maintenance—anything you can think of. You can make an appointment with me for a landscape consultation at your property at ATXGardens.com. That’s ATX as in Austin, Texas.

Alright, now let's get to the show.

This week I met with Carina in East Austin. She has a very small yard and she wasn’t sure what options she had to fit everything in. She was wishing for a pocket prairie, a fig tree, privacy from the busy street where she lives, rainwater management, and vegetables. During our consultation, we figured out how to fit all of those elements into her small yard, and at the end of our consultation, Carina was ready to get gardening. Make an appointment today with me at ATXGardens.com.

In general, it’s the time of year to adjust your irrigation system for cooler weather. The City of Austin Water announced on September 2nd, 2025, that we are returning to conservation-stage drought water use restrictions because Lake Travis is almost full after our much-needed summer rains. That’s really good news for gardeners. Go check your watering day and find out what the schedule is for your place on their website; the link to that watering day schedule is in the show notes.

Do not trim your trees, shrubs, or perennials now. Trimming anything at this time of year stimulates new growth, and we need the plants to stop actively growing so they can get ready for winter. Plus, most of your perennials are getting ready to bloom, so if you trim them now, you’ll be removing flower buds and then they won’t flower.

Do not feed your plants with fertilizers after October 1st. Fertilizers are going to stimulate new growth, and at this time of year we want the plants to slow down and not be actively growing. A little compost, seaweed, or other soil amendments are great to use anytime, but don’t use fertilizers now.

So how do you know the difference between a fertilizer and a soil amendment? It’s kind of hard—there’s a lot of gray area—but in general, if the package has three numbers on the front showing nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium amounts, that’s a true fertilizer rather than a soil amendment.

Seaweed is an example of what I would consider to be a supplement or a soil amendment rather than a fertilizer, and it’s particularly good to have on hand going into winter when the weather fluctuates wildly and can stress plants. Now, seaweed does have three numbers on the front of the bottle, but two of them are zeros and the only number on there is the number one for potassium—it’s the last number. That’s a very low amount of potassium, so it’s not really feeding the plants in an aggressive way. Seaweed is okay to use; I consider it more of a supplement or soil amendment than a fertilizer, even though it’s an exception to the general rule that if it has three numbers on the front, it’s probably a fertilizer.

Look for products that are soil amendments or supplements rather than fertilizers. Like I said, seaweed is really good going into the winter months. I have an Amazon affiliate link for Maxicrop seaweed in the show notes, and it’s also available in the store on my website.

Like I mentioned in the last episode, fall is a very good time for soil testing. If you’ve never had your soil tested before, it can be a fun science experiment and a good way to get to know your home a little better. You can send a sample to the Texas A&M University Soil Lab or the Texas Plant and Soil Lab down in the Rio Grande Valley, or any soil lab in the U.S. really. They’ll have instructions on how to take the sample on their site, or you can call and talk to someone who can help explain the process.

October is time to plant and transplant any type of plant, so get to it. At this time of year, most of the plants are reaching their maximum size. The existing plants in your landscape are getting really big, and if your landscape is looking a little crowded or overgrown—where plants are starting to cover each other too much—it’s a good time to take some plants out and move them to open spots or pass them along to a friend.

Are you cleaning up summer plants that have faded? I am pulling out common sunflowers from my yard. Those common sunflowers are wildflowers that have gone to seed and are dying now, and that’s normal for them. They’re true annuals, so they die after they make seeds. I’m harvesting some of those seedheads to save for next spring and also to share with other gardeners.

I’m the founder of Central Texas Seed Savers, and our organization supports seed libraries around our region. We are seriously short on seeds right now, and I need you to bring us seeds. You can bring seeds to any Austin Public Library branch. Bastrop Library is also looking for seeds right now, and it wouldn’t surprise me if other suburban and exurban seed libraries are running low, so check with your librarians to see if your library has a seed collection and bring any seeds to share.

Pack the seeds into paper bags or envelopes, seal the package well, and write the name of the plant, the year the seeds were collected, and the words “for the seed collection” on the bag or envelope. Or you can keep the seeds and bring them to a seed swap event this fall. There are more details later in the show about upcoming seed swaps.

September was hot and dry again this year, and you may be feeling some fatigue from watering plants—I definitely am. If you’ve been planting or transplanting new plants in September, be sure to keep them well watered to get them established. I have a few tools that help make the job easier, including a handy little round sprinkler that I use for watering large patches of perennials. It’s available on my website ATXGardens.com as an Amazon affiliate link, so I earn commissions from that. It’s in the store there and there’s also a link to it in the show notes. It’s just a little round yellow sprinkler—super simple, inexpensive, durable, and easy to use. It’s great for watering perennials when you’re trying to get them newly established. Thanks to my friend Leah for recommending that little round sprinkler to me.

Now I’m going to talk about woody plants a little bit.

Lately I’ve been digging out sapling trees in my yard and transplanting them, giving them to friends, and donating them to TreeFolks. They have very deep roots and that makes them hard to dig out, so I use a tool called the Root Slayer for digging out small trees and it works great. Again, see the show notes for my Amazon affiliate link, or find it at ATXGardens.com. I want to thank Roger at The Natural Gardener for introducing me to that tool, and they also carry it at The Natural Gardener.

October is the best time to plant woody plants like trees and shrubs, and that also includes woody vines like native crossvine and Carolina jessamine. Planting now, as those woody plants are going dormant, gives them plenty of time to get settled before summer heat sets in. Now is a good time to shop for trees because many go on sale when they start to lose their leaves, and nurseries want to make room for seasonal stuff like pumpkins and Christmas trees. Even though the trees are losing leaves and don’t look great, dormancy is the best time to plant.

Visit your locally owned garden center for the best tree and shrub choices—and don’t forget those woody vines too. Some of your established trees are going to start losing their leaves in October. If you’re new to Austin, you may notice that many trees do not lose their leaves in the fall here, especially live oaks, which are one of our most common species. Live oaks are called “live” because they keep their leaves all winter and look alive year-round.

Keep as many leaves as you can on your property and use them as mulch in your planting beds and vegetable garden. It’s free mulch, and it’s the best mulch. Chopping them up with a leaf vacuum or lawn mower makes them even better for your plants and keeps them from blowing around. Chop up those leaves and put them in your beds.

Hopefully you’re enjoying a second round of blooms on your roses for the fall if you have repeat bloomers in your garden. There’s not much to do with roses right now other than enjoy them. I do not deadhead them in the fall. I leave the dead flowers on. I have antique roses, and most of them make hips, which are the fruit of the rose. When you leave those hips on, it sends a signal to the plant that it’s time to stop growing and get ready for winter, so I just leave them alone.

Now we’ve got our middle-of-the-podcast sponsor break.

Hi y’all. This is Colleen Dieter and you’re listening to the ATXGardens Podcast. I give plenty of garden advice on the show, but there’s nothing like meeting in person to get the best information for your plants and landscape, and that’s what I can do for you. Visit ATXGardens.com. As a certified arborist and professional gardener, I’ve been giving advice to do-it-yourselfers for over 20 years. I help my customers by alleviating their anxieties about their yards.

Visit ATXGardens.com to book a consultation with me. During the consultation, we’ll walk through your yard and answer all of your questions. Also at ATXGardens.com, you can shop Colleen’s favorite things—that’s gardening apparel, tools, and books that I often mention during this podcast. From trees to vegetables to wildflowers, I’m here to help. Make an appointment at ATXGardens.com.

Okay, now I’m going to tell you a little bit about what’s going on in the garden with perennials and bulbs.

October is an awesome time for planting perennials and ornamental grasses. Perennials are plants that grow up in the spring, bloom in summer and fall, and then the tops die in the winter, and the plants grow back again from the ground in the spring. Examples include lantanas and indigo spires salvias, so now is a great time to plant them.

We are also really lucky in Austin to have cool-season perennials in our gardens, and they are starting to re-emerge now. Some of my favorite plants are perennials that have the opposite life cycle of a typical perennial, like white yarrow, spiderworts, and lyreleaf sage. They grow back from their roots in the fall, are green all winter, bloom in early spring, and then their tops die in the summer when it’s hot. Then the next fall they do it all over again.

They usually grow under trees and have adapted this life cycle to take advantage of the extra sun that comes through when the trees lose their leaves in the winter. These plants may be showing up in nurseries at this time of year when they start looking good again, but some of them can be hard to find, so you’ll want to check out plant swaps and seed swaps going on this fall to see if you can find them. I’m going to announce those events later in the podcast.

It’s also a good time to divide perennials, bulbs, yuccas, and agaves. The Root Slayer I mentioned earlier, which is good for digging out tree saplings, is also great for dividing agave pups from the mother plant so you can transplant them or pass them along to friends.

If you don’t know how to divide plants, at ATXGardens.com you’ll find my three-volume set of booklets called “Let’s Care for Texas Plants.” That maintenance guide has diagrams and instructions about how to divide bulbs, yuccas, and perennials. Check that out if you don’t know how to divide things, and of course there’s a link in the show notes.

Now is the part of the show that I like to call “Nature Stuff.” At the beginning of October, I’ve noticed more butterflies starting to visit my garden. I’ve noticed they tend to show up when tree leaves start to fall, and sometimes out of the corner of my eye it’s hard to distinguish between falling leaves and fluttering butterfly wings. Is it safe to assume that butterflies evolved to look like falling leaves to confuse predators? I don’t know.

I saw the first few monarch butterflies traveling through on their migration route to Mexico about two weeks ago—very thrilling. While October is one of the busiest times for gardeners, it’s also maybe the best time to enjoy the garden in Austin. I want you to actively rebel against the current pop and political culture that actively disconnects us from nature and humanity. Isolation is the true enemy, and connection is the cure.

Sit down in the garden this month as much as possible. Invite friends over to share a beverage. Have a real, meaningful conversation and pass along plants and seeds. Slow down and enjoy the spaces you created with your beloved partners—the plants—and our home, Central Texas.

Now it’s time for vegetables.

October is time to plant cool-season veg. Add some compost to the soil and then plant your cool-season crops that will live through the cold this winter. Arugula, radishes, Swiss chard, mustard, turnips, bok choy, beets, collards, carrots, lettuce, and kale can all be planted by sowing seeds directly into the garden soil. Broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbages can be planted in the garden as small plants right now. You can also plant artichokes and their cousins, cardoons, as small plants.

Now is the time to start onions from seed, either directly in the garden or in pots indoors to transplant later, and it’s also time to plant garlic cloves directly into the ground. If you’re letting any part of your vegetable garden rest in the winter, plant a cover crop now. Alfalfa, rye, clovers, Texas bluebonnets, and Austrian winter peas are just a few of the many cool-season cover crops you could plant. Cover crops feed and protect the soil while the garden and the gardener are resting. Sometimes we need to take breaks from vegetable gardening, and that is okay.

Get ready for freezing weather—that could come as early as November 15th, which is hard to believe but true. Even though our cool-season veg can survive cold weather, they can be damaged by freezes, and that damage will set them back so they won’t produce as much food for you and may be more vulnerable to pests.

To keep your cool-season vegetables thriving, be ready with some floating row cover fabric, cloches, or blankets and sheets to toss over them when a freeze is forecast. My friend Kristen from Small Town Farm, who’s also a Central Texas Seed Savers volunteer, gave me a great tip about protecting small plants from freezes by turning a mason jar upside down on top of them to act as a tiny cloche or mini greenhouse.

Options for protecting your vegetables from freezes abound, so do some research and figure out which strategy works best for you, and start gathering your materials now so you aren’t freaking out when the first freeze comes.

Now onto herbs. What’s going on with herbs?

Take out your basil and make some pesto—stick it in the freezer to use this winter. All the warm-season annual herbs should be removed around this time of year to make room for your cool-season annual herbs. If your basil has seeds in the dead flower heads, bring them to the library seed collection.

Plant seeds right now directly into the garden for cool-season annual herbs like cilantro, parsley, dill, calendula, and fennel. These are all plants that will only live through this fall and winter, and then they’ll go to seed and die when it gets hot next spring. These plants will thrive this winter if you provide them with some cover during hard freezes, so get your covers ready.

Be sure to add compost to your planting areas before planting anything new, and mix a little decomposed granite in with it for good drainage for your Mediterranean herbs like thyme and oregano. Plant all those perennial herbs now; perennials are plants that live for longer than one year.

And on that note, it’s time for wildflowers.

This is the best time of year to plant wildflower seeds, especially early spring bloomers like bluebonnets and pink evening primrose. My friends at Native American Seed have the best wildflower seeds. Do not buy mixes from big box stores that often have non-native invasive plants mixed in. Some of the worst yards I’ve ever been in are yards where people tore out all the grass and then bought a seed mix from a big box store and dumped it everywhere. Do not do that. Have a strategy and get good seeds from Native American Seed. That’s Native American Seed at SeedSource.com, and the link is in the show notes. I just love them—I don’t get any money for plugging them.

I have a bunch of events and classes coming up, and y’all are invited.

Central Texas Seed Savers’ Heirloom Fruit Tree Preservation Project is presenting a talk about the importance of preserving heirloom fruit trees at the Austin Water Utility’s Center for Environmental Research at Hornsby Bend in southeast Austin on Sunday, October 12th from 9:30 to 11:30.

Saturday, October 18th, I’ll be at the Healing Roots and Wings Festival at Givens Park from 11 to 4. I’ll be teaching a basic organic vegetable gardening class from noon to 2.

Save the date for Saturday, November 1st, for Central Texas Seed Savers’ Fall Festival fundraiser at Green Sleeves Nursery in Pflugerville. Nessa from MicroLife and Jay from Texas Gardener Magazine will be speaking, and I am putting together a very special presentation about seed saving. There will be food, drinks, raffles, and all kinds of fun. That’s a fundraiser, so we’re selling tickets and all proceeds go to Central Texas Seed Savers, preventing extinction of our special Central Texas plants through seed sharing.

Now speaking of seed sharing, Saturday, November 8th, Central Texas Seed Savers is hosting our big annual seed swap event at the Austin Public Library Central location—that’s downtown on Cesar Chavez. It’s always tons of fun and I look forward to it every year. This year we’re holding it in the gallery area of the library, which is new, and it will be delightful.

Join us between 11 and 1. You can bring any seeds you have to share, whether they’re packaged commercial seeds or still attached to twigs from your garden. Even if you don’t have seeds, you can still come and get seeds—no problem. Vegetables, trees, native plants, herbs—any kind of seed. All are welcome. This event is free and you don’t need to register. Just come Saturday, November 8th at the Central Library downtown from 11 to 1.

Also that same day, Saturday, November 8th, my gardening bestie and my co-host for The Horticulturati Podcast, Leah Turner, has a landscape she designed called Pollinator Paradise that’s included in the Garden Conservancy tour. Please get a ticket and go say hi to Leah. I’ll be stopping by to congratulate her and see that gorgeous garden after the seed swap.

Monday, November 17th, I’ll be presenting on tree planting at the Williamson County Master Gardeners’ monthly meeting, which starts at 6:30. More information about all of these events will be available on my website at ATXGardens.com, so you don’t have to worry about writing everything down.

Alright, thanks so much for joining me for this episode. Please like and subscribe to my show. Please write a review. Share this episode with a friend—if you have a friend who’s also plant-obsessed, they may enjoy it. Connect with us on Instagram; it’s ATXGardens with an underscore at the end: @ATXGardens_. Please check out the show notes, and tune in next time.

I’m Colleen Dieter with ATXGardens.com. Thanks so much for listening.