One of my favorite gardening books is a “Garden Almanac.” The author has compiled all the essential information that a gardener can refer to year in and year out. Every gardener, whether master or novice, can use a guide to seasonal garden tasks.

This month we do an assortment of tasks aimed at creating next year’s garden. September’s tasks include:

1. Have your lawn and garden soil tested. You can contact the Brown County OSU Extension office for more information, or go to Ohioline and refer to Fact Sheet HYG-1132/Soil Testing for Ohio Lawns, Landscapes, Fruit Crops, and Vegetable Gardens

2. Rake up fallen leaves and add them to your compost heap.

3. Mulch areas intended for early spring planting.

4. Plant trees and shrubs and water deeply before ground freezes.

5. After leaf fall, take hardwood cuttings.

6. Reseed the lawn until the soil cools.

7. Mark late-to-emerge perennials.

8. Rake up or pull out annuals once they’re killed by frost.

9. Clean up your perennial beds.

10. Continue planting hardy spring-flowering bulbs.

11. Direct-seed lettuce, endive, and escarole.

12. Take cuttings of your favorite herbs to grow indoors over winter.

13. Dig, sever, and replant rooted suckers of raspberries.

14. Remove stakes and other garden equipment from the vegetable garden.

15. After a killing frost, clean up the vegetable garden. Squash vine borers winter over in plant debris.

16. Check houseplants for insect pests that may hitch a ride inside at summer’s end.

17. Plant amaryllis bulbs for holiday bloom.

18. Dig and store summer-flowering tender bulbs after first frost.

19. Make a to-do list for next year’s garden while you still remember what happened this year!!!!!

Remember that tidying up the garden will ensure the healthy and vigorous development of next year’s flowers, foods, lawns, and ornamental plants. Also, don’t forget to protect those young trees from rutting deer. If the trunk is one to four inches in diameter, you can use a piece of four-inch plastic drain tile. Split/cut it down one side and slide it on the tree. Be sure to take it off the first of March. Each year a buck deer works his magic on several of my Norway spruce trees. Visitors often comment on my natural pruning techniques. I just smile and remember how cute the fawns were in the spring.