HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Next Monday is the first day of Autumn and many are thinking about maintenance on their plants and lawns. Jason French with Stutzman’s Greenhouse says it is a good time to give your lawn the once over. “This is a great time for lawns, overseeding and seeding, or fertilizing,” French said. “Fall really builds that root system and gets that lawn looking really good again.”

There are some things you need to do to prepare your lawn for the fall season if you plan to overseed. “Generally you want to cut the grass a notch lower than what you had it then broadcast the seed over it,” French said. “Then I would use just a plain starter fertilizer where it doesn’t have any weed killer and keep the grass moist.”

Fall also means getting your plants prepared to be brought indoors and that means some maintenance on those as well. “A lot of those plants, it’s good to trim them back before we bring them in, and if we trim them back now they have time to get started with the new growth before they go inside,” French said. “The other thing to think about is sometimes it’s a perfect environment inside for bugs so you may either want to spray the plants or use a house plant granular to put in the soil and then the plant takes that up and it will get rid of any of those pests,” French added.

For those of you who like to garden, French says it’s still not too late to get some fall growing in for things like cucumbers, lettuce and other leafy veggies.