Yard Bazaar, Issue No. 2. Written in Lutz, Florida, first week of October. Yard Bazaar is put out by Portico Goods, which is my store, so when I point at something we sell I'm telling you that up front rather than at the bottom in grey type.
Last issue I said I'd come back to leaf-free yards, St. Augustine that's had a rough summer, and whether anybody has ever kept a fern alive on a screened porch through February. All three, below. One of them I still don't have a confident answer to.
It was 71 degrees at six this morning. That's the first one since April, and if you live here you know exactly what I mean by it.
What actually falls in a Florida yard in October?
Not much, and this is the part that confuses people who moved here.
Live oaks, which is what most of us have, drop their leaves in spring, not fall. February and March, all at once, right when the rest of the country is watching things come back. So the October rake-and-bag ritual you grew up with doesn't apply, and if you bought a rake for this month you bought it for the wrong month.
What does come down now: pine needles, constantly and forever. Crape myrtle leaves, which are small and go to nothing. Sweetgum balls if you inherited a sweetgum, in which case you have my sympathy.
Pine needles are worth collecting rather than binning. They make the best free mulch you will ever get, they don't wash away in a downpour the way bark nuggets do, and they're already the right pH for azaleas and blueberries. A tarp and twenty minutes beats a leaf blower. If you're moving any real volume of yard material this month, the thing that actually saves your back is a cart with air tires rather than the hard plastic wheels that bog down the second the ground is soft.
Why does my St. Augustine look like that?
Because it just came through five months of heat, standing water, and almost certainly chinch bugs.
The classic chinch damage is irregular yellow-to-straw patches in the sunniest, driest part of the lawn, usually along a driveway or a south-facing wall, spreading outward. People water it more, which does nothing, because the grass isn't thirsty, it's being drained. If that's what you had in August, the damage is done and October is the recovery window rather than the treatment window.
Three things actually help right now, and none of them cost anything.
Mow it high. Three and a half to four inches on St. Augustine. Every notch you drop costs you root depth, and root depth is the whole argument come next summer. The temptation after a scruffy summer is to scalp it tidy. Don't.
Start easing the water back. The grass needs materially less in October than it did in July, and overwatering now invites fungus into turf that's already weak.
Check whether your fertilizer window has reopened. Much of the Tampa Bay area runs a summer ban on nitrogen and phosphorus through the rainy season, lifting around the start of October. The dates and the rules differ by county, so look yours up rather than taking my word or your neighbour's. If your window is open, this is a genuinely good moment to feed, because the grass is still growing and will use it.
The grass isn't dead. It's sulking. It generally comes back.
Will a fern survive on a screened porch through February?
I promised an answer and what I have is a qualified yes and a confession.
A Boston fern on a screened porch in zone 9 usually makes it. The screen and the roof do more than you'd think — they hold a few degrees on a cold night and keep frost off the fronds, which is the thing that actually kills them. Our handful of genuinely cold nights are radiational, clear and still, and a roof over the plant is most of the battle.
What kills them here isn't cold, it's February watering on a January schedule. Growth slows right down, the pot stays wet, the roots rot, and you conclude it froze. Back the water off hard once the nights drop, don't feed it at all until March, and move it to the most sheltered corner you have when something below 40 is forecast.
The confession: I've lost two. Both to the watering thing, both while being certain I was doing the right thing. The third one is on its second winter and looks better than either of them did. Ask me again in March.
When should you actually buy a turkey fryer?
Now, and I'll show you my numbers rather than just asserting it.
As I write this, our supplier is holding 539 of the 30-quart kits. That sounds like plenty. It is plenty — in October. The reason I'm writing this in the first week of the month rather than the third week of November is that the demand curve for this product is not a curve, it's a wall, and it lands on the Sunday before Thanksgiving when several hundred thousand people simultaneously decide.
For comparison, here's what the same supplier is holding on things nobody panics about: 920 vertical smokers, 433 barrel smokers, 142 of the 20-inch fire pit lids. Those numbers barely move all year. The fryer number is the one that falls off a cliff, and when it goes it doesn't come back until January.
The 30-quart kit is $119 with the burner stand. Thirty quarts also means it works the rest of the year as a jumbo boiling pot, which around here means a seafood boil for twelve people in one go instead of three.
The safety note bears repeating every single year, because this is the one item on any of my lists that actually hurts people. A frozen turkey and hot oil make a fireball. Thaw it completely, pat it dry, measure your oil with water first so you don't overfill, and set the burner on dirt or concrete well away from the house. Never on a wooden deck. Never in the garage.
Is it fire pit season yet?
Not quite. We get maybe a dozen nights a year cold enough that a fire is a pleasure rather than an endurance test, and they start late November.
But the firewood decision is an October decision. Wood bought wet in December is a smoke machine, not a fire. Buy it now, stack it off the ground, and it'll actually burn when you want it to. Off the ground matters more here than anywhere cold — wood sitting on Florida dirt is a termite invitation and a sponge. A round firewood rack is $49.99 and does the whole job.
If you don't have a pit yet, the folding steel one is $139 and comes with a grill and a spark screen, and it folds flat the eleven months you aren't using it. We're holding 53 of those, which is a much thinner number than the smokers, so it's less forgiving than it looks.
The porch gets used again
The real thing October gives back is the evening. Somewhere in the second week you'll walk outside after dinner and just stay out there, and that's the whole season in one moment.
Most backyards are set up for a 2 p.m. cookout rather than a 9 p.m. sit, and the fix is seating that faces each other and a light you don't have to think about. We've just added a three-piece rocking set at $229.99 — two rockers and a glass-topped side table, which is the correct furniture for doing nothing in particular.
And if the cushions from this summer are still outside, this is the month they come in. A 75-gallon deck box is $99 and swallows four seat cushions and an umbrella, then spends the rest of the year being a bench.
The short version
Stop waiting for leaves that aren't coming until March. Mow high, water less, feed the lawn if your county lets you. Move the fern somewhere sheltered and then mostly leave it alone. Buy the fryer this month, not the week before. Buy firewood now so it's dry in December.
Next issue, before Thanksgiving: what the Imported lane actually means when you're buying a gift, which of our stuff is worth it and which honestly isn't, and the order-by dates in writing so nobody's refreshing tracking on Christmas Eve.
Everything I pointed at is at Portico Goods. Most of it ships from a US warehouse and lands in three to seven days. Stock figures above were read from our supplier the morning this went out, and they move.
— Vincent