Episode 44: What Is It With These Squirrels?

About This Episode

On this episode of Ask Grumpy, Steve Bender, also known as Southern Living’s Grumpy Gardener, helps a reader deal with their squirrel problem. Plus, Grumpy’s tip for prepping your fall garden.

Question Of The Week

What is it with the squirrels this year? They are devouring the seed pods on my Miss FrancesCrepe Myrtle but not doing anything to the other crepes in the area?

Grumpy Gardener Answer: Squirrels go nuts for that stuff. And it's not funny. but actually, there's some good news to this. Even if they eat all of the seed pods off your crepe myrtle, it won't hurt your tree, and it won't affect flowering the next year. So you're going have to put up with it. Everybody hates squirrels. They're annoying, but what you could do is suggest that your neighbors do the maple syrup- trick next year, and so then they'll go and bother your neighbors and not you.

Tip Of The Week

Now that we are getting into the fall, there's a lot of garden tasks that we can be doing this time of year. And one of the easiest to do, and most fruitful, is to divide your perennials. It's a really good time because the temperatures have gone down, and the plants have started to go dormant. And so they don't mind having their roots disturbed at this time. There's a lot of plants that you can go, dig 'em up, and split them up into three or four parts, and you can plant them in different parts of your garden. Now, here's some examples of plants that you can be dividing this time of year. You can be dividing your bearded iris. They're real easy to dig up and just separate the roots. Just make sure that each part of the tuber has a few leaves sticking out of it. Daylilies are extremely easy to divide. Take a garden fork, just lift the whole clump up, and just break apart the cold clump, just with your fingers or with a trowel. You can get a lot of plants from one clump of daylilies, and then just replant them.

Other things you can divide right now: Coneflowers, purple coneflowers, ornamental grasses. Ornamental grasses form these big mounds. Well, just take a spade or a shovel out there, and just chop them into different bits, and replant them. And so you get free plants. You can do this with hellebores too. Just dig 'em up, divide 'em, and divide the roots. Replant. It's a good time to divide hostas before they disappear below the ground, and you don't know where they are until next spring. Now, you can just dig up a clump, and you just put your trowel between the little stems that you'll see there, and just split it into different parts. You can divide bee balm. You can divide mums really easily at this time. Garden phlox is really simple. Now is a good time to divide your hearty ferns, the ones that stay evergreen, like autumn fern. Make more, and that way you have some color in the winter time.

About Ask Grumpy

Ask Grumpy is a podcast featuring Steve Bender, also known as Southern Living’s Grumpy Gardener. For more than 20 years, Grumpy has been sharing advice on what to grow, when to plant, and how to manage just about anything in your garden. Tune in for short episodes every Wednesday and Saturday as Grumpy answers reader questions, solves seasonal conundrums, and provides need-to-know advice for gardeners with his very Grumpy sense of humor. Be sure to follow Ask Grumpy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen so you don't miss an episode.

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.