Spear Head Spade

09/11/2026

The mums are out, which means the digging season is really just starting.

Between now and the first hard frost there is more spade work than at any other time of year: dividing perennials, moving shrubs while the soil is still warm, cutting a clean bed edge, getting bulbs in at the right depth.

Three lengths for three jobs. Long handle for working upright along a border, D handle for anything that needs your weight on the foot rest, mini for containers and tight planting.

What is first on your fall list this year?

09/09/2026

If your lawn goes hard and grey by August, water is only half the story.

Heat and drought put cool season grass into dormancy on purpose, and it is a survival trick rather than a death. What decides how early that happens, and how badly, is usually compaction underneath it.

Early fall is the right time to fix a cool season lawn, so bluegrass, fescue or rye, while the grass still has six good weeks of growing left to fill in the holes. Warm season grass, bermuda or zoysia, wants late spring instead, when it is actually growing. Core aeration pulls plugs out and leaves room for roots to go down. Spike aeration just pushes the soil sideways and packs it tighter, which is why the cheap spike sandals mostly do not work.

A useful test before you spend anything: push a screwdriver into the lawn. If it stops in the first couple of inches, you have compaction worth treating. Do it a day after rain, or water the spot first, because dry soil fools the test exactly the way compacted soil does.

Run the screwdriver test before you rent anything.
https://spearheadspade.com/blogs/garden-guides/how-to-aerate-lawn

09/07/2026

Daffodils are the most forgiving bulb you can plant and still the easiest to plant badly.

Too shallow is the usual mistake, and most of it comes from measuring the wrong thing. The rule is three times the height of the bulb, measured from the base of the bulb to the soil surface, not three times the height piled on top of it. For a big trumpet daffodil that is about six inches down, and up to eight in light sandy soil.

The other one: leave the foliage alone after they bloom. Those leaves are building next spring's flower. Braiding or cutting them early is why a patch fades out after a few good years.

The depth number most people get wrong, and the May decision that matters more:
https://spearheadspade.com/blogs/garden-guides/how-to-plant-daffodil-bulbs

09/03/2026

Fall is the easiest window all year to move a shrub or a perennial. The soil is still warm, the air has cooled off, and roots keep growing for weeks after the top of the plant goes dormant. A plant moved now spends the whole winter quietly settling in instead of fighting August heat with half its roots missing.

The exceptions worth knowing: magnolia, dogwood, birch and most broadleaf evergreens resent a fall move and are better done in spring.

The part most people get wrong is the root ball. Cut it wider than feels necessary, lift from underneath rather than by the stem, and get it back in the ground at the same depth it was growing before.

How wide to cut the root ball, and the depth mistake that kills a transplant six months later:
https://spearheadspade.com/blogs/garden-guides/fall-is-for-planting-how-to-transplant-shrubs-and-perennials-in-autumn

09/03/2026

Fall is the easiest window all year to move a shrub or a perennial. The soil is still warm, the air has cooled off, and roots keep growing for weeks after the top of the plant goes dormant. A plant moved now spends the whole winter quietly settling in instead of fighting August heat with half its roots missing.

The part most people get wrong is the root ball. Cut it wider than feels necessary, lift from underneath rather than by the stem, and get it back in the ground at the same depth it was growing before.

How to time the move, cut a root ball that survives it, and settle the plant in for winter:
https://spearheadspade.com/blogs/garden-guides/fall-is-for-planting-how-to-transplant-shrubs-and-perennials-in-autumn

02/18/2026

We can’t wait to meet you. We’re at Booth 815!

02/08/2026

01/02/2026

Hello Friends! We are working to make our website a bit more user friendly. Till then…..when you add your item to cart, you’ll see on the bottom left, Have a Coupon Code? Type HOLIDAYS in there and 15% off will be applied. (For you Amy Powers fans [like us], Amy gets credit for any orders that resulted from her awesome video.)