Horticulturalist Erica Jo Shaffer made her monthly appearance on The Spark Tuesday to address a few early autumn topics.

A fall favorite -- mums,"There's garden mums and then there's perennial mums. So the perennial mums obviously are going to come back and you'd find those more at the garden centers on the tables with the rest of the perennials. However, you would maybe find some pots now amongst the other garden mums, but garden mums are, I mean it's temporary decoration, like we're moving through the seasons and it's something that you can put in a pot that's going to look cool for a couple of weeks."

What about planting bulbs to bloom in the spring,"There's a thing called forcing bulbs, which means you trick them and make them think they've gone through winter when they haven't. So you can pull that off with daffodils, grape hyacinths, regular hyacinth. That's where we get our Easter flowers they've been through the worst. And again tricked into thinking they've gone through winter. And those ones can absolutely be planted in the garden. But if you're going to use it as a house plant, then we're talking about paperweights, we're talking about Amaryllis and things like that that can go outside but won't make our winters."

Shaffer said it's a good time to buy plants now too,"Garden centers are looking right now to kind of like get those stock down, because, again, if we have a bad winter and all the plants are still in containers, then there's a threat that the the plant roots can actually freeze. So getting rid of the older stuff is beneficial. Plus, all the new stuff comes in in the spring so you can take advantage of the sales, know what you're buying, know where it needs to go and check the roots because and this time of the year, especially if something arrived at a garden center earlier like, say, in April, it's been being watered all summer long. It's been growing all summer long. If the plant is really root bound, like the roots have been circling and circling and circling, a lot of times they don't encircle. They won't grow out of those. And then three or four years down the road, you're like, Why does this thing not grow? And it never knew it had new soil to start moving into because the roots were so tight and circled.

Shaffer said roots can be checked just by pulling the plant up from the pot.

Find the recipe for the Blueberry Zucchini with Lemon Frosting here.

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