What to do, when to do it, and when it is worth paying someone. Written for houses and condos in Oakville, Mississauga, Milton, Burlington and Etobicoke — with the local schedules and bylaws that actually apply here.
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Daffodils, alliums and the small early bulbs belong in the ground by early October; tulips can wait until the soil is close to freezing. Here is the depth for each, and what the Toronto Master Gardeners say keeps squirrels off them.
In the GTA, plant daffodils, alliums and small bulbs such as crocus and snowdrops now: the Toronto Master Gardeners say by the end of September or early October. Tulips can go in any time until the ground freezes. Plant two to three times as deep as the bulb is wide, which puts tulips at 15 to 20 cm. Against squirrels, firm the soil, pick up the papery skins, and lay chicken wire over the bed.
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Window wells before winter need three things: the leaves out, a rim that sits above the ground around it, and a cover that still opens from inside if the window is a bedroom escape route. Here is the order, from the Toronto, Mississauga and federal guidance.
Birds hitting your windows in autumn is a migration problem with a house-level fix: find the one or two panes that cause it, mark the outside of the glass at the right spacing, and move the feeder. Here is what the Toronto and Canadian guidance says works.
Green film on the north-side walkway, moss between the patio stones, black streaks down the roof. Three different problems: a slip hazard, a cosmetic stain, and growth that can lift shingles. How to tell them apart and what each needs.
A vegetable bed in late September holds three decisions: which plants can go in the composter, which ones must leave the property, and whether garlic goes in this week. Toronto's growing guide and Ontario's vegetable specialists settle all three.
The garage fills up with fuel, batteries, paint and lawn products every summer. Ontario's Fire Code puts a number on the fuel, and the labels and fire services settle most of the rest. Here is what may stay out there until spring.
Autumn cleanup puts hands, rakes and string trimmers into exactly the fence lines and shrub borders where poison ivy grows. The leaves are dropping, the stems are not harmless, and the ten minutes spent finding it first decide how the rest of the job goes.
Nothing in Halton, Peel or Toronto stops you from pressure washing your own driveway. All of it regulates where the water goes afterwards, and the grate at the bottom of the slope is the part that turns a Saturday job into an offence.
Earwigs, sowbugs and millipedes in a basement are a moisture report from the outside of the house. Which one you find tells you where to look, and most of the fix is mulch, leaf litter, downspouts and grading rather than a spray.
Lady beetles, cluster flies and stink bugs on a sunny wall in September are looking for a place to spend the winter, and the gap they use is usually around a window. What to seal, what to leave alone, and why a spray is the wrong tool for two of the three.
Three of the five municipalities we work in still require a permit to take down a dead ash, and the wood cannot leave the federally regulated area. Here is what each one asks for and where the trunk is actually allowed to go.
The plow ridge at the end of your driveway is handled five different ways inside 30 km. In three municipalities the answer for this winter is decided by a form in October.
Three Ontario sources give three cutoffs for autumn seeding, and by the middle of September two of them have closed. What each one measures, what the 30-year temperature record shows, and what seed put down this week can do.
The last outside window clean of the year is decided by three things: when the leaves are down, when the gutters are done, and how many days are left that stay above freezing. Here is how to pick the date in the GTA.
Mid-September is when most of the yard gets cut back. The oak is the one tree that does not, and the reason is a fungus that has been confirmed in Ontario since 2023. Here is what every level of government actually says about the date.
Spongy moth egg masses go up around mid-August and sit on fences, eavestroughs, furniture and bark all winter. Autumn is the window to take them off — and the part worth getting right is telling them apart from the native masses that belong there.
A dip in the run, a corner that drips only in heavy rain, a stain down the fascia. The eavestrough repair or replacement question is usually settled by the wood behind the trough rather than by the metal itself.
A move creates about a dozen address changes and exactly three of them carry a deadline in law. Here is which ones force your hand, which single form covers four records at once, and which ones nobody will ever chase you for.
One item in the yard has an actual rule attached to it, and it is the propane cylinder. Everything else is a question of whether it survives until May. Here is the order that works, and where an old tank goes.
Autumn is one of the two seasons GTA municipalities plant trees. Before buying one, check whether the spot is city land with a free tree attached, file the locate, and know how many litres your municipality says a new tree needs until the ground freezes.
The move that takes one afternoon in July runs out of daylight and legal parking in November. Three things change between September and December in the GTA: how much light you get, how many days bring rain, and when a parking permit stops being valid.
Most autumn yard work does nothing about mice. Raking the middle of the lawn changes nothing. The band that matters is roughly the first metre around the foundation, plus four food sources and a handful of openings the size of a coin.
The grate at the curb is the town's. The grate at the low point of your back yard is yours, and nobody is coming to clear it. Both fill with leaves in the same six weeks, and both take about ten minutes to deal with.
Autumn is when a tree gets marked for removal. Two facts decide whether the cut is legal: where the trunk stands, and how thick it is. Both are checkable in an afternoon, and the size threshold is a different number in every municipality.