Last-Minute Outdoor Tasks

Remember about three weeks ago, when I gave you the list of everything I still planned to get done in the garden before winter set in? Well, I don’t know about you, but the warmer-than-usual November lulled me into thinking that autumn would last a bit longer here in Northern New England. When the snow finally did come just before Thanksgiving, it caught my household by surprise.

The hose froze in place right in the driveway; the compost pile crusted over with a layer of ice before it was fully spread. With a bit of a thaw, though, it looks as if we’re going to get a reprieve. Daytime temperatures for Tuesday through Thursday of this week are projected to be well above freezing in most of our region — 50-65 in Manhattan, 50 to 60 in Hartford, Conn., and 43 to 53 throughout Maine from Portland to Houlton.

Let’s take one last look at the remaining outdoor to-do list for December.

Labeling— Make the rounds one last time to make sure your plant labels are in place and legible. I’ve long-forgotten cultivar names and without accurate labels, I’m lost. It’s important to me, because I use my gardens to report back to you. Are cultivar names important to you? If so, attend to the labels while you still can.

Mulching— Depending on where you live, the ground may or may not be frozen. In southern New England, you still don’t want to put down that winter mulch. In northern areas, you may be ready. It’s easy to tell. If you try to drive a shovel into the ground and it doesn’t easily pierce the soil surface, then the ground is frozen and mulch can go down.

Remember, the idea with mulch is to keep the ground frozen. If snow happens to fly again before the ground freezes — and the snow sticks — you don’t need to worry about applying the mulch until spring, or at least until the snow melts.

Bulbs—Believe it or not, I do still have some spring-flowering bulbs to go into the ground and plan to use my lunch hour on Wednesday to get them into the ground at last. I have no doubt they’ll sprout and bloom just fine next spring.

Planting— Yes, you can still plant any balled-and-burlapped or container trees, shrubs or perennials until the ground freezes. I have some plants I spoke for at my local garden center and I’ll use my lunchtime on Thursday to go collect those and get them into the ground. Mulching will be doubly important on these plants, since I don’t want them to heave out of the ground when the soil thaws out prematurely next spring.

One other note: If you’re transporting trees or shrubs this late in the year, be certain to wrap them in burlap or a poly tarp for the ride — otherwise the wind will desiccate them and likely kill any exposed stems.

Holiday Trees — The same goes for transporting trees. Everywhere I turn, I see people with bare cut Christmas trees tied to the tops of their cars. These cold, windy rides are a terrible strain on the needles and will cause premature needle drop once the tree gets inside the home. Tote your tree inside the vehicle if possible, or take the time to wrap it inside a tarp if you have one handy.

Also, if you’re planning to bring a living tree indoors that you plan to plant outside after Christmas, it’s a good idea to dig the hole now before the ground fully freezes.

Check Snow Loads —Where I live, that first snow fall was a good opportunity to see how some of the new plants carry snow. You may want to make the effort to build a snow frame wrapped in burlap if you think your plants may not handle a heavy load of snow plunging from a roof or overhang. If this is a recurring problem, you may want to consider moving the plant to a new location next spring.

Check Your Watering —Around my home, we’ve had more than enough moisture and I’m quite certain that’s true throughout the Northeast. If you happen to have any new plantings that might not have received water lately, give them a deep drink now before the ground freezes solid. It will likely be the last water the plants get for a while.

Winterize Your Tools —Remove all soil and lubricate all moving parts. Sharpen your hoes, spades, loppers, saws and pruners and give those a good coating of lubrication as well. Paint any wooded-handled tools. Run the gas out of any power equipment and then drain the oil. Add winterizing agent to any leftover gasoline . . . and, yes, pick up those hoses that are still hanging around outside.

Purchase Your De-Icer — If you’ve got lawns and gardens around your front door, avoid purchasing products that have high sodium content. Kitty litter, salt-free sand and calcium chloride products are better choices for salt-sensitive plants. In many cases, hardscapes are also sensitive to salt.

Apply Anti-Dessicants — This oily coating helps plants’ foliage retain moisture on dry, cold winter days. You’ll probably want to reapply this again in mid to late January.

Paul Tukey - November 28, 2005.

The Truth About Holiday Plants

This edition of People, Places & Plants magazine, now out on newsstands and in subscribers’ mailboxes, contains an article that details the honest truth about five of the most popular indoor holiday plants: holiday cactus; gloxinias; azaleas; poinsettias and bromeliads. Before you plunk down your hard-earned cash at your local garden center, read the article. It may save you some frustration later on.

As a bonus, I dusted off some information about several other plants that are part of many holiday celebrations. They all have their merits . . .

Cyclamen — In white, red, lavender and pink, these members of the primrose family are one of the most prolific flowering plants for indoors. If you can keep your cyclamen in a bright room with cool evening temperatures between 50 and 60, with daytime temperatures at about 70, the plant may flower for several months.

After flowering, gradually withhold water until the foliage dies off. During this rest period, don’t water for six to eight weeks.

In the late spring and summer, you can move the pots into an area with little direct light. Cyclamen needs continually moist soil and won’t react well if it is allowed to wilt between waterings. Don’t keep the plant in standing water, though, and fertilize regularly while the new leaves form. Move the plants into more sunlight by early autumn and, with any luck, the plants will rebloom by the next holiday season.

Orchids — Many types of orchids work well as holiday decorations. Possibly the best and easiest to keep healthy is Cattleya trianea that blooms in white, pink or red.

If you purchase a new plant around the holidays, keep it in full sun at home through March. After that, indirect light will be best. Keep the area as humid as possible by setting the plant in a plastic or metal tray that has been filled to a depth of an inch or more with perlite or pebbles covered in water — but don’t let the roots of the orchid stand in water.

Amaryllis — This South African native is perhaps the most spectacular flowering plant for the holidays, coming in an assortment of vivid shades. It’s easy to bring to bloom simply by bringing the large bulb home and giving it water and a minimal amount of sun.

Getting the Amaryllis, Hippeastrum spp., to bloom in subsequent years will be the payback you’re looking for on a substantial investment. When the flowers are finished blooming, keep the pot in a sunny location, and continue to provide water and food throughout the spring and summer until the foliage dies back. You can event take the pot outside for the summer.

When the foliage is yellow or brown, cut it back and store the bulb in a cool, dry place with no water or sunlight.

After a month or three, repot the bulb in fresh potting mix, then water and feed it with bone meal or a fertilizer rich in phosphorus. Before long, the long stems should emerge from the soil and, with any luck, a spectacular bloom in time for next year.

Cape primrose — Another close cousin to the African violet, the Cape primrose, Streptocarpus spp., is easier to grow than gloxinia and the horn-shaped blooms are almost as large and more plentiful.

The good growers tell me a really light soil mix is key; purchase African violet mix and you can’t go wrong. Otherwise, grow your Cape primrose the same way you would a gloxinia or African violet, with moderate light and household temperatures. Avoid watering the foliage and keep constant moisture below the plant.

These will rebloom; in fact, if they’re really happy in the right soil mix, they’ll bloom indefinitely. If you can’t get them to bloom, always think first of the soil.

Kalanchoe — If you keep your home warm and want a holiday houseplant to thrive, this may be your choice. Kalanchoe, a native of Madagascar, will even forgive you for missing a watering, or two.

With rubbery textured leaves and glossy flowers, the plant can even look fake from a distance. I know I’ve pinched a few just to be sure.

As a houseplant in our climate, kalanchoe is oblivious to the seasons. When the flowers first die back, give the plant a rest period with reduced water, fertilizer and light. Unless it is too cold, it will likely begin to form new leaves and flower buds every other month or so. True kalanchoe afficionadoes will carefully monitor light levels during the rest period. The plant will reportedly put out bigger and more blossoms if light is limited to eight hours a day — with 16 hours in a closet — until flowering begins.

Reiger begonia — In the garden center, this is always a tempting plant for the holidays. Healthy specimens will literally be covered with red, orange, pink or white blossoms. With glossy leaves, it can make a spectacular centerpiece all on its own.

In my experience, though, they’re far more challenging in the home environment where they’ll react negatively to cool drafts, intense direct light when in bloom or the heat of a nearby furnace. They also like more humidity than can be found in most homes in winter, but this can be overcome by placing the plant atop a bed of pebbles and water — but don’t try to grow your Reiger in standing water.

The good news is that if you like these begonias, they’re rarely expensive. Purchasing a pot or two just for the holidays isn’t such a bad deal.

Chenile — Also known as red-hot cattail, or Acalypha hispida, this plant is among the most exotic of all houseplants. Nothing is more luxuriant that a chenille in full bloom, with cascading bright red “cattails” that resemble soft bottle brushes.

Think twice, though, before plunking down the $15 to $40 to bring a prime specimen home. These are difficult to grow in the typically dry home environment and, without the moisture available in a greenhouse setting, they will tend to drop their blossoms quickly.

Keep moisture under the pot, just as you would with begonias or orchids, but don’t put the plant in standing water.

“Don’t ever let the plant get cold,” said Ken Ellis of Sunset Greenhouses in Fairfield, Maine. “Give it as much sun as possible in the winter and at least half a day in the summer.”

Christmas peppers — A relatively new addition to the offerings of holiday plants, these “hot” peppers are the same members of the Capsicum annuum species that we use as ornamental peppers in the outdoor garden. In our climate, these peppers often need the later days of autumn and early winter to bear fruit anyway, so many people grow them in containers. Bringing them indoors for the holidays makes perfect sense.

They’re annuals, so you don’t need to fret about keeping them alive for a second season — just plant new ones next year. If you purchase full-grown plants at the garden center this winter, you’ll probably want to toss them out as soon as the fruit drops off.

One note about these: most of the species of hot peppers are really, really hot and not in the edible category. Eating the fruit can be especially irritable to young children.

Paul Tukey - November 22, 2005.

Yes, You Can Still Plant Bulbs

It’s Monday as I write this and, my goodness, I am sore from head to toe. This past weekend was a classic full-court fall cleanup, with wheelbarrows, shovels, rakes and the rototiller running from morning to night.

It felt good to go to bed Sunday night after accomplishing much of our To-Do list, but a few items remained. We still have about half of our 30 yards of compost waiting to be spread, a few shrubs yet to plant, and we still have hundreds of spring-blooming bulbs waiting to go into the ground.

I’m not panicking, not yet anyway. In southern Maine, where the soil is showing no sign of freezing anytime soon, I’m guessing that I’ll be able to plant bulbs until early to mid December. In northern areas, you may be in more of a rush, but chances are you still have time left, too.

Bulbs are gardening’s slam dunk. Stick them in the ground, ideally at least twice as deep as the bulbs’ diameter, and you’ll almost certainly be rewarded with a blossom next spring. Deer, squirrels, chipmunks and skunks are usually the only things that keep bulbs from blooming. If critters have historically been a problem, you can either spray the bulbs with a deer and squirrel deterrent available at your local garden center, or plant the bulbs under a layer of wire mesh. You can also plant daffodils in close proximity to the bulbs and they will act as nature’s own deterrent, since nothing — not even a hungry deer — will eat a daffodil bulb or blossom.

This is also a good time to prepare bulbs for indoor bloom in February and March. In the technique known as “forcing,” you can trick bulbs into thinking it’s spring several weeks ahead of time.

Here are the steps:

1) Pot the bulbs in a container with a drainage hole and fill it about halfway with potting soil. At least a couple of inches of soil below most bulbs would be ideal;

2) add some bone meal as fertilizer;

3) check the position; bulbs can be tightly packed, but shouldn’t be touching;

4) add water, enough to moisten all of the potting soil;

5) place the container in a cool, dark spot such as a protected porch, garage, unheated basement or the refrigerator shelf;

6) check the container regularly for about three months;

7) when shoots begin to emerge a couple of inches high, move the container into the full light and warmth and you should get blossoms within two to three weeks.

Plan ahead. If you start now, you can have blooming tulips by March, just about the time the flower shows are in full gear. You’ll have a flower show of your own on your kitchen table.

Paul Tukey - November 8, 2005.

Healthy Soil

Thanks to all of you who responded to last week’s Tip of the Week with comments and questions. It’s nice to know you’re reading! Some of you asked about the bulk compost deliveries, and others asked when my book will come out. So, yes, Winterwood Farms will deliver bulk compost to your home, too. And, I don’t know exactly when the lawn book will be out on the street, but right now the goal is October or November of 2006. That’s if I get the book written by Feb. 1 . . . and that’s not all that far away.

It was also interesting to me that some of you questioned why I’d be traveling to South Carolina to research gardening information. How could our Northeast readers possibly benefit, you asked?

I always think of a classic George Harrison line from a Beatles song when someone asks a question like that. In the “Inner Light,” he wrote, “The farther one travels, the less one knows.” Every time I travel, or Dr. Rick travels for that matter, we inevitably learn things that we can bring back home for the benefit of our readers.

I was in South Carolina to learn about Southern or “warm-season” turfgrass varieties, since that’s not my area of expertise in the book. Granted, most of what I learned isn’t applicable up here — since Bermudagrass, centipedegrass and bahiagrass won’t make it north of North Carolina — but I found it amazing how soil dynamics are fairly universal. For at least 50 years or so, most of us really have had it somewhat wrong in the way we have gardened and cared for our lawns. We look at things like NPK — nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium — when we really should be examining soil bacteria, protozoa, fungi, mycorrhize, enzymes and endophytes.

It’s too bad, really, that the microscopic components of healthy soil have such seemingly complicated names that remind us of a high school biology test gone wrong. The chemical industry has fed us simplicity and we have devoured the meal, to the tune of more than 80 million pounds of pesticides on home lawns each year.

So what’s the tip of this week after all this? Begin this fall by learning about your soil and what will make it healthy. Go on-line to find information. Go on your email and ask questions. Visit organicare.com, sustainablegrowth.com  or soilfoodweb.com, three sites that celebrate the work of Dr. Elaine Ingham, who has proven beyond doubt that natural gardening provides a better solution for the planet.

In my travels, recently, I was able to look at soil under a microscope, just as Dr. Ingham has done for the past several years at Oregon State University. In lay terms, organic soil is alive! Microscopic organisms are crawling everywhere. Under that same microscope, chemically treated soil often appears as if it’s on life support, with little activity.

I came away thinking about soil the same way I think about my own body, as if it’s a balance between red blood cells and white blood cells. Too many white blood cells and we’re in trouble. Too much bad stuff in the soil and it can’t sustain other life.

This fall, look around your garage and assess your chemical usage as it relates to gardening. Either use up what you have left or take it to a dumping station for toxic chemicals and be done with it. Order yourself a load of compost — the more local the better — or bring in some manure from a local farmer.

Vow to make some changes in your own yard and you’ll be doing your part to help the world. Get educated and you can make a difference.

Here’s how Dr. Ingham recently made a difference. You probably never read about this anywhere, and yet this story has the most profound of implications.

Presenting at the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification in New Zealand, Dr. Ingham told the story of a genetically modified bacterium called Klebsiella planticola, which had passed many governmental assessment processes and was nearing final approval for introduction into the marketplace. Proponents of this genetically modified organism said it had the potential to replace fossil fuel as an energy source because it could aid in the production of a cheaper alcohol alternative. As the bacterium processes dead plants, it causes the alcohol to be released.

No one talked about any side effects, however. Byproducts from the residue of the dead plants, which still contained the genetically modified bacterium, would be used as organic fertilizer on crops.

That all seemed great . . . except that no one tested this fertilizer on LIVING plants.

That’s where Dr. Ingham came in. Her research team found that the bacterium, in the presence of live plants, produced a lethal dose of alcohol — five times more than any plant could handle. Within seven days, the plants exposed to the bacterium died and turned to rotten, slimy residue. If this bacterium had been released in a wide geographic area, it would have wiped out life as we know it.

Imagine if this product had been released to the world at large. Know that it almost was.

As a backyard gardener, it is difficult for us to understand all of this and most of us won’t even try. It is easy, however, to garden safely and organically. If we all do, then companies may eventually stop trying to find us better chemicals and genetically modified super products that have untold consequences.

As the soil food web tells us, everything is connected. The smallest of bacteria to the largest of animals. The burning of fossil fuels and the changing of weather patterns. A negative action causes another negative action we might not even consider.

Paul Tukey - November 1, 2005.