Okay, gardeners. We can see the finish line. It’s been a busy gardening season, but we are almost ready to wrap things up for the year. Almost.
October and November are the wrap it up, clean it up months. Now’s the time to give the last of your withering vegetable plants the heave-ho.
I know there is still one tomato out there, but it’s a brick. Let it go. Toss healthy plants on the compost pile and bag and trash the rest.
Are you one of those garden daredevils who cheat the season with late plantings of cool weather crops? Good for you. Just be ready with frost protection such as floating row covers or a deep layer of straw.
Floating row covers extend the growing season. Photo: UME/HGIC
Cut back any perennials that had serious disease or insect problems, but leave the rest standing to provide food and shelter for birds and overwintering pollinators and beneficial insects.
Mums have sensitive crowns – the part where the roots and stems meet– so treat them gently. After their fall show, leave them standing to increase their chances of coming back. Not all hardy mums are hardy.
Use leaves as mulch around trees and shrubs and in your vegetable and flower beds. Use a fine layer on your lawn and toss the rest in your compost pile.
Collect fallen branches to start a brush pile for wildlife. Put larger pieces on the bottom and smaller ones on the top to create cover and resting places for creatures great and small.
Yes, you can still sneak in some bulbs. Remember to plant them three times as deep as they are wide. In other words, a 1-inch daffodil bulb goes into a 3-inch hole.
You can plant trees and shrubs until the ground is frozen, too. Earlier is better to give roots a chance to get established. Just make sure you water them deeply every week.
There’s still time to plant trees such as this native black gum (Nyssa sylvatica) with brilliant fall color. Photo: T. David Sydnor, Bugwood
Here’s a fact sheet that tells you how to plant trees and shrubs and lists plants that are best planted in the spring.
Also deep water any tree or shrub you planted earlier this year to send them into the winter well-hydrated. Water until we get a ground-penetrating frost, usually around Thanksgiving.
Water any newly planted trees and shrubs to help them overwinter. Photo: M. Talabac, UME
Want a live Christmas tree? Save yourself some colorful language by digging the planting hole now before the ground freezes. Drop in a few unopened bags of mulch to avoid losing Bowser or any holiday guests in there.
We’re almost to the cuddle up with cocoa season. Taking care of these few last-minute garden tasks will let us smile and sigh under the afghan, reveling in a job well done.
By Annette Cormany, Principal Agent Associate and Master Gardener Coordinator, Washington County, University of Maryland Extension.
Mulch piled high around trees is harmful. Photo: D. Clement, University of Maryland Extension
I’ve been a bit twitchy lately. I keep seeing mulch piled high around trees and it makes me more than a little crazy. Those mulch volcanoes are so very bad for trees.
Why? They hold moisture against the bark, inviting rot, pests, rodents, and disease.
With mulch, less is more. One to three inches is all you need.
Done right, mulch can be a good thing. It suppresses weeds, holds moisture, prevents soil compaction, moderates temperature, and improves soil structure when it breaks down.
Proper mulch is 1 to 3 inches deep. Photo: UME-HGIC
Mulch can be attractive and create a protective barrier between lawns and plantings. It creates a no-go zone, keeping mowers and weed whackers from damaging tree bark.
A ring of mulch around trees also keeps thirsty grass from robbing tree roots of much-needed water. Water passes more easily through mulch than turf.
But too much of a good thing is bad. Very bad. So many plants die an early death due to excessive applications of mulch.
One client had lost three trees in one spot and called me for help. I nearly drove off the road as I approached her home. There were 17 inches of mulch, the bark was black and mushy, and the tree was dead as a doornail.
Once you start looking for them, you’ll notice mulch volcanoes everywhere. My phone is full of photos of these dastardly cones.
Chipped leaves applied too deeply around a tree as mulch. Photo: Jennifer Foltz
I can’t save all the trees, so I’m enlisting your help. Don’t let mulch volcanoes happen on your watch.
Know that the type of mulch you choose is important, too.
Shredded bark mulch is the most popular choice for flower, tree, and shrub beds. It resists compaction, looks good, and is readily available.
Avoid using chunkier nugget mulches where water flows regularly. Those nuggets float, so they tend to move – sometimes quite dramatically – in heavy rains.
Consider stone mulches carefully. Leaves, debris, and weeds are difficult to remove, and stones can dry plants with the heat they reflect. Baked Alberta spruce, anyone?
Also, avoid mulch made from recycled tires. It blocks the flow of air and water to plant roots and can leach harmful chemicals. Plus, it doesn’t break down to feed the soil.
Regardless of the type of mulch you use, keep it an inch or two away from trunks. This avoids moisture buildup that can cause rot and invite insects and disease.
I also encourage you to look at mulch alternatives. Not only are they more sustainable, they can save the cost and effort of applying and reapplying traditional mulch.
Plant groundcovers or a mix of perennials and groundcovers around trees to create a plant community that supports pollinators, beneficial insects, and wildlife.
Try using groundcovers instead of mulch in your flower beds. Newspapers and straw or untreated grass clippings work well in vegetable beds as does an inch or two of compost.
Untreated grass clippings can be used to mulch vegetables.
So join in the mulch mania. Toss it forth with glee but not too deeply. Or explore some mulch alternatives that not only block weeds, hold moisture, and feed the soil, but provide vital habitat.
By Annette Cormany, Principal Agent Associate and Master Gardener Coordinator, Washington County, University of Maryland Extension.
With the first frost of autumn hitting many areas of Maryland, this is a good time to think about cleaning up your vegetable garden, if you haven’t already done so! Below are some hints to getting this job done efficiently and well, and some distinctions between the vegetable garden and the rest of your yard to keep in mind.
First, maybe you still have seasonally-appropriate plants growing – in which case, congratulations! Whether they are cover crops or cool-season vegetables, keep them watered as needed and remove weeds. We’re past the point where you have to worry about most insect pests, so the lightweight summer row covers can come off the brassicas, but you may want to replace them with heavier row covers to keep the plants a bit warmer and protect them from wind. You’ll have less frost damage that way, and can keep your veggies alive longer into the winter.
Summer vegetables, however, are toast. In some recent years we haven’t had frost until later in November, and I’ve seen lots of gardeners keep tomatoes and peppers growing up to Thanksgiving. My attitude is, why bother? You may still get some produce, but the quality and flavor will not be great, and then you’ll have to do cleanup when it’s really cold. Just pull the plug. Of course I have a small garden, and if I want to plant any fall veggies, the summer ones must vacate as soon as they start to go downhill. Your mileage may vary. But it doesn’t seem worthwhile to keep a sorry plant alive for just a couple of cherry tomatoes or a wizened paprika.
So, the first step is getting old plant material out. But wait, you say – didn’t I hear that we should leave plants in the ground until spring for overwintering insects? Sure, but not in the vegetable garden. Here are two good reasons why. First, when you leave perennial plants standing in your landscape so insects can find shelter inside their stems, you commit to waiting until the weather warms in late spring to remove the dead material. That’s going to be too late for vegetable planting in many cases, especially if you rotate crops and are planning to put a spring crop where your summer veggies grew this year. There’s a big difference between a landscape of perennial flowers and an ever-changing garden of annual vegetables.
Secondly, many vegetable plants are great disease hosts. Think about it – if tomatoes and squash didn’t produce delicious food, we’d probably banish them because of how awful they end up looking and how many fungi, bacteria and viruses they spread. The longer that diseased plant material stays in the soil, the more parts drop off and bury themselves, and in some cases that disease lives on until the next year, ready to infect a new host. Ideally you should remove sick plants, or at least the affected parts, as soon as they show disease. This is really hard to do in the middle of the growing and harvesting season, but if you haven’t caught up, at least do it now.
In general, diseased plant material shouldn’t go into home compost. Some fungal diseases will be killed by thorough hot composting, so if you’re rigorous you can take the chance, or else put it on the curb and let your municipal composting do the job. Consult our vegetable diseases pages for information about each type of infection – in some cases, you should just put the plant material in the trash. If you don’t know what infected your plant, it may be best to throw it out. If the plants have been healthy, you can shred and compost them, but remember to not add mature seeds to your compost. We’ve all had pumpkin vines and tomato plants emerge from our pile, and while it’s fun to have volunteers, remember that they may be cross-pollinated and unpredictable in what they’ll produce. Also, don’t add weeds that have gone to seed, or ones that have big roots.
Rake up the surface of your beds; get all that plant debris out. Then, the final step to putting the garden to sleep is covering the soil. If you haven’t planted cover crops, use some kind of organic material to keep the soil from erosion and sprouting weeds. You’ll be surprised how many weeds will cover those beds by spring! Many “winter weeds” have thousands of seeds to spread after they go to flower, so while the bees may appreciate the early snack they provide, you will not. Covering soil also helps to protect the beneficial microorganisms and other critters that inhabit it.
Fall is a great time to add compost to your garden beds, and if the compost is really finished its breaking-down process, it can be used by itself as a mulch. However, it’s probably better to protect it and limit its potential as a weed bed by covering it with other organic materials. Leaves, shredded or un-, are a great option, if you have them around. It’s less important to shred leaves for vegetable garden mulch than for perennial beds; it doesn’t matter that whole leaves mat down and stop young plants from getting through, because you’re going to remove them before planting anyway. Sometimes whole leaves blow away, though, so it’s your choice. Straw is another great option, either from a bale (make sure it’s straw and not hay, to limit the number of grass seeds that will sprout), or in a product often known as “sticky straw” which stays in place better (the “tack” will go away in time and the straw will decay nicely). Don’t make the mistake I did and buy the straw rolls that are held together with netting! Those are meant as a temporary cover for new grass seed. I guess I’ll pull mine up in the spring and maybe I can use the netting to keep the rabbits out of my lettuce bed.
You can also cover beds with a few layers of newspaper and then put leaves or straw on top, if you’re particularly worried about weeds popping up. Whatever lightweight organic material you have will be great, or you can also use black plastic or a roll of weed barrier as a temporary cover if you have nothing else. Plastic keeps the rain away from your soil, however, and it wants the moisture. And when the mosquitoes emerge again, they will breed in the puddles where the plastic isn’t flat.
Finally, fall is a good time to repair fences and fix or add other permanent garden structures. Do it now and you won’t have to do a rush job in the spring.
Then have a nice cup of tea or cocoa and put your feet up!
By Erica Smith, Montgomery County Master Gardener. Read more posts by Erica.
