| Recycling: A "natural" in the garden |
Recycling in the garden? Let's count the ways.
Garden waste of all kinds (except weeds that have gone to seed), pots, plant divisions or cuttings, branches or cut trees, and interesting household and garden artifacts can all be recycled. We're going to continue to address these in the next few issues of Seasonal Solutions. Here is a summary:
Mulching leaves is a great way to nourish perennial beds. We covered this in the September issue.
Sheet composting allows you to feed your vegetable garden soil all winter long. See the Edible Garden article in this issue.
A compost bin is a great place to recycle yard waste and create great compost for next spring.
Pot recycling is becoming easier and easier. In just a few easy steps you can get your pots ready for our recycling depot.
Tree prunings, including small branches, can help aerate the compost pile.
Found junk can be recycled into very interesting garden art! |
| Fall cleanup guide | |
There's so much to do in the fall, to prepare the garden for winter! Where to start? Here's a guide to the final clean-up chores of the season:
Continue to water trees, shrubs and evergreens up until the ground freezes. They should get at least an inch of water per week, including any rain.
Plant new trees throughout the month. Water carefully until the soil thoroughly freezes. Plant spring blooming bulbs right up to frost time. Prepare your winter ornamental pots sometime before frost. Once the soil in the pot has frozen hard, usually sometime in late November, it will be too late to insert plant materials into the soil. Mow the lawn to keep the grass about 3 inches and to shred fallen leaves. Leaves can then be left on the lawn as fertilizer. If the leaves have accumulated too much, rake them into a pile and then mow before spreading them on the garden beds. After a good hard frost, dig up tender bulbs such as canna, dahlias, elephant ears, and gladiolus. Shake off excess dirt and cut off stems. Rinse if necessary to remove soil. Layer with peat moss, sawdust, shredded newspaper or sand in ventilated containers These bulbs can be stored in your crawl space or anywhere else where the temperature is 40 to 45 degrees all winter. If you're concerned about your soil, now is a good time to contact your local County Extension office for soil testing information.
Clean up the debris of annual plants after the frost has killed them. These can be added to the compost.
Cut back perennial foliage if you prefer a clean look in the garden in the winter. Or you can leave this chore for spring. Dried plant tops do provide cover and landing places for the birds all winter long. |
| In our next issue |
More on garden recycling
Holidays in the garden
Watering in winter
Notes for next year
and more!
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| Contact us |
2550 East Dempster Street
Des Plaines, IL 60016
847-824-7411
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| Featured Plant: Daffodil | |
 Daffodils are very familiar to us, and deserve their place as our featured plant this month. Now is the time to plant Daffodils, for early spring blooming in a variety of colors ranging from yellow to yellow-and-white, yellow-and-orange, white-and-orange, pink, and lime-green. Daffodils come in over 13,000 different hybrid varieties.
All Daffodils have a corona in the center that looks like a trumpet, surrounded by a ring of petals. The natural Daffodil is golden yellow color all over, while the trumpet may often appear in a contrasting color.
Daffodils grow perennially from bulbs. They are among the earliest flowers to appear in our gardens, yet some varieties bloom late into the month of May. In our area they are among the earliest bloom we see in spring. They are best grown in clusters, and are often "naturalized" -- planted in lawns or on wooded hillsides.
They are particularly versatile in being both shade and sun tolerant and in the fact that deer do not find them tasty!
Daffodils come in all sizes, from 5-inch blooms on 2-foot stems to half-inch flowers on 2-inch stems. Bulbs should be planted at a depth of 6 to 8 inches if large, 3 to 6 inches if medium and 2 to 3 inches if small. Use plenty of organic matter when planting and then look forward to a wonderful show in spring.
Come on in - we have a great selection! |
| Winter composting idea from an expert |
Compost is soil very rich in organic matter that is used to fertilize the garden. It comes in bags that you can buy in the Garden Center. But it can also come right from your own back yard. Creating your own compost is not difficult.
Compost is made of brown organic materials (dead leaves, wood chips, straw, sawdust, branches, shredded paper) and green organic materials (grass clippings, plant material, and kitchen scraps -- excluding meat and fat), and animal manure (excluding human or pet waste). Add to these ingredients water, air and heat, and you will produce compost. The relative relationship among these ingredients will determine the chemistry of your compost and the speed at which it is finished. The hotter your pile, the quicker it "cooks." The resulting compost is extremely rich in soil micro-organisms, much richer than ordinary garden soil no matter how fertile that soil may be.
Compost can be made using the hot or cool method. It can take a long time - up to a year - or it can be done in a few weeks. You can find all kinds of fancy composting bins on the market and you can also make it in a simple pit or bin in your back yard.
If you are interested and have not yet made your own compost, Lynn Bement, The Organic Garden Coach, suggests that you try a simple method to get started. Piling is a method that produces great compost and costs almost nothing to undertake, she says. It is "a method that sounds exactly like what it is: a heap of mixed compostable materials" in a bin somewhere discretely placed in the garden. The pile can be placed in a bin made of wood, plastic framing, or even bales of straw. It's best if the bin is open at the bottom to allow contact with the soil so that micro-organisms can freely work their way into the pile where they will reproduce rapidly and in huge numbers.
 Layering materials in the bin will allow air to flow freely and heat to generate in the pile. A good pitchfork is the only tool necessary, and this is used to turn the pile periodically. To prevent collapse of the pile and the resulting loss of air pockets deep inside, piles should not be made more than 5 feet high, Bement says. It's also wise to layer other materials, such as garden debris, over kitchen scraps whenever they are added to the pile.
You can start the pile this fall and have partially decomposed compost by spring. This material can then be spread on the garden where it will continue to decompose throughout the season. Your compost will decompose faster if covered by black plastic. Open bins take longer to decompose. |
| Bringing houseplants in for winter |
By now the night temperatures are well into the 50's or even lower, so any houseplants still outside should be placed in a porch or other sheltered area to adjust before they are brought into the house for the winter. These plants should ideally be quarantined for at least three weeks and sprayed with soap spray or plain water to remove any bugs. Watch for insect infestation - spider mites or other critters -- during the quarantine period and treat if necessary before bringing inside.
Once you bring houseplants inside its well to remember that the light inside has only one-tenth the power of outside light. It is therefore necessary to keep most houseplants in or near a sunny window during the entire winter - unless you want them to become very leggy, droopy and reachng for the sun! The most common error in caring for houseplants indoors in winter is to give them too little light and way too much water. This is a recipe for disaster.
Here's a simple guide to keep in mind: the lighter the leaves of the houseplant, the more intense sun it will need when indoors. |
| Pumpkins and more pumpkins! |
 There's nothing like the orange of pumpkins! This time of year, they add just the right touch of color to the garden and they can be used in so many interesting ways. To enjoy them without the frustration of finding squirrel gnawings in them each morning, sprinkle blood meal liberally around them and reapply after each rain. And, to avoid the problem of the bottoms rotting, place them on pot racks or a piece of wood or stone rather than directly on the soil. Now, here are some ideas:
Step back and look at your garden beds. Where might a pumpkin be placed to add just the right touch of color? Simply put one or a grouping of several in that spot! And while you're at it, why not make that pumpkin into a creative Jack-O-Lantern? Extend this idea and create a whole arrangement in the garden bed, using pumpkins, mums in old baskets, corn stalks and grasses. For Halloween, add a ghost or witch to the mix and set up lights for the nighttime viewers. Get creative with your containers! If your Summer arrangement is looking a bit limp and worn out, replace it with an arrangement of pumpkins, gourds and grasses. Make a pumpkin a container by cutting off the top and planting grasses, mums or other fall annuals right in the pumpkin. Be sure to cut a hole in the bottom for drainage and do put it on a pot rack to encourage air circulation and thereby discourage rotting. |
| Edible garden cleanup | |
As you finish harvesting vegetables and begin cleaning up debris in the edible garden, be sure to gather and discard any diseased plant material. Do not put this in your compost, as this can encourage re-infestation next season.
Do not rototill the soil as this will break up the soil structure that we now know is best left intact. Disturb the soil as little as possible.
Once the vegetable garden is cleaned up, you can use a technique called sheet composting to nourish the garden soil over the winter. Here's how:
Shred leaves, and twigs and mix with grass clippings or other garden debris other than weeds that have gone to seed. Spread a generous layer on the garden soil and that's it! The organic matter you have just spread will feed the critters in the soil all winter long and contribute to a richer soil for your vegetable sets and seeds next spring.
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