Spend an Unseasonably Warm Fall in the Garden

Well, one thing about a dry and warm fall is that we can’t rely on the rain to keep us indoors catching up on new garden books and magazines. But the leaves continue to fall and need to be moved, removed or composted, and the warm weather is great for the compost pile so long as you can add some moisture to it. Remember, a dry compost pile can’t cook.

For most of the last 15 years I’ve had one gardener who works with me on my personal garden. It’s a love-hate relationship, and that seems to be common among gardeners and their helpers. Nancy is a very hard worker, but this year she hit me up for a raise of 30 percent. She’s my biggest gardening expense, but truth be told, my garden wouldn’t be anything like it is without her help. She’s well-meaning and hardworking, but it’s difficult to get her to do things my way. Nonetheless, she’s as invested in the gardens as I am, and I know when I’ve been away she’s driven by a few times and asked visitors to leave the property. When I heard about that I knew I had to keep her. She’s invested.

One of Nancy’s gardening traits is to leave seedheads on plants when they’ve finished blooming. It’s not how I managed the gardens of the rich and infamous who wanted everything that was “done” gone. No seedheads, no faded flowers. Well, Nancy won’t have that in my garden. She’s what you might call an “earth child,” and if that peony is going to set seed that some animal will eat later in the season then the seeds stay on the plant. She does have a very good point though. If we deadheaded every Rudbeckia as the flowers faded we’d never see the goldfinches feeding on them or the chickadees searching the dry ground for seeds that have dropped. The Rudbeckia triloba would not reseed, and the Echinacea wouldn’t self-seed and spread. Easy enough to thin the seedlings so long as you know what seedlings to rogue out.

In fact, there are some seedheads and seed pods that do have artistic as well as wildlife appeal. I have one Magnolia that leaves behind incredible seedheads (follicles) as the flowers fade. Six-inch-long-by-3-inch-wide masses of seeds develop in a cocoon-like covering that I’d never seen until a few years ago when Magnolia “Spiced Spumoni” matured, flowered and set seed. The sight was apparently a new one for the local birds as well as the squirrels as the seeds matured, turned bright red, rotted then fell to the ground below.

Ah, but the curious squirrels began to experiment and started picking off the berries, which were carried away. This year, however, the squirrels had a new trick. Instead of snatching one berry at a time they would scurry up the trunk, crawl out on a low limb and pull off the entire seedhead of maybe 30 to 50 seeds and carry that away. The squirrels were incredibly well organized by their second year of harvesting and worked the tree, branch by branch, from bottom to top. I watched for two days as one after another of the seedheads were snapped off and carried away to a stash location off the property. So, you can teach old squirrels new tricks.

And speaking of squirrels, they just love living in your attic and crawl spaces in the winter. And if they’re flying squirrels, they move in with their entire extended family, who will spend the winter gnawing at wood in the attic and crawl spaces to keep their teeth sharp. Flying squirrels often require a professional removal, but gray squirrels are a bit easier. However, you can protect your house and keep them out.

Squirrels mostly enter our homes by jumping from nearby trees onto the roof then finding an entry spot. They will easily make a jump of 8 feet. This can be the gable end of your roof where there’s a vent. If the screen on that vent deteriorates then you have a point of entry. They will also chew the wood on the vent to gain entry. Another entry point can be any spot along the house soffit where wood has rotted and is soft enough for them to scratch and chew an entry hole.

No, flying squirrels don’t fly but they do glide. They’ll jump off a high spot or limb then glide down to your roof below. They cannot “fly” back up, but they will crawl up a gutter downspout, chimney or ivy vine.

The most obvious solution is to make sure that no tree is within jumping distance of your house. You also need to consider phone and cable lines that are strung to your house as the squirrels use these as pathways as well. They rarely will travel the 60 feet or more from a utility pole to your house, but if there’s a tree halfway, they’ll simply scurry up the tree and use the phone or cable line as their sidewalk for the rest of the route.

First, get rid of the squirrels if you have them. You don’t want to trap them in the house. When you’re certain the squirrels are gone, make the repairs where there’s rotted wood or missing screening. In the case of flying squirrels, the entire family needs to be trapped and removed before the “leaks” are sealed.

If you’re hearing something in your walls it’s probably not squirrels but mice. They enter from the ground level and look for voids in the walls and other places to make their winter nests. Old fashioned wood/spring mouse traps work best baited with peanut butter on a small piece of apple. If the mouse only gets a foot or tail caught in the trap you’ll smell it days later. Tie a string to the trap and anchor it to something. That way the trap and mouse can’t disappear together.

I don’t know if you’ve done any bulb planting this fall, but we’re in a double whammy. When our spring bulbs are planted there are two things they need as they try to establish roots, which is primarily done before late December. First they need cool soil. It’s the lower soil temperatures of 50 degrees and lower that stimulates the roots to grow. But what about the lack of rain?

As the drought continues the moisture level in the soil continues to drop and the dryness gets deeper and deeper. This probably isn’t great for newly planted bulbs but we still have six to eight more weeks of root-growing weather for these bulbs, and all we can do is hope. Maybe some of you heeded my notes back in August when I said that due to bad weather and poor harvesting many of the Dutch-imported bulbs (which are most bulbs) would be of lower quality this fall. Low-quality bulbs, drought and warm soil. Not a great combination.

Roses will undoubtedly flower for a few more weeks, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some are still flowering at Thanksgiving. This is good news and bad. Nice to have roses in flower at any time but as long as the plants are growing they are still subject to diseases that will remain on the foliage and stems through the winter and be a source of reinfection come next summer. Continue to remove fallen rose leaves and continue to spray the foliage with a fungicide or horticultural oil until there’s no foliage dropping. No heavy pruning though as this needs to wait until the plants are fully dormant or once you feel that the winter dieback is over early next spring. No fertilizer at all, but water as needed.

Fall is also the traditional time we check our gardens and lawns for the soil pH. Why in the fall? Probably because the traditional method for adjusting soil acidity was to use dolomitic limestone. This material breaks down slowly, and the freezing and thawing in winter aids in its breakdown and movement down into the soil. But with products like Solu-Cal, the pH adjustment is much, much faster. This means that the material can be added in the fall or the spring, and the pH change takes place in as fast as 30 days as opposed to the dolomitic lime, which could take three to five months.

There are very simple test kits you can buy to test soil pH, or you can take a soil sample to your local garden center and ask them to test it. Then, based on your results, you can determine how much lime you need to add and where. Don’t forget your ornamental beds, veggie garden and your lawn.

What changes the pH in your lawn? Chemical fertilizers and to a lesser extent acid rain. When I tested my lawn earlier in the summer I was very surprised to find a problem. I don’t use chemical fertilizers though, and I know it wasn’t acid rain. Then what? Every week during the colder months I take a pail of wood ashes from the wood stove and store it in a large metal container. In the spring I apply the ash as a fertilizer to the gardens and lawn. After several years of this the acidity built up, and I had a problem. A couple of bags of Solu-Cal, and my pH is now back in a “normal” range. Remember, if your soil pH is out of whack you could be wasting money on fertilizer.

Have some grass seed left over from a lawn project or overseeding? You can store it in the original bag so long as it’s sealed. Keep the sealed bag in a metal can to keep mice away from the seed, and don’t let it freeze. An unheated basement is great. Cool and dark is the best. The seed can be stored like this for a year at least instead of throwing it away. Keep growing.