Rodd's Seeds of Wisdom Horticultural tips and tricks from Rodd Moesel

Fall officially arrived last week and we have been blessed with at least a little rain in the last two weeks. We could definitely use several more nice rains.

This is the time to plant hardy mums, pansies, ornamental kale and cabbage for fall color. Fall garden mums recently had a name change by taxonomists from chrysanthemums to Dendranthema x grandiflora but they are still the same plant that does best in full sun planted in well drained soils. These colorful perennials make mounds of color and should be planted on 18” to 24” centers to create a spectacular display. They will make great color in container gardens as well but should be transplanted into a ground bed before a hard freeze to help insure they will overwinter to create a show again next fall as they bloom naturally with shorter day lengths. Mulching them with a layer of hulls or bark helps more tender varieties to survive the winter for a repeat performance next year. Select from the vast smorgasboard of colors and flower styles to make a “fall color” statement in your yard.

Pansies are one of my favorite flowers because they show their pretty flowers or interesting and colorful “faces” not just in fall but all through the winter. It is always inspiring to see their cute faces poking through snow or ice and still providing a dash of color and hope. Pansies and their related violas have been painted and written about since early Greek civilizations. Tough alpine varieties were discovered by the French, who called them the French word pensee which means thought or remembrance. Over time that name evolved into pansy just as the wild pansy has evolved and enjoyed breeding work to become the pansy we know today. Over the last 50 years, breeders in Japan, Germany and the United States have introduced hundreds of new varieties in most all colors. They can be of a single color or may feature 2 or 3 colors on different petals to create really interesting “faces” to charm us. They thrive in cool weather and when planted in a sunny area, in the fall, will usually grow and flower until the heat of late spring wears them out. Choose stocky plants with dark or bright green foliage and plant in a sunny, well drained area about 6” to 10” apart depending on how thick you want them. It is always good to add organic matter to the soil when you plant and pansies will benefit from a slow release fertilizer applied at transplant or soon thereafter.

Don’t forget to water your hardy mums, pansies and other fall plant material after planting and regularly whenever we are not enjoying regular rains from above.

If you plan to plant a tall fescue lawn or overseed your bermuda lawn with tall fescue for a green winter lawn you need to sow your seed now or in the next few weeks. Visit your local nursery or garden center to select the best variety for your yard while you are picking out your mums and pansies.

What a joyful week of temperature relief we enjoyed in recent days. Regrettably we did not get much rain out of the front that brought us the nice temperature change. We appear to be heating back up again so it is very important you remember to keep soaking your “still dry” trees, shrubs and gardens. They will be able to make better use of the water now that our night temperatures are cooler and the daytime highs are not as hot. We really need to help our permanent plant material produce and store as much energy as possible in the next 6 to 8 weeks before our first hard freeze. This is a great time to apply your last fertilizer application of the growing season to your warm season grasses, trees and shrubs. That will allow the new growth a chance to harden before that first freeze. Do not fertilize unless you are also watering.

Now is the time to complete applications of pre-emergent herbicides or weed and feed type products to your lawn to control winter annual weeds. Do not apply a pre-emergent herbicide if you plan to plant or overseed fescue or rye grass in that area in late September through October. If you have an area of the yard you want to convert from bermudagrass to tall fescue, now is the time to use glyphosate or Roundup to kill the bermuda before you make the switch to tall fescue in a few weeks.

The football season is in full swing and that is always a good sign that we are also in hardy mum season. I  visited several nurseries and garden centers this last week and saw many very good looking hardy mums in all size containers ready for you to select and plant. Most are covered with flowerbuds and few crops make such beautiful mounds of color. There are many styles of chrysanthemum flowers and even more colors so that you can decorate your yard and containers with red, purple, orange, yellow, white, bronze or pink. They will bloom for weeks, often right up to the first, really hard freeze. They are good perennials and if watered regularly will come back year after year to be a highlight of your fall garden.

The Oklahoma Horticulture Society will be holding their annual Garden Tour for Connoisseurs 1 week from this next Saturday on September 24^th from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM. This is always one of the best garden tours offered across our state. This year you will have a chance to visit 7 great family gardens in near northwest Oklahoma City and the amazing Chesapeake Energy employee community gardens. This is the main fundraiser for the Oklahoma Horticulture Society and provides funding for their great educational programs and student scholarships. You can buy tickets in advance at local garden centers, on the day of the tour at any of the gardens or visit okhort.org for more information.

Many Oklahomans have been fortunate to get at least a little rain over the last 2 weeks and it felt fabulous. It always amazes me how efficient Mother Nature can be with so little moisture. We are still very hot and dry but even that little moisture has turned many almost totally brown Bermuda grass lawns back to green in a matter of days. Many weeds and our heartiest annuals and perennials are now producing a flush of new growth.  Much of the plant world is trying to show and live a life of hope after a summer of drought and despair. Even the trees, shrubs and plants we have been watering all summer had been fighting to survive and the rains literally seem to bring them to life. Drip irrigation and water sprinklers are good but nothing matches the refreshing nature of rain delivered in the form of cooling showers. It is depressing to drive around the state and see all the serious damage to even our deep rooted trees and shrubs. We are still battling triple digit temperatures so our crops are still drying out very quickly and still need your extra watering assistance.

If you were blessed with rains and are now getting some new growth on your plant materials this is a good time to do the final feeding of this growing season on your trees and shrubs. We don’t want to feed them too late where they are soft and just producing new growth as we approach our first freezes of early November. Fertilize in the next few weeks so that the new growth has a chance to harden up before those freezes. This new fall growth can help your permanent plantings produce a fall surge of natural sugars and energy to fortify your plants. This will allow them to store up energy to help survive the winter and to be ready to launch a new season next spring. If you are seeing new growth on your lawn and annuals this is a good time to feed all except shade grasses. Apply a pre-emergent herbicide by itself or select a good weed and feed product to kill weed seeds before they germinate as you fertilize your lawn.

Even though our daytime temperatures are still setting records and passing 100° regularly, we are experiencing slightly cooler evenings and mornings which means it is not staying so hot as many hours per day.  A couple of times we have even gotten a small taste of fall which makes it more believable when we advise that you need to rush to finish planting your fall vegetable garden. If you plan to over seed your lawn with tall fescue to enjoy a green lawn this winter you need to be locating the seed for a good variety like Crossfire III, Hounddog, Wolfpack or you can select one of the many tall fescue blends with multiple varieties in the mix to plant in mid September.  Don’t forget to focus on watering and feeding all your plants and planting your fall vegetable gardens.

This last week we finally got a little relief from the persistent onslaught of 100 degree days across most of Oklahoma. It was a real blessing to get at least a little rain and some cooling. Hopefully we will continue to enjoy some relief from these intense summer conditions. The plants that have survived in reasonably good condition will respond to cooler temperatures and your continuing application of refreshing water with a flush of new growth and renewed vitality.

However, we are still very dry. The limited rain we have received has not soaked very far in the ground and still dries out very quickly, so you still need to be watering regularly. It is particularly important to soak your trees and shrubs so that they can benefit from any reduction in temperatures and rebuild their strength this fall before confronting another hard winter.

We are still battling summer but now is the time to be planting our fall vegetable gardens. Don’t even start planting fall veggies unless you are committed to watering these tender plants until Mother Nature gets in fall mode and starts providing adequate moisture. You can still plant tender vegetables like bush beans, lima beans, cucumbers and summer squash that will need to be harvested before the first frost or freeze which usually occurs in early November. There are many semi-hardy vegetables you can plant now that will often survive and keep producing even through the first several light frosts this winter. You can plant root crops like beets, carrots, leek, onions, parsnip, radish, rutabaga and turnips. Many leafy vegetables do well in the fall garden including cabbage, Chinese cabbage, kale, leaf lettuce, mustard, spinach and Swiss chard. You can also grow great fall crops of broccoli, Brussels spouts, cauliflower, kohlrabi and peas.

Visit your local nurseryman to get plants or seeds for these vegetable crops if you want to grow some of your own fresh veggies this fall. Make sure to water the ground well the day before planting and then be prepared to water these fall crops regularly.

Several have inquired about fertilizing now. Please wait until the plants are less stressed, it cools down a little more and we begin to see new growth coming out on our trees and shrubs. Your plants are already weak and stressed from the constant heat so please be observant of any significant pest or disease problems and take action to get these problems under control. A healthy plant just like a healthy human can better defend itself from other problems and a weak or stressed plant is more vulnerable to other troubles.

Don’t forget to water, even soak your existing landscape and have fun planting your fall vegetable garden.

There is just no sugar coating it. This is a hard, challenging summer to be gardening in Oklahoma.

It does give us a chance to observe what plant material really holds up and performs in the heat and some do. Most of our plant materials from vegetables to trees are showing stress and are having an adverse reaction to our persistent, grinding and punishing heat. These conditions make the importance of water all too obvious. The deeper a plant is rooted into the earth, the better it can fend for itself as it can draw moisture from deeper underground that does not dry out as quickly or as completely as moisture near the soil surface. That is why most trees and shrubs are more tolerant and take longer to show stress than vegetables, flowering annuals or newly planted crops that are not rooted as deep in the soil.

These annuals and newly planted trees or shrubs can show extreme stress at missing regular watering for just a day or a few days depending on your soil and the type of plant. The drought has persisted for so long and is so severe that we are now seeing serious stress on even mature, long established trees and shrubs that are not benefitting from human intervention and supplemental watering. Many trees are dropping significant quantities of leaves to try to get in balance with the water they can access so that they can survive this “natural oven” of heat and hot dry winds.

Other trees, shrubs and plant materials are displaying lots of yellow leaves or dullish gray foliage as they turn down their photosynthesis and respond to the lack of water, Many of these trees and shrubs were already stressed and fighting to regain their energy after a very tough winter where parts of the state got down to -40° and all of us had unusually hard freezes. They are now getting serious heat stress before they have fully recovered from the rough winter. Make sure you are walking your yard, hopefully with a water hose in hand, to look at your trees, shrubs and flowers. Make sure you are giving our living friends the water they require.

Some folks have decided to throw in the towel and quit watering their vegetables or select flowerbeds just as cotton or corn farmers have been forced to walk away from crops that are too stressed to save. Those are annual crops and you can start again this fall or next spring after we are blessed with new rains. Please don’t give up on your trees, shrubs and long term plantings. A little attention now will save many years of growth, investment and allow a future for these “foundation” plantings.

We often hear the weathermen comparing this heat and this drought to the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. There is no comparison horticulturally as we benefit from many more trees and shrubs, that break the winds, provide cooling and create microclimates. Many of those were planted in response to the Dust Bowl through conservation programs and more recently in beautification efforts and by individual landowners. The big difference is water distribution. Thanks to city water departments and rural water districts and thousands more wells we now have water if we are willing to invest the money and time to apply it. Horticulturally that option puts us light years ahead of the Dust Bowl, if we will pick up the water hose, spread the mulch and install the drip lines.

Pray for rain. We are now one day closer to a cool, life supporting rain!