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

Welcome to autumn in Oklahoma with beautiful warm afternoons and crisp cool mornings.  We are about two weeks away from the average date for our first light freeze in central Oklahoma.  Enjoy these last days with your annuals, snap pictures and capture memories of the bright colorful flowers and vegetables you want to remember as you plan your future landscapes and container gardens.  We often end up with some “Indian Summer” weather after the first light freezes and tender plants in protected areas or that you cover and protect with row cover, sheets or boxes may survive these first bouts of cold weather and still perform for up to another four to eight weeks until we get really hard freezes down in the low to mid twenties.  Your cool season veggies like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, some root crops and leafy green crops and many cool season flowers like pansies, and viola will  keep growing and flowering for many weeks or even though most of winter depending on the weather ahead.

The star of fall gardening is the show of color from our deciduous trees and shrubs as they change color and then fall to the ground ready to become compost.  Some trees are certainly more exciting to watch than others and conditions vary from year to year depending on the soil moisture, humidity, daytime and nighttime temperatures and sunny days versus cloud cover days leading up to fall color season.  Day length is the main trigger for leaf color and leaf drop as the trees and shrubs sense the shorter days and lower intensity of sun for fewer hours each day.  These light signals trigger the tree to start storing sugars and carbohydrates for winter and to start reducing photosynthesis or food production activities.  Photosynthesis is powered by the sun but chlorophyll is the secret sauce that powers the conversion of solar energy, water and nutrients, inside the plant cells to produce sugars.  As the basic green of the chlorophyll is removed from the leaf, the other colors become visible.  Carotenoids product the yellow, orange and brown colors we see in fall leaves.  These are the same colors we see regularly in corn, carrots, bananas, marigolds and daffodils.  Anthocyanin is the plant pigment that results in red, blue and purple color tones.  We regularly see anthocyanin at work in red apples, cranberries, blueberries, strawberries, plums and grapes.  Anthocyanin is generally produced in the fall in response to excess sugars within the leaf cells and is water soluble and is actually in the liquid of leaf cells.  Chlorophyll and carotenoids are present throughout the whole growing season but the green color of chlorophyll dominates or hides the yellow carotenoids until the long nights of fall as the chlorophyll wraps up its work for the season.

In our region, poplars produce the most yellow fall foliage while oaks produce red, brown or russet colors, some maples with higher sugar levels like red maple, Caddo maple or sugar maple produce orange red or even scarlet foliage.

The veins that carry fluids from the roots into and out of the leaf gradually close off as the days get shorter and a layer of cells form at the base of each leaf that leads to falling leaves. These clogged or stopped off veins trap sugars in the leaf and the amount and type of those sugars and pigments determines the fall leaf colors.  If there are enough sugars trapped, that will promote production of the anthocyanin and the more dazzling orange and red colors.  We get the best color with warm sunny days and cool, crisp but non-freezing nights as the chlorophyll winds up its work for another growing year.

Enjoy the fall color in your yard and neighborhood, local parks like Will Rogers Arboretum in Oklahoma City or plan a family trip to forested areas like the ever popular Talimena National Scenic Drive though the Ouachita National Forest of Southeast Oklahoma.

Don’t forget to be buying and planting pansies and violas to enjoy all winter and spring flowering bulbs like daffodils, tulips, hyacinths and crocus so you can enjoy their color early next spring.

Fall is for planting!  You can and should plant trees, shrubs, hardy mums, ornamental kale and cabbage, pansies, asters and many kinds of perennials now.  This is also a great time to sow tall fescue or ryegrass lawn seed to establish a green lawn through the winter.  Shop now for the best choices in spring flowering bulbs like daffodils, tulips, hyacinth and crocus.   Plant these bulbs later this month and next to produce a spectacular flower bulb show in your yard to start next spring off with the thrill of flowers.

One week from today will be the Oklahoma Horticulture Society Annual Garden Tour for Connoisseurs between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm.  It is certainly one of the premier, if not the very best, garden tour in central Oklahoma.  The tour opens the gate for you to see special gardens in different parts of the city each year.  This year features gardens in the Edmond and Guthrie area with the purchase of a single ticket.  You can buy advance tickets at the following local garden centers: Cultivate Garden Market, Marcums Nursery, Precures Nursery and Garden Centers, TLC Nursery and Greenhouses, Tony’s Tree Plantation, Wild Bird’s Unlimited and Wilshire Garden Market.  The advance tickets are Ten Dollars each for active members of the Oklahoma Horticulture Society and Twelve Dollars each for non members.  Tickets can be purchased on Saturday, October 17^th, the day of the tour at any of the six gardens for Fifteen Dollars each.  Children twelve and under get to enjoy the garden tour for free.  All proceeds support the horticulture scholarships and educational programs sponsored by the Oklahoma Horticulture Society.  This tour is a wonderful way to see great gardens in our own community and to get ideas on plant material and landscaping you can use in your own yard.

You can explore the classical English Garden of Bill and Cindy Stewart in Edmond, full of garden ornaments and water features and even a box wood “Knot Garden” that were all recently featured in Garden Gate magazine.  Visit the Tudor estate in Edmond designed by Joseph Coffin and planted by Total Environment that features pools, playhouse, rose gardens, raised vegetable garden, koi pond and a private garden off the master bedroom.  This design creates a series of outdoor rooms.  Enjoy Grandeur on the Golf Course at Oak Tree designed by Mike Lindsey of Scapes Landscaping (You will have to have already purchased a ticket in order to enter Oak Tree).  The Robert and Debbie Daniels home features colorful Japanese maples, large hollies and conifers, flowering shrubs and lots of amazing stonework.  The home of Van and Sammy Bumpas features a low maintenance garden designed by John Fluitt of Garden Design Associates.  They have replaced much of their turf with gazebos, gravel, pavers and decorative container gardens.   The fifth Edmond garden is home to Mike and Judd Cross and was designed by Shaun Doering of TLC.  It is designed for year round color and interest.  The gardens feature terraces, winding ramps and steps through plantings of dogwoods, azaleas, redbuds, Arizona cypress, abelia, roses and crepemyrtles as well as many perennials and shrubs.   The sixth garden is the home of writer and blogger, Dee Nash, near Guthrie and features a one and a half acre English cottage style garden full of annuals, perennials, shrubs and grasses.  Dee has two vegetable gardens, a perennial garden and the garden will feature hardy mums and asters in full fall bloom.

You can find more details and garden addresses on line at www.okhort.org.  Please consider a fun tour of these great Oklahoma gardens next Saturday while you help support horticulture education.  These visits will inspire you to return home and do more of your own fall planting.

The days are getting shorter and the nights and days are getting cooler as we move towards fall when many of our flowering annuals respond to the cooler weather with a new round of flowers. The surviving tomatoes, peppers and other veggies often produce a fresh crop of fruit or goodies as they de-stress and recharge with the cooler weather. Apply your final application of fertilizer to trees, shrubs and flowers as we head into the final six to eight weeks of this growing season.   Apply weed and feed type fertilizer with winter weed killer or herbicides to your lawn to prevent or at least reduce winter weed stands in your lawn.

You can mulch tender perennials, as well as new shrub and tree plantings as we head toward winter to help insulate them from extreme winter conditions and to reduce the need for winter watering . This is the prime season to sow and establish tall fescue lawn grass or overseed your existing Bermuda or summer grass lawn to enjoy a green lawn this winter. You can start shopping for the best selection of tulips, daffodils and other spring flowering bulbs at your local garden center even though I prefer to wait to plant them until after mid October or in November when the soil temperatures have cooled a little more.

Trees and shrubs do more to change our environment and your landscaping than most anything else you can do. Fall is a great time, some think the best time, to plant trees and shrubs. Trees planted this time of year have more of a chance to get rooted out into their new soil environment and established so they can uptake moisture and nutrition before facing the punishing heat of next summer. We are blessed with a large portfolio of trees and shrubs that do well in our part of the country and your local nurseryman can help you select the best species and varieties for your soil, location and application.   Do you need a fast growing tree, a large shade tree or a smaller sight screening tree, fruit tree, flowering tree or trees for a windbreak? Slower growing trees usually experience less storm damage and live longer but take a little longer to grow and make an impact. Soil preparation or preparing the hole for your new trees and shrubs has a huge impact on success of your new plantings. Dig the hole, which will be the long time home of your new trees and shrubs, about twice as big as needed, backfill with twenty to fifty percent sphagnum peat or compost mixed with the soil from the hole and then plant your new trees and shrubs.

Hardy mums or chrysanthemums are one of my favorite plants of fall. They produce spectacular mounds of color in white, yellow, orange, red, pink, purple and other colors that can really liven up a flowerbed or decorative containers. Most nurseries and garden centers offer many varieties at this time of year in 4, 6 or 8 inch pots or even larger 2, 3 and 5 gallon sizes in bud and ready to put on a flower show from now until the first hard freeze.   Growing up, hardy mums in flower and football games meant fall was in the air and provided great memories of these magical autumn gardening weeks before a hard freeze puts much of nature to sleep until next spring.