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

The wonderful Thanksgiving celebrations are now memories and the grand holiday march to Christmas is in full swing. Plants play a big part in our Christmas celebrations. Some plants or greens have been a part of the celebration for centuries; others have been a part of the festivities only since the birth of our great nation.

Fresh evergreen boughs have been a part of the holiday celebration for centuries stemming from the Druid, Roman, Celtic and Norse winter solstice celebrations that occurred on December 21st each year. The tradition evolved with Christianity and European cultures brought that tradition to the New World of America. We still use greens to make wreathes for our front doors, to decorate mantles and table tops, as ropes of green to hang around porches or patios or to decorate living rooms or gathering places. The use of greens was a great way to bring something alive and vibrant into the dark and dreary indoors during the winter months when most of the outdoor world was brown and bleak. Folks were often nested up inside for months and these fresh greens livened up the winter Christmas celebrations. We continue and adapt these old traditions today with the hanging of the greens at many churches and public facilities.

The Romans had used fir and spruce trees for their Saturnalia festivals but an English missionary St. Boniface is credited with making Christmas trees a German Christian holiday tradition starting in the 8th century. It spread to England by 1841 when German born Prince Albert put up a Christmas tree in Windsor Castle. These early European trees were often decorated with candles, fruit, paper roses, cakes and ribbons. English and German immigrants brought the Christmas tree tradition to America, where the widely available cedar tree became the most popular early Christmas tree. They added berries, popcorn and Christmas gifts to the range of Christmas tree decorations. Today we can select from many species of cut Christmas trees and fresh greens to continue these Christmas traditions. We also can select a live Christmas tree grown in a container to decorate for a couple of weeks and then to plant out in our yard so the Christmas spirit can live on for years to come. There are several smaller living trees for small apartments or smaller rooms like Norfolk Island Pines that can be kept inside like a houseplant or small Holly trees that can be used like a living Christmas tree and planted out in the yard after Christmas.

Ancient cultures used holly and mistletoe as part of their Saturnalia or pagan December festivals and believed bringing the green branches inside would help assure the return of vegetation after the end of winter. After the birth of Christ, the Romans continued their Saturnalia and pagan festivals while Christians began celebrating the birth of Christ. The Christians avoided detection and persecution by decorating their homes with holly, mistletoe and greens like the ruling Romans.

The poinsettia is the most widely known and used floral symbol of our modern Christmas celebrations but has only been a part of the festivities for less than 200 years. The poinsettia is native to Mexico and was used by Franciscan Monks in Mexico as part of the Nativity celebration as early at the 17th century because they bloomed naturally during the month of Advent. Dr. Joel Poinsett was our U.S. Ambassador to Mexico from 1825 to 1829, discovered the “flower of the Holy Night” plant in Mexico and sent cuttings home to his greenhouse in South Carolina and to botany friends across our young country. This exciting new Mexican plant was named poinsettia after Ambassador Poinsett. The poinsettia came into wide use across America and the world starting in the early 1900’s thanks to the breeding and development work of Albert Ecke, a Swiss immigrant growing flowers near Los Angeles. Today you can select from hundreds of poinsettia varieties with bracts of red, white, pink, orange and many speckled multi color selections. Current poinsettia varieties will stay colorful for months with a little bit of basic attention to light, temperature and watering compared to the varieties of just forty years ago that rarely lasted with color for over two to three weeks.

We hope you enjoy the Christmas season and get started on developing and continuing many of your own Christmas traditions.

Our nation is consumed and focused on the important local, state and national elections this next week but the plant world proceeds unfazed, more consumed with the weather than public policy. We have been blessed with an unusually warm and very nice fall although many areas could use more rain. We have yet to freeze outside the Oklahoma panhandle so many of our spring and summer plantings have made a fall comeback with the shorter days and cooler weather and are looking colorful and still producing new growth. If the freeze would wait long enough to harvest all the young green tomatoes now on my tomato plants, it would be my best harvest of the year. I doubt the freeze will wait that long. In just the last few years we have already had hard freezes and been down to 17° by this date. Many areas have not gone below 40° yet this growing season. You can enjoy your annuals and spring and summer plantings as long as you water periodically and we stay above the freezing mark.

We do know the freezes are coming and this growing season will end, so it is wise to plant now to assure some garden color on through the winter. You can still plant and enjoy flowering kale and cabbage long into the winter with their beautiful and unusual colorful foliage. If you need instant color there are still some late varieties of fall or hardy mums and fall asters that can make a show for your election watch party or other entertaining but these will be done for the year when we do get a hard freeze. The Queen of Winter color for Oklahoma gardens is the pansy. You can plant them now and enjoy them all through the winter as long as they get some moisture from rains, snows, ice or a little relief from your water hose if the rains are too far apart. We can enjoy colored berries on many of our hollies and other shrubs, cones on our pines and spruce and vibrant foliage colors from our needle and broad leaf evergreens but nothing else gives us the enticing and surprising reds, bronzes, pink, yellows, blues, white and purple colors all thought the winter that we can enjoy from pansies. The sooner you plant your pansies the longer you can enjoy them until the heat of late spring wears them down and they are spent. Pansies are available in hundreds of varieties, some with a single color in their “face” or across all the petals but one of the things that make pansies especially charming are all the many styles and colors of “faces” to choose from where a couple of the petals may be one color and other petals a completely different, even contrasting color. When planted along your front sidewalk, around your back patio or in a large decorative container on your porch flowering pansies have the power to make you smile every dark and dreary day you walk past them and see their bright flower faces smiling at you. Few things can top pansy flowers determination and blooming right through the winter snow and ice. The snow has to get deep enough to cover them to hide their excitement and joy for life.

You can still sow tall fescue or annual ryegrass seed if you want a green lawn this winter or need to cover a bare spot to prevent erosion. Don’t forget to mulch your more tender perennials and shrubs with an inch or two of natural mulch of some type of bark or hulls to give them a little extra winter protection and to reduce the need for winter watering. This is a great time to plant those spring flowering bulbs you bought earlier this fall0. If you haven’t bought any daffodils, tulips, hyacinth, crocus or other spring bulbs yet, go bulb shopping and get them planted to enjoy a wonderful welcome to spring event in your yard next March and April.

Don’t forget to study the issues and go vote on Tuesday. You can spend some time enjoying, meditating and working in the garden this weekend to help you think clearly about your election choices.

This is a magical time of year as most of the leaves on our deciduous trees and shrubs color up and begin the process of saying good-bye for another growing season. There are literally trillions of leaves, just here in the metro area, even more leaves than dollars of national debt. Those leaves sprouted forth from the branches, twigs and stems of our trees and shrubs as early as March, April, and May. They unfolded to produce beautiful foliage, often green colored leaves, which have worked all spring, summer and fall to cool and beautify our landscape. These leaves are really photosynthesis factories to produce sugars and carbohydrate food to support these trees and shrubs and even produce extra energy so these plants can grow larger and to store up food and energy to make it though the long winter ahead. Chlorophyll is not constant, it is ever changing. It constantly breaks down during the growing season and is replaced with new chlorophyll. In the fall, with shorter days, longer nights and cooler day and night temperatures the connection between the leaves and the rest of the tree or plant begins to absciss or be blocked. The chlorophyll which provides the green pigment in most leaves begins to disappear as it cannot be renewed and we begin to see the other pigments in those leaves that had been hidden by the constantly renewing chlorophyll.

Next year’s leaf buds are already set and carbohydrates have been stored for winter in the branches, roots and stems of your trees and shrubs ready to launch a new season of growth next spring when this miraculous cycle of life will repeat again..

The fall colors vary by species and are greatly affected by the weather we experience each year. Temperatures and moisture levels can impact the intensity and duration of the fall color from year to year. The yellow colors are the result of the xanthophyll pigments and the orange
colors are the carotenoids like those we see in carrots and sweet potatoes. These yellow and orange pigments are in the leaf for the full growing season but are only visible when the chlorophyll that usually masks them over has disappeared from the leaves.

The red and purple colors are the result of anthocyanins. They occur when the sugars that would usually be piped out of the leaves is trapped in the leaves as the abscission process starts and movement between the leaves and the rest of the plant becomes limited. These orange, yellow and red pigments will all break down after a short time and all that will be left are the tannins, which are brown. Some deciduous trees and shrubs drop their leaves quickly; others hang onto their dead brown leaves long into the winter.

The best fall color occurs when we have adequate moisture, bright sunny days and cool nights. We can all enjoy fall color in our own yards, our neighborhoods, at public parks or arboretums like Will Rogers Park or Myriad Gardens. The most spectacular fall foliage in Oklahoma is down in the forests of southeast Oklahoma including the famous Talimena Nation Scenic Byway.

Don’t forget this is a great time to plant new trees and shrubs in your yard. Plant hardy mums, fall asters, ornamental kale and cabbage for color right now in your garden. Set out pansies for color all winter. Plant spring flowering bulbs like: daffodils, hyacinths, crocus and tulips now for great color early next spring. Sow tall fescue seed now for a green lawn this winter. This is a wonderful time to be outside, so get outdoors and enjoy the fall color and do some planting to assure living color for the future.

We are in the charming and beautiful days of October, which the old timers often called the second planting season. The temperatures have moderated, we have been blessed with some fall rains and most of nature seems to be happy enjoying this pleasant respite between the intense scorching heat of summer and the cold dreary days of winter. This is a great time to think long term and to plant new trees, shrubs and perennials that can beautify and enhance your landscape and property for years, even generations to come. Many of those old timers used to advise me that in their opinion, fall was really the best planting season for trees and shrubs as they have so much longer to get established before facing that scorching heat and the hot dry winds that define Oklahoma summers. Spring planted trees only have a few weeks or months to get ready for our Oklahoma summer furnace experience while fall planted trees will have six to eight months to get rooted in and established in their new environment before confronting their first dehydrating Oklahoma summer. With container grown trees and shrubs we can now plant year round with reasonable success but we are most in tune with Mother Nature and it requires the least extra watering if we tackle these long term plantings in the wonderful natural windows of fall or spring. We have hundreds of great choices in trees that can adapt and grow well here in Oklahoma and literally thousands of choices in shrubs. Before you visit your local nurseryman or garden center for help in selecting the best trees for your landscape put a little thought into the size of tree you want when it is mature. Do you want a giant shade tree to shade the whole backyard or do you want a grove of smaller trees to fill in a corner of the property? Do you want a spring flowering tree or an impressive fall color tree? You can help the nurseryman give you better advice and suggestions on your landscape choices if you take a few pictures with your cell phone or camera of your yard, showing your home or barns and where you want to plant your new trees or shrubs. As with most things in life, a lot of success depends on good planning and preparation so dig a hole about one and a half to two times larger than needed, add sphagnum peat or good compost to the backfill and plant your new trees and shrubs. Then soak in your new plantings and be prepared to water regularly through the winter if we go a stretch without natural rains. Fall plantings do not require as much extra water as spring plantings because the day length is shortening, the temperatures are cooling and the plants will be less active, not doing as much photosynthesis, transpiration or evaporation. Don’t forget to buy and plant spring flowering bulbs now to create a big color splash next spring. Tulips, hyacinths, crocus, daffodils and many other bulbs are available now at your local nurseries and garden centers. Plant the gorgeous hardy mums and fall asters, ornamental kale and cabbage for color now and into early winter. If you plant pansies now they will provide color and excitement from now through most of our winters. Plant tall fescue seed if you want to cover bare soil until next spring or to overseed your summer lawn to create a green lawn this winter.

This is a great season to decorate for fall with crops we have grown all summer. Pumpkins, gourds and corn stalks are great fun, add lots of color and are a fun way to celebrate the harvest and enjoy fall at your home or business. Get outside and enjoy the color and fruits of your spring and summer flowers and then dig in and plant some new trees, shrubs or perennials in this second planting season.

Fall is for planting! Fall is the second important planting season of the year and some growers think it is the best season for planting trees and shrubs. It is definitely the season to plant hardy mums, ornamental kale, cabbage and asters for fall color, pansies and tall fescue for fall and winter color and spring flowering bulbs for spring color.

With our day and night temperatures moderating and a few well placed fall rains this is a great time to plant container grown or balled and burlapped trees and shrubs. They are able to get established and rooted into their new home, in your yard, during this milder fall weather and are better prepared to face the heat of next summer than trees and shrubs planted just before or during the searing heat of our Oklahoma summers. Even after the leaves have dropped on new deciduous trees the roots will still be growing and expanding their root network to pick up more moisture and nutrition from the soil that is their new home. Dig your hole about one and a half times again as deep as needed and twice as wide as needed, amend the removed soil with about 1/3 sphagnum peat moss or good compost and fill the hole back to the depth needed. Carefully place your new tree, without busting the soil ball, fill in around the tree with amended soil, then water in the new tree thoroughly. You may need to loosely stake or tie the tree, depending on its size to keep it straight and upright until it is well established.

There are several important things you can do to take care of your lawn in the fall. Apply a pre-emergent weed killer or herbicide to kill winter weeds before they germinate. You can apply the weed killer alone or as part of a weed and feed product as you apply the final lawn fertilizer of this growing season. If you want a green lawn all winter this is the time to sow tall fescue or rye grass to overseed your summer lawn in sunny areas to grow a green lawn that will look nice all winter until the heat of late spring wears it out and gives new life to your summer lawn. Do not apply a pre-emergent weed killer to any area where you have just sowed or plan to sow grass seed this fall.

There are many flowers which provide great fall color including many of the plants you already have planted in your yard from spring and summer that are enjoying a burst of new growth and flowers. The flower we most identify with fall in Oklahoma is usually hardy mums. I have visited many greenhouse growers and garden centers across Oklahoma the last couple of weeks and the crop of fall mums is looking really great this year. The early varieties are just coming into flower and there will be varieties blooming all the way until the first hard freeze, usually in early to mid November. Few plants make such a significant impact as soon as you buy them when added to your container gardens or flowerbeds. You can immediately liven up your place with red, white, bronze, pink, yellow, orange, purple or multicolored chrysanthemums. You can also plant fall asters, flowering kale and flowering cabbage to provide fall color and nice contrast to the hardy mums. The early Pansy crops are available now and can be planted now or over the next couple of months to provide color for the rest of the fall and more importantly through most of the winter. Few things cheer me up as much on a short, cold winter day as the beautiful and colorful pansy flower “faces” greeting me in my yard. This is also the time to shop for the best of the spring flowering bulbs. Plant your daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, crocus and the many specialty bulbs over the next couple of months to enjoy a great flower show to welcome the start of spring 2017. Take advantage of the beautiful fall weather to enjoy time in your garden and to do some fall planting.