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

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.

What a difference we have this moist summer compared to the extreme drought of the last few Oklahoma summers. Usually we are spending much of our July gardening time watering by hose or sprinkler or repairing and troubleshooting sprinkler and drip irrigation systems. This year we have had to do remarkably little watering compared to normal as Mother Nature has been handling most of the watering responsibilities. As it warms up, you will still need to be prepared to water on those summer days and weeks that nature doesn’t provide adequate rain.

Many folks did not get as much planted as normal because of the extreme rains we got in May and some plantings drowned or were set back from standing water or soil that was super saturated with water and did not have adequate oxygen to allow plant roots to breathe. Most of the spring plantings that survived flooding are looking great now. It has been a long time since our trees, shrubs, lawns and flowers looked so lush and green in mid July across Oklahoma. The tomatoes, peppers and eggplant are bearing and sharing their harvest. The begonias, penta, geraniums, periwinkle, zinnias, marigolds and other color plants are blooming and putting on their own summer fireworks show. The flower bulbs of summer including cannas, dahlias and gladiolus are producing spectacular flowers that are like having a flower show in your own yard. To enjoy many of the flower shows you have to plan and plant ahead, just like dealing with our human goals.   Cannas, dahlias and gladiolus have to be planted in the early spring to enjoy them in the summer. Most of the annuals and vegetables had to be planted earlier this spring to enjoy the displays now after they have grown for 30, 60, or 90 days. There is still time to plan and plant many annual flowers and even vegetables to enjoy in the three and a half months left until our first normal freeze in early November.

Daylilies and crapemyrtle are two of the blooming wonders of Oklahoma summers. There are literally thousands of varieties of daylilies that bloom in virtually every color you can imagine. Some have single flowers and some have double flowers but they are exceptionally tough and although they freeze to the ground, they come back every year with their long green strap leaves and then produce waves of colorful trumpet shaped flowers. Crapemyrtle comes in many varieties ranging from a dwarf shrub all the way up to a small tree of fifteen to twenty feet tall. The most common crapemyrtle varieties grow to between six foot and twelve foot tall. Crapemyrtles love the heat and produce colorful pink, white, red or lavender flowers that will enchant your yard and neighborhood for many weeks from early July into September on some varieties. Many of the old time varieties were not as cold hardy and would freeze back to the ground and then re-sprout each year. The newer varieties are much more cold hardy and rarely freeze back although they go deciduous and drop their leaves each winter to expose their artistic bark patterns. The new varieties offer much more intense color selections and will bloom for longer time periods. Crapemyrtle breeding has been greatly advanced by work at the National Arboretum in Washington D.C. and by the work of Oklahoma’s own Dr. Carl Whitcomb of Stillwater. It is fun to landscape your yard and neighborhood with plants that will be at their peak throughout all four seasons. There are lots of good plant choices for summer color so enjoy the flowers of summer.

Happy Birthday America!  Today marks two hundred thirty nine years for this great experiment in self government launched by our forefathers at Independence Hall in Philadelphia back when we were a mere thirteen colonies ready to control our own destiny.  Many, even most of the early delegates were or had been farmers with a deep love of the land and respect for nature as well as a strong commitment to independence and a sincere belief in self rule instead of always yielding to the King of England.  Plants and crops have played and are still playing a significant role in our country’s birth and development.  From the pilgrims arrival they struggled to produce food with the seeds and crops they brought from England and finally had more success when the native Indians shared their crops and growing ideas.  The love of tea and the high taxes claimed by King George III on those imports helped focus the new country on a course of independence.  The wisdom of farmers and their reading, writing and grand discussions as they traded crops and hunted for new crops and production areas also resulted in exchanges of ideas and a quest for freedom and the power and ability to make their own decisions.  They even wanted the ability to decide on what crops to grow and where they could grow them and then sell or trade their crops and products as they chose.  As the years have gone by and our country has grown to a full fifty states it dramatically expanded the variety of crops that could be grown in our country.  It has made it possible to grow crops in the part of the country best suited to each crop and has allowed us to become the most productive country in the world with a smaller per cent of our population required to grow our food and fiber so that we can all focus on the vocations we most enjoy and where we have the greatest skills.  This has allowed us to not only feed our fellow Americans but to export and help feed and clothe many more around the world.  The wide variety of crops and the specialization has allowed us to develop many experts who continually breed new and better varieties of ornamental and food crops and develop better growing methods to improve our quality of life and to feed more people better.

Our country was founded with a freedom to find and breed new crops and to give people choices.  We don’t order someone to eat the new, healthy variety of tomato or blueberry or to plant the newest, brightest color of geranium, penta, or crape myrtle.  But we do encourage folks to keep hunting and breeding for the newest and best varieties and to give us choices of what to eat or what to plant and enjoy.  The world would be a boring place and subject to a lot more “plague” type insect and disease problems if we all planted and raised the very same crops.  The diversity of varieties and plants has served our nation well and should allow us to continue to grow and prosper.

We are blessed to be able to garden or farm because we enjoy it and want to, not because our very ability to eat and survive is at stake.  That is a tremendous freedom when you face extreme conditions whether it is drought, flooding or disease to know that your survival does not depend only on the crop that is currently in the ground.  The success of modern farming has allowed us the freedom and often provides the means to grow pretty ornamental trees, shrubs, lawn and flowers and not to be totally dependent on our fruits, berry, grains and vegetable harvests.   Most of our founding fathers were good agronomists, horticulturist, or botanists and many helped breed, discover or introduce new plants.

Spend some time this summer to do your own plant exploring and then expand your yard and garden with some new types and varieties of plants.

What a difference a year or two makes!  In recent years at this time, we had already experienced triple digit heat several times and had been watering regularly to beat a punishing drought.  This year we have yet to reach 100 degrees and have been blessed with regular refreshing and thirst quenching rains that have dramatically reduced how much time we have had to spend watering to grow and sustain our trees, shrubs, gardens and lawns. Normally we would slow down on planting at this time of the year and focus on mulching, watering and trying to support or sustain the crops we have already planted.  With the extra moisture in our top and sub soils and the milder conditions this year you can still experience great success planting container grown trees, shrubs, annuals, perennials and even warm season vegetables as long as you will be faithful and dependable in watering when needed between our natural rains.

This is prime container gardening season as many folks are spending more time outside on the patio, the front porch or in their back yards.  You may be entertaining guests and want to dress up your apartment, condo or home with the extra color and excitement of live plants.  Container gardens give you two opportunities to make a design statement.  One is with the actual container you select.  It can be anything from a traditional black nursery container to a decorative terra cotta or other color plastic or foam pot.  It can be a whisky barrel, an old wash tub, a wheelbarrow or other imaginative container that can hold soil.  The big issues that affect container gardening success are the size of the container and how much soil it can hold, drainage holes for water to escape form the container and the quality of soil used in the container.  Also the obvious decision of picking appropriate plants for the size containers and location where you plan to set the containers.  The larger the container soil volume the easier it is to manage plant watering and gives you better chances for success.  The smaller the container, the more dependent the plants will be on you to take care of them because they will dry out more often and need more attention.  Outside containers should have drainage holes so that excess water can drain freely from the container.  If you don’t want it draining out on a covered porch or other special area use a saucer to catch the drain water from the container.  A container without drainage will have much greater disease or fungus problems, possibly even rotting out plants that need good drainage and the soil structure will break down and not perform well in standing water.  Most plants need a good well drained soil with a good water and oxygen relationship.  Soil selection is an important part of container gardening success.  Lighter weight, well drained soilless potting mixes usually perform best in container gardens.  They do better than loam, clay or sandy top soil or heavy soil mixes.  Roots will grow and sustain best in a good well balanced mix of sphagnum peat moss, composted pine bark, vermiculite and perlite.  There are many good commercial grower mixes and some similar “grower style” consumer soil mixes available at your local grower or garden center.

You have lots of room to show your imagination or design flair when selecting plants for container gardens.  They can be a practical way to grow your own vegetables with pots of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, herbs or strawberries.  Most decorative containers are either a single ornamental plant like a hibiscus, oleander or palm or a combination planter with a tall plant at the center and medium or short or even cascading plants around the edge.  Visit with your local garden center or grower to select the best plants for your location, whether sunny or in the shade, over concrete that will reflect extra heat or under the porch roof that will be more protected.

Enjoy this less stressful gardening weather and have fun planting those gardens and container gardens that you have been dreaming about.

We are finally getting some sunny weather without daily rains and the weather feels a lot like early May instead of early June in Oklahoma.  As dry as we have been in Oklahoma the last few years and as much as so many have prayed for rain it takes a lot for us to be happy about June days when it is not raining.  We have been so moist and have received rains so regularly that we have rarely had to water our gardens, flower beds and decorative containers this spring season.  With the sun taking the lead over the rains now and with the temperatures warming up we will need to start paying attention to the water needs of our plants and mulching to reduce future watering.

The weather is still very mild and we still have time to plant and enjoy most of the 2015 growing season with newly planted Oklahoma warm season vegetables, ornamental annuals and perennials.  We have about five months of growing season left before our first frost of winter.  There is still time to plant tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, black eyed peas, okra, pumpkins, watermelons and cantaloupe to get a good harvest yet this year.

It has been so wet that many Oklahomans have not done their usual spring planting of blooming annuals like petunias, periwinkle, impatiens, begonias, caladiums, sweet potato vines and hundreds of other crops.  As a result, Oklahoma garden centers and nurseries are still bursting at the seams with crops and inventory that needs to find a good Oklahoma home.  Please consider a visit to your local nursery or garden center to select the trees, shrubs, annuals or perennials you need to beautify your home.  We have great growing conditions this year after the bountiful rains that have recharged our top soils as well as our sub-soils.  New plantings should be happier and take off quicker than in any recent year.  Everyone has observed how green our lawns, trees and plants are this year with the cooler moist conditions.  As it warms up we will need to be more diligent about watering and mulching and may need to fertilize some to replace food that has leached further into the earth or has been used by our fast growing plant materials.

If you ended up with standing water you may have lost some plants to suffocation or rotting out.  Often plants may have been weakened by an excess of the water they normally crave. Some plants develop fungus or disease problems in the cool, wet conditions like we experienced the last few weeks.  You can take a sample of your plant problem to your local garden center or county extension office to diagnose the problem and help select the proper fungicide to battle the problem fungus or disease.  With the good moisture in our soils from earlier rains combined with nice sunshine now we should get some wonderful plant growth in the next few weeks and we expect some great gardens later this summer and fall.

Take advantage of this rare extended planting season and go select more plants to add to your yard so you can watch the miracles of nature growing at your house.  It is rare for June gardeners to enjoy the kind of selection still available at local nurseries and garden centers.  There are lots of plants still waiting to be adopted by a happy home.