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

We are into the heart of the fall gardening season all across Oklahoma.  This is the season to plant trees and shrubs for long term enjoyment, tall fescue or ryegrass for green winter lawns and lots of fall color plants.  There are many choices for fall color but some of the most popular are hardy mums or chrysanthemums, flowering kale, cabbage and asters which all do best when planted in the full sun or part sun. 

The hardy mums are perennials and will come back year after year to add pizzazz to your fall landscape. They will grow into nice mounds of green vegetation that erupt into color as the day length shortens since they are very receptive to photoperiod.  Because of that, you should not plant handy mums under street lights or patio lights which can delay flowering.  Flowering kale and cabbage are ornamental varieties of the kale and cabbage you are used to including in salads or dinner menus.  They are semi hardy and will survive several light frosts before succumbing to the hard freezes later in winter.  They produce very interesting foliage but also fun foliage colors that transition with cooling temperatures through tones of white, pink, red and purples.  Asters have been used in other parts of the country for years and have been growing in popularity in Oklahoma, producing beautiful daisy type flowers in purple, white, pink, blue and red. 

 This is also the time to plant one of my favorite fall and winter color plants, the amazing pansy.  They are available in a number of varieties and colors that can add excitement to your landscape as a border planting, mass plantings to fill a whole flower bed or in decorative containers.  Pansies will usually bloom all winter long when planted in the full or part sun before surrendering and dying in the heat of next spring or summer.   Pansies almost grow to have their own personalities with their multi colored flower “faces”.  Although some pansies have flowers that are all the same color, others will have lower petals or cheeks of one color and upper petals of a complimentary or contrasting color.  These little pansy “faces” will appear to look at you and can easily make you smile.  They tolerate the cold and even fairly hard freezes.  It is not uncommon to see those pansy flower faces poking through a winter snow or flowering to brighten those dreary winter days we will be facing all too soon.  You can select transplants of the pansy colors or “faces” you like at your local garden center and then plant them with a teaspoon of blood meal, in the hole, as you plant them to product color all winter. 

Don’t forget to buy your daffodil, hyacinth, tulip, crocus, Dutch iris and other spring flowering bulbs to plant this fall for color next spring.

It is time to get serious about fall gardening in Oklahoma and this year it actually feels possible.  It is much easier to think about planting crops when we have enjoyed regular rains and are surrounded by so much beautiful green plant material.  Many tender fall veggies should already be planted like tomatoes, cowpeas, winter squash, pumpkins, eggplant, sweet corn and cilantro.  Right now is a great time to plant bush beans, lima beans, cucumbers and summer squash or to sneak in a late planting of the earlier tender fall vegetables and pray for a late freeze so you can enjoy a full harvest.  There are also many semi-hardy vegetables that will keep producing and can be harvested even after several light frosts or freezes.  These semi-hardy veggies are many of the main crops for Oklahoma fall gardening since our first winter freeze can be very unpredictable for timing and how hard we freeze.  Right now is the time to plant beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots, Irish potatoes, leaf lettuce and parsnip.  You can plant the following fall veggies until the end of August: cabbage, Chinese cabbage, cauliflower, collards, kale, kohlrabi, leek, onions and green peas.  A few veggies can be planted far into mid or late September including garlic, mustard, rutabaga, spinach, Swiss chard and turnips. Visit with your local nurseryman or garden center for help in picking the best varieties of seeds or plants for planting in your fall vegetable garden.

This is also the best time to apply pre-emergent herbicide or weed killers to your lawn to control winter weeds.  You can apply herbicides alone or in combination with a lawn fertilizer as a weed and feed type product.  The weed and feed combination is the most popular way to manage the home lawn in Oklahoma as it gives you the chance to feed your lawn and help insure a healthy root system going into winter while applying the “weed birth control” to your winter weeds.  With all the rain this summer and our cooler summer temperatures the winter weeds will germinate earlier than normal so it is important to apply the pre-emergent “sooner rather than later” to create the prophylactic effect that will kill the henbit, chickweed, clover, wild carrots, dandelions and other winter weeds as they germinate.  These products do not work after the weeds are germinated so you must apply them and activate with rain or water before they will be effective.  Visit with your local nurseryman to select the right pre-emergent for your yard.  Those of you trying to be organic can use a corn gluten product as a pre-emergent.  Do not apply a pre-emergent where you have just sown or plan to sow turf or ornamental seed this fall.

Fall is for planting!  This is an Oklahoma gardener’s battle cry I have heard since I was a young boy.  Others call it the second planting season.  Spring is unquestionably the largest planting season in our part of the country but fall is also an excellent planting season and is arguably the best planting season for many crops.  Many nurserymen and arborists argue that fall is the best time to plant container grown, balled and burlapped (B&B) or Root Control bag grown trees and shrubs.  Fall planting allows trees to get established and get down young roots in their new home before facing the windy, drying blow torch of an Oklahoma summer.  This can be especially true of plantings near concrete or blacktop where the heat is magnified.  Select the spots in your yard or on your property where you want to add trees or shrubs.  Then think about the size of the tree you want when they are mature or full grown.  Notice whether you have sandy or clay soil, whether you want to plant in the open, between other trees or on what side of your home or building.  With this information your local nurseryman can help you select the right trees or shrubs for your application. You may want a tree with fall color, a flowering tree or a fruit tree.  You may already know you want an oak, a maple or another type of tree and just need help selecting the best variety for your location.  A big part of success with your tree planting is based on proper soil preparation and planting.  I’ve had my best success when I dig the hole about twice as big around as needed and half again as deep as needed.  I recommend adding one third sphagnum peat moss or another good organic material to the soil you removed from the hole and back filling the improved soil into the hole.  Remove your tree or shrub from its container being careful not to break the root ball during transplanting.  Set the tree in the hole, backfill with the improved soil and water thoroughly.  Stake your new tree, if needed, to stabilize the tree upright.  Fall planting gives new trees and shrubs a great chance at success as long as you are faithful in watering, when needed, this fall and winter. 

The football season is in full gear so it reminds us we are in the heart of the fall mum planting season.  This is a great time to visit your local nursery and buy hardy mums, hardy asters and other fall color plants to spice up your landscape.  Hardy mums are perennials and will come back year after year and come into bloom naturally as the days get shorter.  Hardy mums come in white, pinks, purple and the great fall colors of yellow, orange, red and bronze.

 Fall is also the time to plant tall fescue grass seed if you want to overseed your turf to grow a green lawn to brighten up the winter and early spring.  Fall is truly for planting all the above crops and lots more.  Soon we will be talking pansies, kale, cabbage and spring flowering bulbs.  Visit your local garden center; select some living plants to add to your yard and start planting as you enjoy the cooler weather and charm of fall.

What a difference a year makes!  This is the greenest Oklahoma has been in late August in years thanks to all the amazing summer rains.  Most of our trees, shrubs, flowers and vegetables are celebrating with lush, beautiful growth.  Many gardeners are enjoying their best vegetable harvests in years even after sharing part of the harvest with grasshoppers and other critters that are also enjoying the summer of 2013 and their improved garden buffet.  If you don’t want to share so much of your crops with the grasshoppers, mealy bugs, aphids, spider mites and other heavy eaters of the insect world visit with your local nurseryman to help select the best organic or non-organic solutions to your problems.

The weeds are also enjoying the extra moisture and moderate temperatures so one of the biggest challenges this year is keeping the weeds from overwhelming your desired vegetable or flower crops.  The safest weed control is hand pulling the weeds or plants that are not where you want them.  Hand pulling is very labor intensive and is not most people’s idea of a good time.  Some folks see weed pulling as a good way to take out their frustration or aggression; others see it as a “Karate Kid” character building and strange meditation technique.  After doing lots of hand weeding most folks want to reduce weed pressure in the future which you can do by using pre-emergent herbicides or by mulching your plantings to reduce weed germination.  Once the weeds are up there are post emergent herbicides you can use but you need to be very careful of what you use where.  Products like glyphosate or Roundup will kill everything green, the good plants and the bad plants so don’t use it anywhere you don’t want to kill everything.  Glyphosate works great to clean up an area where you want to create a new flowerbed in a few weeks or months but it is a terrible idea over a flower bed or vegetable garden.  There are many other selective herbicides that kill either grassy weeds or broadleaf weeds.  Visit with your local nurseryman to help select the best herbicide or weed killer for your application if you don’t want to just pull or dig out the weeds.

 This is the time to apply pre-emergent weed killers to your lawn if you want to control winter weeds or grasses.  You can apply pre-emergent by themselves that act as birth control for those winter weeds before they germinate or you can apply weed killer with a lawn fertilizer as a “weed and feed” product.  With all the moisture this year winter weeds are likely to germinate earlier than normal so you should apply your fall weed & feed to your lawn “sooner rather than later” for best results.

We are now in the season to plant tall fescue lawn seed if you want to maintain a green lawn this winter.  You can plant tall fescue or ryegrass from now until mid October.  Now is a great time to spend evenings outside enjoying the gardens you making earlier this year and planning your fall garden plans.

Summer was a little late to arrive this year but it looks like it has now landed in Oklahoma.  Most plants can still grow and prosper even when it is hot if they are properly hydrated or watered.  Water and mulching are the biggest factors or the secrets to summer gardening success in Oklahoma.  Water is the most important element, the very lifeblood for all living things and the need is greatest in the summer time whether it be humans, plants or animals.  Plants are particularly vulnerable to the hot dry summer as they can’t get up and move to go inside the house or a barn or even the comforting cool shade of a tree.  Plants confront the hot, dry, windy summer conditions where they are planted whether they be a wheat plant in the middle of a wide open field, a geranium in your big urn on the front porch, a tomato in the vegetable garden or bermuda grass in the middle of your lawn.  We have been blessed to receive regular rains most of this growing season so that our plants were hydrated without our hardly lifting a finger until last week.  A week of everyday in the upper 90’s quickly dries out the topsoil and starts to dehydrate our plants without a little water from their gardening humans.  Every time a plant gets heavily stressed with too little or too much water or some other extreme stress it “stunts” the plant a little or interferes with its’ natural  growth momentum even if it is not enough to kill or even heavily damage the plant.  Our goal is to provide a happy medium rather than extremes for our plants.  There are some “daredevil” plants that thrive on extremes just like a few humans but most do best when the conditions are more even or consistent.  We can help moderate the summer environment in our garden or yard by adding organic matter to the ground to improve drainage, aeration and microbial activity in the soil.  We can moderate the soil temperature, dramatically reduce weed competition and reduce watering by mulching the top of the soil.  This makes a “mulch comforter” of 1” to 3” to cool the soil, and reduce surface evaporation and to reduce the high levels of summer light bouncing or cooking back up into the plant canopy. 

 When it is hot and dry your plants will appreciate cool refreshing water no matter how you get it to them, by overhead sprinkler, by hand watering or by soaker hose.  They will love drip irrigation, refined by the Israeli’s  and the South Africans to deliver very small but steady drips of water that won’t wash the soil away, knock down the plant or just run off the top of the ground.  The beauty of a good drip irrigation system is that virtually all the water gets to the plants’ root system, with very little run-off or evaporation.  That is how you can grow even better and happier vegetable gardens, fruit trees, berries or pretty flowers with 25 to 50% of the normal water use.

 As a horticulturist, we are often too busy in the prime spring planting season to get our own gardens planted.  I have just made time the last couple of weeks to do a lot of my planting as we are really heating up.  You can still plant container grown vegetables, trees and flowers and they will transplant and do well if you are responsible with your watering.  New plantings will need more frequent watering than established plantings that are well rooted into deeper soils.