If you have any questions about gardening, outdoor living, greenhouse growing or anything else that I might be able to help with, please leave your question in the comments section and I will do my steady best to answer!
31 Aug
Take action to control winter weeds
Now is the time to apply pre-emergent herbicides if you want to control winter annual weeds in your warm season grasses. Pre-emergents can be sprayed or spread as granules. Most are applied as weed and feed granular products where you feed your lawn at the same time you are applying the weed killer. There are many good pre-emergent herbicides. Some of the most popular and broad-spectrum contain Barricade or Prodiamine, Dimension, Trimec or Simizine and they act like birth control to kill the winter weed seeds before they germinate.
The researchers at OSU recommend application by mid September so you are not feeding your lawn and stimulating too much soft new growth as we approach freezing temperatures. Many folks still apply fall weed and feed products through October, just remember the pre-emergent weed killers are generally not effective once the weeds have germinated.
Many folks are experiencing a lot of mole and gopher problems this year. This often means you have a lot of white grubs that they are feeding on. Apply a product with Imidacloprid or Mach 2 to your lawn areas and water thoroughly to help reduce your grub population.
This is a good time to apply fertilizer to your trees and shrubs, particularly young trees and shrubs to help them prepare for winter. If you plan to convert any lawn area to tall fescue this fall – usually in late September through October – now is the time to apply glyphosate (Round-up) type post-emergents to kill competing grasses and weeds in the areas to be converted.
My tomato plants don’t have many red fruit but they are absolutely loaded with green fruit after our cooler temperatures and refreshing August rains. It is too late to plant more tomatoes for this season, but you can still add to your fall vegetable garden. You can plant collards, lettuce, spinach and Swiss chard for greens. Consider planting leeks, onions, radish, rutabaga or turnips to produce root crops to use fresh in your kitchen. You can also plant green peas, kale and kohlrabi to enjoy this fall or plant garlic cloves now to produce next summer. You may want to find some row cover to have on hand in late October so you can cover and protect your good producing vegetables from any early frosts to stretch out your season. We often will have 3 to 6 weeks of Indian Summer after the first frost or two and a little protection can give you a lot longer harvest season.
17 Aug
Milder Oklahoma weather has effect on plants
We are enjoying a very unique August in Oklahoma blessed with summer rains and cooler temperatures. When you are farming or gardening the weather is often the most important factor in how your crops perform. When we had the couple of hot weeks back in July the okra was really starting to pod and the squash was really starting to bear. As we have cooled down, the okra and squash, which love really hot weather, have gone more vegetative and are producing less harvest. My tomatoes on the other hand had stopped setting much new fruit when we got up around 100º, as they don’t set flowers well above 90º. Now that we have cooled down my tomatoes are lush green and covered with small fruit. The lesson is that as the weather changes some crops benefit and some face new challenges. The same thing happens with our ornamental plants but overall most of our annuals and perennials are really enjoying the natural refreshing rains and the cooler temperatures. Our ornamental plants are generally under less stress and looking happier at mid August than any year I can remember.
The three things I hear gardeners complain about the most are pulling weeds and fighting grass where they don’t want it, battling insect and disease problems and the time spent watering. Instead of viewing these experiences as a chance to meditate, observe mother nature and to commune with your garden, many folks see these as obstacles that limit their gardening. Mulching is the very best sustainable practice for Oklahoma gardening to help reduce watering and weed pressure. I planted two new similar flowerbeds and top mulched one with 2” of bark mulch and used no mulch on the other. I am watering over twice as often on the unmulched “naked” soil bed and the plants are generally not looking quite as healthy either. Although I still need to do a little weed pulling in the mulched bed I would guess it is facing over 90% less weed pressure than the similar unmulched bed. The mulch is reducing watering by at least 50% and weeds by around 90% and the plants are looking happier. Happier, unstressed plants aren’t bug free but do a better job of resisting insect and disease problems. If you aren’t mulching yet you really ought to try it out. Use any of the many kinds of bark mulches, cottonseed or pecan hulls. Many community gardens even use burlap sacks, flattened cardboard boxes or even pin down old newspapers between plants. It should make your day to know you can recycle this paper and my columns to mulch your flowerbeds.
3 Aug
Horticulture conference reveals trends
How wonderful to end July with rains across much of our state. They have really refreshed our lawns and gardens and give us a chance to visit about something besides mulching and watering in our summer gardens. I just returned from the American Society of Horticultural Science in St. Louis, the annual gathering of all the horticulture professors from across our country. I’m not a professor but I still try to attend to listen to these bright folks talk, to see what research the graduate students and professors have completed and are pursuing.
There were several clear trends this year. Interest in vegetable, fruit, nut and berry or edible food production is up for both home gardeners and commercial producers. We have seen a surge in new gardeners raising tomatoes, peppers, herbs and melons for the first time in traditional gardens, interplanted with ornamentals or in containers. Across the country there is a trend towards locally grown commercial produce including some ornamental growers switching part, or occasionally all, of their production to produce. With the interest in more locally grown produce we are seeing more production of produce and berry crops on plastic film and other mulches, under row covers, under shade cloth, in tall season extending hoop houses and in temperature controlled greenhouses.
There is a lot of research to determine the best varieties, best fertilizer and watering protocols and best production systems for specific crops in regions all across the country. Most everyone expects water to become a bigger issue in the years ahead as costs go up and we stretch scarce resources and limited water distribution systems. There is growing interest in water tolerant natives, breeding other crops to tolerate and even produce fruit or flowers with lower water use. Many are working to refine sprinkler and drip systems to deliver less water, more efficiently as we all work to maintain our lifestyles and yet live a more sustainable life.
Over the last 20 years the research had focused on how much we could fertilize to get maximum plant growth. Now with fertilizer costing more and a commitment to be more sustainable, the fertilizer research is being directed to how low can we feed to meet the plants basic needs and get most of the benefit of fertilization to assure healthy and productive plants. There is significant university research now into organic or low impact fertilizers, fungicides and pesticides. There is a focus on finding good consistent liquid organics that could be applied through drip systems and to find more organic or biological controls that will have mainstream impact like BT (bacillus thuringensis) has had for worm control.
20 Jul
Hot, dry times call for extra plant care in Oklahoma
The hot dog days of summer have arrived and your plants, like your puppies and pets, depend on you for water and a little extra care and attention. Last week we had a long stretch of days at well over 100 degrees, some days even tougher with hot drying winds.. It is very important you walk your yard, observe the condition of your lawn, trees, shrubs, vegetables and flowers and provide adequate water to prevent wilting and extreme stress. Some of your plants would survive without extra water but might stop growing, will drop many leaves to get their water use in sync with water availability and might be slow to recover when we get to cooler temperatures this fall if they survive. Spending a little time observing your plants and soaking them when needed will keep your plants healthy, growing, and often flowering and fruiting in spite of the hot dry conditions.
Remember it is better to really soak your plants every few days rather than squirting them every day. Drip hoses or soaker hoses are a better way to water then overhead sprinklers. A mulch of 2” or deeper of cottonseed hulls, pecan hulls or bark like eucalyptus, pine, fir, oak or cedar will cut your water needs in half and keep the soil cooler and your plants happier. Remember that plants in hanging baskets and containers, especially smaller containers, with less soil will dry quicker so need more frequent watering, maybe every day at these temperatures. Sandy or loose soils will need watering more often than clay and loamy soils that will maintain moisture longer and require a little less watering.
Happy, properly watered plants will be healthier and experience less insect and disease problems. We have much less fungus and disease problems in these hot dry conditions but this is the time of year we face the greatest insect pressure. Most insects hatch many more insects per batch and lay eggs or cycle much quicker at these temperatures so insect populations can appear to explode in our gardens. We are currently seeing lots of wooly leaf hoppers, spider mites, grasshoppers, hornworms and other worms and caterpillars in our vegetable gardens and on our ornamentals. We are seeing bagworms on junipers and webworms on many trees. Visit with your local nurseryman to select the proper control to apply to your plants if you are tired of sharing your crops with the worms and insects. Now is the time to make like a fireman and soak your lawn and garden to keep everything healthy in these hot dry sauna conditions.
Rodd's Seeds of Wisdom 