Columbus has seen record rainfall this summer and fall is shaping up to be soggy as well.
What does that mean for your fall harvest? And what will still grow for the next few months?
Two gardening experts join All Sides to discuss how all this rain has affected our growing season.
Plus, we share tips on how to put your garden to bed for the winter.
Guests:
- Mike Hogan, extension educator/associate professor of agriculture and natural resources, Ohio State University
- Deb Knapke, author/educator and Ohio's Garden Sage
Transcript
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Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. With autumn comes cold winds, colorful leaves, and new strategies to keep your garden as healthy as possible. For home gardeners, this could be a good time to begin germinating seasonal seeds or snipping annual plants. But how does that look with unpredictable weather, pests to combat, and all the other complications that prevent you from keeping gardening simple? Here to answer your gardening questions is Mike Hogan, an Extension Educator and Associate Professor of Agriculture and Natural Resources at The Ohio State University. Welcome, Mike. Thanks, Amy. And also joining us is Deb Knapke, author, educator, and Ohio's Garden Sage. Welcome back, Deb. Nice to be here. So the National Weather Service reports that Columbus has already received three times the usual rainfall this month in September. August and September. Now has a record rainfall. It's breaking a record set back in 2003. It is so drastic that Columbus Water and Power declared Hoover Reservoir overfilled. I mean, Deb, how are you dealing with all this rain?
Deb Knapke: Well, I did put a picture up on my Facebook page of a melted plant, and people said, oh, you could spray it with fungicide. No, no, it's just too wet, and it's an area that I've never had problems in, so it's even when you have a slope or well-draining soil, you're still seeing problems from all this rain. In my backyard, I've had over 14 inches. It's probably closer to 15, but I missed a couple measurements. Hmm, Mike, what are you?
Juravich: Make of all this rain? Have you ever seen anything like this before?
Mike Hogan: No, and definitely not in the past couple of years. Last year was the driest August on record. This August is the wettest August on record and we're close to having the wittest September on record, we had more than 10.2 inches of rain on campus at our weather station just in August and so far we've had more than six inches in September. So, you know, if we had to have that much precipitation It's probably best for plants if we had it late in the season as compared to early in the seasons, especially for farmers and even gardeners. We can see real damage to compaction in gardens when we try to mud in plants. So yeah, we don't get to choose, obviously, how much precipitation we get. But yeah, seeing things we normally don't see, like Deb mentioned, seeing some plant diseases like powdery mildew on plants that usually don't get it, and are plants that aren't crowded together or very thick.
Juravich: What does mud in mean when you said mud in?
Hogan: Oh, you know, when we we just are forced to be have so much rain in the spring that we're just forced to plant into wet soil, which we shouldn't do now as gardeners, especially if we have raised beds, we can do that a little easier. If we have in ground beds, and we have to walk on or we try to use equipment on we can compact the soil and really cause some permanent damage with some different soil types farmers have that much larger challenge. Oh, I see.
Juravich: Oh, I see. So whenever it's too wet in May and they have to put their seeds in mud instead of dirt. I see, okay. Well, Deb, I mean, I expected to have you on here to talk about a drought, to be honest, because that's I mean the past several years, the past summer and I you know is this is this odd to you?
Knapke: It's really odd. I've said this before, my garden is 42 years old. I have never seen it like this. And Mike said, last year was a drought. This year, an overabundance. And I am seeing plants that look fabulous, much more than they've ever. And then other plants are just dying, saying, too much of a good thing here. Too much, yeah.
Juravich: I don't want to complain about rain, right? Like, is that a weird thing? I mean, what are you hearing from people who don't wanna, because normally we're complaining about, like we're desperate for rain, so.
Hogan: Yeah, we can't control it, obviously. Welcome to climate change. For folks that still struggle with understanding climate change, when they say, oh, we have warm temperatures in winter, or we have cold temperatures in summer, that's the whole result of a changing climate is a variation. We see a lot more variation. Not just in this year having too much water in August, compared to drought last year. But in the way the precipitation comes, we don't get those nice, gentle showers anymore. We get high-intensity rainfalls, fewer rainfalls on average, but much more intense. And that's a lot more challenging, especially with certain soil types. There are some good things. Many times this time of year, lawns, home lawns and athletic fields look a little ragged. And we have spots that maybe if we had the drought, like in July or August, that we're needing to receive. The biggest problem with my lawn, I have none of those spots in here. Beautiful green lawn looks like it's, you know, March or April. Um, but what I have is, uh, you know, some, uh brown spots, uh tracks from running the lawnmower because, uh, the grass is growing so fast and, uh it's not draining as, as quickly. And we, we, we call some spots with the power equipment on, on the grass.
Juravich: Hmm. Yeah. I mean, Deb, how much more have you had to mow the lawn? Well, I haven't, but my husband's been...
Knapke: Complaining mightily that he has had to mow every single week this year if he could get into the garden. And it's sort of like, well, how's the backyard? Can I mow back there? No, honey, you can't. Too wet. Yeah. What if?
Juravich: Too wet, yeah, what if it's even too wet to mow sometimes, right?
Knapke: Well, right now he's mowing at the highest he can, which is, I think, four and a half inches on our mower. And that's fine. I don't mind a taller lawn. And it's actually healthier for the crowns to have taller grass, especially going into fall. You have four inches is like optimal. But now I think we're at about four and half. But what's interesting is that it's not, it's lush, but it's kind of starting to thin out because there's too much water. So I haven't mowed, but Tony's not happy. Julie noted, I'm sorry Tony.
Hogan: That's one of the benefits. We should see lawns go into the dormant period whenever that comes, whether it's December or January, in pretty good shape. Like Deb says, nice root growth. That gives us a one up when we break dormancy next late winter in our lawns. And compared to last year, where come spring you had some grass plants that didn't break dormant because they actually died from the August drought. So there's the upside is that the lawn should be in much better shape and there's a lot Less spot seating and reseating needs to be done this fall.
Juravich: Talk to me about how the rain was like really heavy at times. It wasn't this nice light shower that Mike was just talking about. Does that make things wash away or does it just really soak the ground?
Knapke: I like the word extreme because, you know, intense, extreme. Our weather events are becoming extreme. So extreme drought, extreme rain, extreme cold, extreme heat. But they're like for shorter periods of time and then there's all these predictors. We have this super El Nino forming in the Pacific which is charging up some hurricanes and we might see rain from Polo coming at us Wednesday and Thursday. But um It's like... If you put mulch down, now it's in your neighbor's yard. If you have just seen it, it washed away. We have a driveway, we've been talking about what we want to do, and so some of it's breaking up and that's in our neighbor's yards, so I have to go clean that up because of the gravel. It's just interesting how we have to switch our management of our gardens with the rain, the spot heat. You know, the tomatoes stop, then they start, but then they get diseased because of all the rain. So it's just been sort of, okay, what am I going to do next? What kind of task?
Juravich: And Mike, in all the gardens that you and your team take care of, are you seeing things that got washed away that have been able to hold on before?
Hogan: Not so much in the gardens, certainly raised beds fare a whole lot better, but like Deb says, you know, I have a lot of perennial gardens mulch with Cypress mulch. This is a little bit lighter and I can't tell you. I mean, usually after a hard rainstorm, I'll have a couple of places where I need to rake the mulch back into the bed. Oh my gosh, this year it was more than a weekly chore to go and rake mulch out of the grass where it's washed. Um, but you know, most in-ground, uh, gardens, particularly vegetable gardens and certainly raised bed gardens, you know. Don't have that much of an issue unless someone's planting on a, you know, pretty, uh fair slope. Uh, uh not, not too much problem with, uh topsoil or mulch or other soil, uh amendments washing.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about fall gardening. And with us, we have Deb Knapke, author, educator in Ohio's Garden Sage. And we also have Mike Hogan, an extension educator and associate professor at Ohio State University. And listeners, we want you to join us with your gardening questions. We have two experts here ready to tackle a lot of topics. So ask us some questions about your fall garden. Give us a call. 614-292-8513. That's 614-292-8513 or send an email to All Sides at WOSU.org. Deb, you were going to say something.
Knapke: Yeah. I used some straw this year. I had some spoiled straw, which means it's been sitting there and starting to compost. And I opened up a new area in the spring and I ended up putting straw down because the soil was coming out of the bed because it was on an incline. So the straw kind of broke up the raindrops, the torrential sheet of rain that was coming down. But even so, I would still have some soil come out of the bed like the mulch. And so it was, it's, I can't say this enough. It's been an interesting year. I feel like I'm chasing after nature. You know, like, give me a clue. What am I, what am I going to do next? But I will say, my conifers are probably gonna go into the winter just fine.
Hogan: Shrubs right, you know box was they're looking very well a lot of our evergreens coniferous plants. They're looking really good They didn't have much I mean we had some high temperatures But that's worse on plants when we when it's combined with lack of soil moisture We didn't had that like a soil moisture So they were able to take the high temperatures even if there's some conifers or plants that aren't Totally acclimated to that in their native environment. So yeah, a lot our perennial plants are looking awful good this fall
Juravich: So an issue that I saw in my garden was, because of all the rain, all my tomatoes split. Can you tell our listeners, why does a tomato split? What happened? Not just mine, everyone's.
Hogan: Well, you know, again, we complain about too much moisture all at once, precipitation, but what happens when we get those, the plants have, if they come when the plant is, when the tomato is actually on the vine and is starting to ripen, it's too much growth all at once. You know, and they basically cause the splits by excessive or quick growth.
Juravich: The inside grows too fast for the outside.
Hogan: Right, right. It's just too much water all at once. So.
Juravich: I- I mean, I still ate some of them, but like tell me about like if the tomato splits, it's still good Oh, if you catch it before it like absolutely. Yeah
Hogan: Yeah, and you know unless it's left there and we start to see some rot, you know inside it's perfectly good for eating And you know, we just cut those cut the those those portions out So yeah, it happens a lot to some variety some of our you know Larger varieties especially can be prone to it compared to the some of the small rice But this year we saw it on small like a Sun gold yellow cherry tomatoes We're really prone to cracking if we didn't harvest them quick enough and some of my gardens We harvest two and three times a week depending on the schedule of where it's going to a food bank or whatever And we still saw that cracking on varieties that we typically don't see.
Juravich: Do people who are buying tomatoes in the grocery store at a farmer's market, I mean, do they want them to look perfect? So is this a problem or it's like, have you heard just anecdotally of farmers taking split tomatoes to the farmer's market and having problems?
Knapke: If they do, they might call them seconds, and so then you're not spending as much money on them. And if you're making tomato sauce or roasted tomatoes, like I do, to freeze to use in the winter, who cares if it's split? I just cut that out and it's fine. Something that I saw in the late or actually early summer, I saw some blossom end rot that was a combination of we were getting too much rain and then we weren't getting rain and so there was uneven watering. So we got where the bottom looks like somebody put a scab on the tomato, that comes from leaching. It's a combination of inappropriate water amounts and not having calcium available to cell wall.
Juravich: Listeners join us, 614-292-8513, or send an email to allsidesatwosu.org. What other veggies don't like over-watering? I mean, my peppers didn't split. Does anything else happen with over- watering?
Hogan: You know, we can get rot and diseases, both leaf diseases as well as fruit diseases and just general rots when we have too much water. You know anything in the Solanaceous family, same family as tomatoes, like eggplants and pepper can be susceptible to that. We didn't see too much of that because I think of the timing of the excess moisture. You know before August, we were pretty typical in the level of precipitation and the frequency of that precipitation.
Juravich: June and July were more normal. Yes, or typical.
Hogan: Yes, or typical. I hate to say normal, but typical. And so, if anything, if we had to have excess precipitation, especially for some of our vegetable crops here in Ohio, late season might be better if we choose. You know, I've heard that, you know, when you dance with Mother Nature, you let her lead, right?
Hogan: And that's what we have to do every year. We have to adjust to the situations. Like Deb mentioned, or you mentioned, we saw more cat-facing, we saw a more splitting of tomatoes, but we really didn't see a lot of late-season blossom end rot like we could have because we had the frequent and excessive rain. So pick your poison. If you're going to garden or dance with Mother Nature, you're gonna have to adapt to different situations, not just weather and climate, but other situations that come.
Juravich: I didn't plant any lettuce this year for numerous reasons. I just have very small beds. But anyway, did was there any trouble with lettuce since it's so low to the ground and kind of fragile? Does too much rain happen anything bad happen to that or is it okay?
Knapke: I didn't have any issues with my brassicas though, and this is kind of an interesting thing that happened. My early crop of kales were great. I didn't have the butterfly because it was too cold and wet. The cabbage butterfly was not there. However, my second season, which I sowed the beginning of August, were eaten to the veins by cabbage butterfly. There were so. Many of them. So again, I love the metaphor, dancing with nature. So I got my kale in the early summer, but my late-season kale is not looking too good. And that's part of the rain, too, because it's not only what goes in the ground, but how it affects the insects that
Juravich: Eat. Yeah our different crops. Did you see any other insects have have like a heyday with all the rain?
Hogan: No, you know, we maybe saw a few more Japanese beetle on some plants this year than we have the last couple of years, but the greens fared fairly well. If anything with the greens, and I think this could be a trend, they seem this year, they did well because we had decent soil moisture, and especially if they were planted early, they seemed to bolt maybe a little bit early. And I think that can be related to increased temperatures, both the ambient temperatures and the soil temperature. So. Good, you know lesson is to as soon as you can as early as you Can in this season get cool season crops in the ground that that you know are should be planted early like greens and You know chard and spinach and peas and lots lots of other root crops like radishes and stuff
Juravich: I don't know if it was, I was talking to either of you about this, but I can remember talking maybe last summer where there was a worry about some, some trees where the drought was so bad that the trees were not going to have enough water and people don't water big trees, right? Because why would you water a giant tree that's been here for a hundred years? So did this, did this fix that? Was I talking to you about that where the, you were worried about some old trees, not having enough water
Knapke: I think we both mentioned that once upon a time, and that's always a concern when you get high heat and not enough water. Does this fix it? It depends on how much damage the tree sustained last year during the drought. So we just have to watch because a lot of times you don't see the damage to an old tree happening right then. You see it two years later when it falls down and you think, what happened? Well. It actually happened two or three years ago. So it got sick and I don't know how else to say it. Yeah, I mean, that's as good a word as any, but it was stressed so much that it, root growth was affected, shoot growth was effected. I have a friend who lives in Nebraska and she sent me a picture. She always likes to send me these pictures of trees coming down. She showed me a maple that was essentially hollow. Than when they took it down. And so when did that stress happen? When did it start? A long time ago for something like that, versus we're seeing a lot of our blue spruces being affected by needle cast.
Knapke: Yeah, and it's, it's the heat and the two warm winters, you know, when you say Colorado, blue spruce up in the mountains, and then you think about Ohio being 842 feet above sea level, there's a problem.
Hogan: And that goes back to how we plan for our gardens, for our home landscapes, for our environment. We always stress the moniker, right plant, right place. A really great example, I have a fairly large home lot, larger than we were looking for when we bought the house, but have a lot of trees, both mature and young, but the lot drops off and gets a lot of poor drainage and water sits towards the back. And someone before me was smart enough to plant trees that don't mind having wet roots. But if we had the wrong trees there, if we have some conifers, if we add some deciduous trees that didn't mine some wet soil for extended periods, they wouldn't do so well. And so, we always need to be thinking about the characteristics of where we locate our garden, where we locates shrubs, flowers, especially perennial plants, trees, on our property and what the characteristics are so that we're putting. Trees in the best position and shrubs and other perennial plants in the position to deal with in the vagaries in climate
Juravich: Deb and Mike are staying with us. Listeners, we'd love for you to join us. What's happening in your rain-soaked garden? And do you have a yard puzzle that you would like to be solved? Give us a call. 614-292-8513. That's 614-292-8513. Or email us at All Sides at WOSU.org. Coming up, we're going to talk about the fall to winter gardening transition. Getting things ready in late fall for the winter. When All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides, I'm your host Amy Juravich. Columbus has seen record rainfall this summer and fall is shaping up to be quite soggy as well. What does that mean for your fall harvest and what will still grow for the next few months? We are talking about fall gardens this hour. How can we maximize our autumn vegetable yields when deal with all this rain? Plus how to prepare our landscapes for winter and what to do right now to set us up for spring success. Two gardening experts join us today on All Sides to discuss all things gardening. Deb Knapke, author, educator in Ohio's Garden Sage. Thanks for being here Deb.
Knapke: Nice to be here as you.
Juravich: And Mike Hogan, an Extension Educator and Associate Professor of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Ohio State University. Thanks for joining us, Mike.
Hogan: Yeah, thanks for having us.
Juravich: So what will still grow for the next couple of months? I mean, we don't have to be all done with the food right now, right? I mean we still have, I mean it's not gonna freeze until December. So what's growing right now?
Hogan: Well, the soil won't freeze probably till December or after, you know, for what we're seeing the last several years. But certainly we get frost that will kill certain plants. I love fall gardening. Sometimes I would much rather garden with a hoodie on and building a fire outside than be out there in t-shirt and shorts and can't see through my glasses because they're fogging up with the humidity and the sweat is getting in my eyes type of thing. You don't want to have a headband on. So there's lots of things we can do in the fall. Hopefully- You know, if you want to grow some fall vegetables, you've already got those in the ground. You know things like carrots and radishes and beets all do wonderful. They're cool season crops. Like most of the greens, the chard and lettuces and kales, they all do well. Last season or the season before, we harvested kale in our beds on campus right through the winter. You know I remember seeing out the window on a snowy day, one of our master gardeners in boots was trudging through the snow to. Go harvest the kale to take it to a food bank. So we may have to be ready to do some covering with blankets or row covers and some crops. We can extend the season with our warm season crops like peppers. Peppers have done wonderful this season compared to some others. We have just a bumper crop of peppers in a lot of our gardens, particularly on campus at Waterman Farm. You know, we may if we get some early frost, you know, be ready to cover those warm season crops You know with not with plastic paper can work Fabric, you, know old bed sheets things like that or work gets you several degrees temperature difference But if you're growing cool season vegetables There may be times where it's beneficial to create a micro climate and cover them You know With with hoops or just covers for a night or two But be ready, too manage that because sometimes you know we get those frost even a hard frost and then the next day it's you know 65 or 70 degrees and if it's that temperature uh outside the temperature is going to be higher under those hoops and so you got to manage them by by pulling those covers back even on some uh warm days in October and November and you know even into December.
Juravich: Deb, what Mike was saying about planting your carrots and all the things that you can still get through the fall, I mean, does three times the amount of rain in September make the, are the carrots okay under there? They are.
Knapke: Soil was well drained. If the soil is not well drained, you're probably going to have mush instead. I'd like to add in also that our pumpkins and our squashes are all coming ready to be harvested. I have two that I'm watching and I think the animals are watching them too. But I lost a lot of my vines to the squash bug this year, even though I was watching. But don't take a vacation in July. Because when you do, when you go out of town, that's when all the squash bugs know and they get all into the stems. They were fantastic when I left and when I came back. I noticed they didn't look so good, but I only had two plants make it through. So you asked about carrots, I like to put radishes in and of course I already mentioned kale and beets. Yeah. So.
Juravich: Well, Mike, what about the pumpkins? Did all this rain make the pump, like everyone's always trying to grow such big pumpkins and there's that, you know, I can remember, I'm having a memory from last summer where there was worries that pumpkin patches weren't gonna have enough pumpkins. And I think some pumpkin farms had to truck in pumpkins from elsewhere because they didn't have enough, right?
Hogan: Yeah, I think that that was the case last year. Probably not so much this year. The moisture came I think at the right time for pumpkins. Like Deb says, fields where you have drainage issues, high clay soils, low levels of organic matter, we may see some issues. I'm gonna guess there was maybe more powdery mildew in some fields of cucurbits like cucumbers and pumpkins and gourds and some of the fall things. But overall, I think it was a much better growing season for those type of crops than last year or more dry season. I've heard a lot of older farmers say they would much rather deal with a drought than a flood type of thing. And I think that comes from experience of the damage to crops can be so much more when they're wet as compared to extended periods of dry weather.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about fall gardening with Deb Knapke and Mike Hogan. And listeners, join us with your questions about gardening. We have two experts here ready to tackle lots of topics. 614-292-8513. 614-292-8513. Or email Allsides at WOSU.org. We have an email from Osmond who is in Pickerington and they moved into a newly built home. With a sawed lawn that's thin and has lots of bare patches. So Osmond wants to know the best time to reseed and try to repair this lawn that was sawed.
Hogan: Now Now is a perfect time and a lot of times we we think of, you know, late winter or late spring after we've mowed several times, we start to notice the bare spots from the year before and we see those spots. And what happens is we get good germination, then the hot weather comes and the plants just don't have extensive root systems that can survive if we don't provide irrigation. So we normally see late summer early fall seedings now Sometimes be much more successful And that's when we don't have drought. Last year, not so much. Late August, September, even into October, soil was very dry. Unless you could commit to constant, almost daily irrigation, it was hard to get a good stand of turf grass started. This year, I think we have the perfect environment, the soil temperatures, and the amount of precipitation we've had. Now, obviously, for low-lying areas, if you still have water setting, we wouldn't wanna see that. But now is the perfect time here in central Ohio to reseed lawns.
Juravich: Yeah, Deb, talk about if putting seeds in, if it if it's kind of a little bit muddy, should you not do it? Like do you need it? What is it? What does that need to look like to put seeds in?
Knapke: So it depends on the type of seeds. If you're putting in a lawn, we'd like to have good contact with the soil. And that's, I'm sure something Mike could talk about and some time to even roll it. Now, if it's muddy, I am not going to do that. I may scatter seed and, and let mother nature take over with bringing the rain down because anytime you compact wet soil or push down wet soil, you're you're looking for going to have a problem in the. Garden a lot of times I will sow annual seeds this time of year and also some of my perennial seeds from my prairie plants. I'll put those in different areas where I'm changing things up and I may pat them into the soil if I can get to them or I may just put them on top because with our perennials and our annuals or ornamentals if you think about how nature works they just drop and nobody's patting them in the soil. Oh, like naturally, I see. So you're trying to replicate nature. I'm trying to duplicate nature, at least with my ornamentals. Lawn is a different story. And also with vegetable, a lot of our vegetables, you can read the back of the package, spend a lot money on those packages with instructions. And a lot times they'll say gently pat them down so that you have good soil seed connection. This time of year, I don't worry as much because I know that combination of rain and or snow or frost will push those seeds into the ground. But one thing I do wanna mention, and I know we're going to get to this about preparing for next year, but I am seeing a lot of hairy bittercress come up right now.
Juravich: Which is that I have no idea what that is. All right, go ahead
Knapke: It's that little roundy-moundy cute little thing that comes up with little tiny white flowers and it's everywhere. And those folks who are out there listening, we just call it Bittercress, Winter Bitter Cress, Hairy Bitter Cress. It's in the same family as our kale, but with the cool temperatures and the wetness we've had, I've never seen a crop like this in August and September as I've seen this year.
Hogan: You're probably right. I think most of the winter annuals that creep into our lawns, that get in our garden, our in-ground gardens, especially like purple dead nettle. Yes. Perfect conditions. Now is a great time wherever you have these winter and if you've had them in the past, you could have applied a pre-emergent. We're getting close to the time that that's less effective. Once we start seeing the plants like the bitter Harry Crest that Deb mentioned. If you have hen bit or chickweed, you know, in some shady areas of your lawn or in some in-ground beds, now is a great time, October into November is a good time to spray them with post-emergence, much more effective than waiting until late winter, early spring and trying to clean them up at that time of year.
Knapke: And this is where we have two people who diverge just a little bit. What I do is I have something called a cobra head hoe. It's just a one, like one blade, and I go in and I just scrum them up and leave them, and they go back into the soil as long as they're not in seed or in flower. If any of these plants are in flower, they come out, because that means they're going to leave seed behind, and I don't want that. But, so. If they're really small, and that's what I'm seeing now, I'll leave them behind upside down.
Hogan: Yeah, and I wouldn't disagree, and pulling is certainly an option. Pulling is easier in the soil temps that we have now and with the soil moisture we have now.
Juravich: Mm, it'll come right out. All right, before we take a break, I'm gonna take a call. We have Elizabeth in Columbus. Elizabeth, what's your question?
Elizabeth: Yes, I had, I plant an art by them maybe four years ago and I've lost more than half and they seem to get like a rough on them before they die. What's wrong with them and and I have them for a privacy shrub and what should I replace them with that's deer resistant?
Juravich: So you're talking about like an evergreen type shrub situation, right? Yeah.
Knapke: This is a tough one. This year, they're fabulous because of all the rain. That's what I was.
Juravich: That's what I was wondering and why is Elizabeth having this problem? I thought they were they love the rain, right?
Knapke: This might have started last year. It might have been that they were stressed last year...
Juravich: So, okay, so they're weakened, yeah.
Knapke: Or they're in too much water and I guess that not seeing where they're sighted they might have also decided to give it up if they're standing in water and while they'll take a lot of water because you'll see them at cedar bog they like a boggy situation but they'll be excuse me a little bit higher up from the water so it's hard to know exactly what's happening but I heard her also say dear resistant. And some of the arborvites or arbs, as we like to call them, are deer food. You can see the deer browse line on mine in my backyard. You know, when you talk about deer resistant evergreens, it's getting harder, especially since the deer ate my junipers last year.
Juravich: Do you change their eating habits based on what's available? They do.
Knapke: And they get used to the spikiness or the flavor, whatever.
Juravich: What about what Elizabeth mentioned about them turning orange? Does that mean that they're dying, is that orange an indication of death?
Hogan: Yeah. And you know, it depends on when we start to notice the symptoms. And sometimes I think it's hard for homeowners, especially when you have a variety of plants and maybe a larger lot type of thing. So many times when someone brings in samples to our office or they call for assistance, you know we try to diagnose the problem. When did you notice the problem is the first question we ask. And a lot of times it would happen right away. You know, one day it was green and next day was orange and that's not typical progression. The problem is we just may not be noticing the plants as much, especially if everything's going well. Arbovites, you know, can get damaged by several insects. Bagworm is one of the most common one. We saw quite a bit of bagworm damage this year. And a lot of times we see the bags, once they build the bags and tie off the bags and cocoon in that for the winter. But, you now, sometimes we don't notice the feeding. And sometimes after they feed and destroy some of the foliage, you start to get kind of this brown cast, you know before you have whole scale orange coloring on you know foliage that's left so several different things could be going on like Deb said some varieties just don't like wet feet but but last year we saw we saw a lot of Arborvites this spring didn't make it through the winter and I think that was especially if they were newly planted and a lot of that was related to soil moisture and now you know this year we if it stays this pattern continues which it may with the El Nino may continue for more months into the new year. We may see just the opposite, some Arborvites and other perennial plants not suffering because of excess soil moisture.
Juravich: Once it starts to turn orange, can you save it? Or is it?
Hogan: Or is it usually not usually not?
Juravich: Usually not.
Hogan: And the deer resistant question is really tough. Deer like Arborvitae, so many folks that have deer pressure on their property, they have these misshapen Arborvitas that have no growth at the bottom three or four feet and then these nice full lollipop plants at the top where the deer don't often reach. I've noticed this year, the deer just, it seems like they could, I don't know if they're getting larger, if they can jump higher, but they love the... Buckeyes on a couple of buckeye trees I have in the yard and I deer cross through our yard not poisonous for a deer no and so I start because they were damaging the branches I just started you know in the middle of the summer removing buckeyes long before they're ready just to discourage the deer and you know I did that as high as I can reach you know seven or eight foot and then this year I see they're they're getting the ones higher than that so it's hard.
Juravich: Or they're standing up on two legs. Yeah, that or someone standing on the shoulders of another. We're pulling down wearing a trench coat. Right. Yeah. This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. And we are talking fall gardening. And listeners, join us with your fall gardening questions. 614-292-8513. Or email us at all sides at WOSU.org. Coming up, we will continue our conversation about transitioning the garden from fall to winter. And we'll talk about bulb planting. That's when all sides continues on 89.7 NPR News. This is All Sides, and I'm your host, Amy Juravich. It is fall, and the air is cooler, and the leaves have begun to change. And today, we're talking about strategies to keep your garden as healthy as possible in the fall. And we hope to set you up for some success through the winter, so you can be ready for spring. Joining us to, still with us, to talk about fall gardening is Deb Knapke, author, educator, and Ohio's Garden Sage. Thanks again for being here, Deb. And Mike Hogan, extension educator and associate professor of agriculture and natural resources at OSU. Thanks for being here, Mike. Listeners, join us. You have an opportunity to ask some gardening questions. We have a few minutes left in the hour. 614-292-8513. Or email us at All Sides at WOSU.org. We have an email from Jonathan who has lilac bush issues with mildew, especially the last two years. The plant has been in the family for decades. Can he save it?
Hogan: Depends on where it's planted. Sometimes where I have my lilac is not the greatest place. It doesn't get enough sun to dry out, so we don't get some of those leaf diseases. Usually, unless it's very severe, it won't kill the plant. It's not going to be very harmful for long-term overall plant health. It is mostly unsightly, likely because of the increased rain we have, but that's very common on certain plants, peonies and other You know if we don't have good air movement don't an area they're planted where we have a lot of sunshine that will allow them to dry out quickly when we have the repeated precipitation events.
Juravich: So if the plant has been there for decades and it's planted in an open area of the yard mid to full sun, do you think something happened in the last two years?
Hogan: It depends on the leaf disease. We'd almost have to see the leaf disease to try to diagnose what pathogen it is. You know, I would say at this point, maybe fertilize lightly, don't over, but give it a little bit of, you know, fertilizer. You know I would normally say, you know, even if it's mature, you know, make sure it has adequate soil moisture. Give it some supplemental irrigation. We don't need to do that this year, obviously. So I would just not panic, let it go and see how it leafs out in the spring.
Juravich: And we have a call from Mary in Westerville. Mary is worried about 100 year old tree. Go ahead, Mary.
Mary: Yeah, I have two giant pin oaks that are way taller than my two-story house, so they've been there for at least a hundred years, and the one is losing its leaves on the bottom and the leaf looks like it has some anthracnose, so I'm curious from everything I read, it seems like I don't need to do anything about it, but I just wanted to double check.
Knapke: You think it could be okay? If it is anthracnose and you matched it up with the pictures, that was helped out a lot by the moisture that we've had. So if it dries out, that should be good, but what I would suggest is, normally I like to leave leaves, but in this case, if you could remove as many of the leaves as possible. And they go into the bad compost pile, or they get sent to a place that uses heat in their composting facility, I would highly recommend that. You don't want the anthracnose to be lying around on the ground to then re-infect the new leaves that'll be coming out next year. So there's a lot of disease out there right now caused by all this rain. And that's part of the managing of a garden. And a 100-year-old pin oak, that's fabulous. Congratulations.
Hogan: By this time in the season, Deb, don't get too excited about almost any leaf disease because most, especially trees that old, but most trees, they've already stored all root reserves, carbohydrates they need for leaf out next spring. So there's lots of reasons why trees start to shed their leaves early or unevenly or change color, you know, everything from not enough soil moisture to too much soil moisture. But again, this time of season, that's not a sign of imminent tree health problem of even older trees that you're talking about.
Juravich: I wanted to, before we run out of time, talk about what we need to be doing now and in late fall to be prepared for the winter. So let's talk about planting bulbs. You mentioned it briefly a couple of times, but what can we be planting and is the very Wet soil, good for this.
Knapke: So, I'd like the soil to be a little, well right now it's great for planting bulbs, at least in most of my yard. I concentrate on deer resistant bulbs, which are daffodils and a lot of the small bulbs because they don't want to lean down to get them. Then the chipmunks get those. I love tulips to death, so I try to hide them so the deer won't get them.
Juravich: Wait, the deer are going to dig them up?
Knapke: No, no, the chipmunks do. Oh, I see. Chipmunks will dig up your tulips, and then the deer will eat the flowers next spring. Oh, so I see what you're saying. Okay, the multi-season problems continue. And then I also plant garlic. I like to plant garlic after October 15th. I used to plant it October 1st, but we're getting warmer, and I don't want it to sprout as much, so I use October 15 to November 15th as my target month of time. I also do not do massive cleanup in my garden. I leave stems, I leave seed heads, but if there's disease, I take that out and that goes into the bad compost pile.
Juravich: Mike, what about you? What do you recommend for some things to do in the late fall so that everyone is set up for winter to have a good spring?
Hogan: Well, think about cleanup, especially of some herbaceous perennials. A lot of our native bees, wasps, other beneficial insects overwinter in cavities in plants, in trees, and under plant debris. And so if you do want to cut back some herbacous perennials, some that are hollow stemmed or spongy stemmed, maybe don't cut them all the way back. Maybe cut them at different heights, you know, from 8 to 24 inches. Because that'll give different stem sizes for different insects, gives them a place that they can overwinter. If you do cut some, you can not put them in compost, but leave them in small piles because many insects will overwinder under those piles or even under leaves in a perennial bed. We don't want to leave too much leaves on the lawn because we can kill the lawn over winter with snow molds and other problems. But if on a perennial bed, on a garden bed, it's great to leave some leaves in certain places, not put all of them in a compost pile or send them to the organic recycling because we have beneficial insects that spend the winter. Even some small mammals will spend the winter under those piles. But things like bee balm and Joe pieweed, thistles, cop plant, perennial sunflowers like helianthos, they have nice hollow stems. And so if you cut them down. Don't cut them all the way down to the ground. You know, maybe think about it, like say anywhere from eight to 24 inches high and leave the stems laying there and you can pull them out next spring. Most of those plants, when they start to grow next spring, they're gonna overgrow, outgrow the stubble or you can wait and cut the stubble from last year down, if you want. But most of the time plants are gonna outgrow that and there's no need to recut them.
Juravich: Deb, how much raking of leaves should we do? I mean, we can't ignore it completely. We have to make sure our walkways don't have leaves on them and everything like that. So what do you recommend whenever it comes to leaf raking and bagging?
Knapke: So I don't bag any of my leaves. All my leaves stay on the property. In fact, I take leaves from my neighbors too, to put in my pathways. I have pathways in different areas of my gardens that are shady. Um, in my gardens, my perennial gardens, I won't go over two inches of leaves, otherwise you start suffocating crowns and I also, I will mine in the spring. I will pile them really high in my walkways and then use those in the Spring if I see trouble areas. So I kind of move my leaves around as I need them. And I also have compost and put them in an air, a pile next to my compost bins where I put all of my vegetable leavings, et cetera, because you need that carbon. So I add carbon to my compost pile in the winter when I'm taking out, make soup, all that goes out to the compost bin. And then I put some leaves over on top of that because otherwise you get an out of whack carbon to nitrogen ratio.
Juravich: You mentioned chipmunks attacking your bulbs, right? Yeah, and squirrels. For the first time ever in my yard, we have lived in our house for almost 20 years. We're having a chipmunk problem. They have found us and they won't go away. And I've never had this problem before. I don't know. I guess we used to have a dog, so he probably chased away the chipmunks, but we don't anymore. So anyway, do you get rid of the chip mugs or do you live amongst them?
Hogan: When I bought up my house 14 years ago I inherited a resident family of chipmunks and have been arguing with them literally for 14 years. 14 years.
Hogan: And and they they have we have this nice little pocket succulent garden and they just for fun They don't eat they dig up the succulents and throw them on the walk daily type of thing The only thing long term that I've had to you know, don't want to you Know take them out, you know and kill all the chipmunks just don't them in certain places, right? So the best thing I found is some of these Scare devices that have a low frequency sound Actually, you can hear it if you listen and you're close enough to it, but mostly just some animals can hear. That really has been successful, me to chase them out of the beds I'm trying to protect and let them go. An annoying sound. Right. Okay. But you can't hear the annoying sound very well. I guess I'm used to it. Earlier this year, my daughter and son-in-law from Washington D.C. Were sitting on the front porch and they said, what's that sound? And I said, oh, that's to keep the chipmunks and other critters away. But if you're not used to it, you can't hear. But it's not annoying. It's not like your neighbor's gonna hear or anything like that. They're not very expensive. They're solar powered. I've had them probably for four or five years and they've lasted. That's the best non-lethal control. You can catch them with the large rat glue traps and stuff, but we don't wanna remove all the wildlife from our gardens. We just wanna steer them to where they can do the least amount of damage, right?
Knapke: Right? So if we have time. Yeah, 30 seconds. Go. Okay, we are really lucky. We have a pair of red-tailed hawks in our neighborhood, and we have some other hawks that have kept them down to a dull roar. So thank you very much, Nature.
Juravich: Oh, so you literally let nature take its course.
Knapke: I do, except I have cursed at my chipmunks quite a bit this year because some were digging underneath my pathway since they were sinking. So I then put cayenne pepper there.
Juravich: Oh.
Knapke: And cayenne pepper, they don't like that, at least not yet.
Juravich: All right, I'm going to try the cayenne pepper. We have been talking to Mike Hogan, Extension Educator and Associate Professor of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Ohio State. Thank you for being here, Mike. Absolutely. And we were also talking with Deb Knapke, author, educator in Ohio's Garden Sage. Thank you, Deb. It's been a pleasure. If you missed any part of today's show, listen back at our website, wosu.org slash all sides. Subscribe to our podcast and every episode is available for free in our mobile app. This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich.