Don’t be too quick to put away your pruning shears and other gardening equipment after Labor Day. — Photo by Frederik Broden

• Plant perennials: With moderate temperatures and generally increasing rainfall, fall is a good time to plant trees, shrubs, and many other perennial plants in most U.S. climate zones. The soil is nice and warm, which promotes good root growth, and — unlike in the spring — young upstarts don’t face the potential of a long, hot, dry summer. Plant perennials in the fall and they can get established before going dormant for a winter’s nap. Best of all, you can find terrific bargains on perennial garden stock, as nurseries and garden centers liquidate their summertime inventory to make way for mums, pumpkins and, eventually, Christmas trees.

EDITORS’ PICKS

You’ve heard all the “no-duh” tips before about preparing for a disaster – keep water and non-perishable food on hand, have a flashlight with extra batteries…

But this month the federal government is hoping you will get down to details to make a plan for, not the unthinkable, but the inevitable: wild fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods or even terrorism and pandemics.

To get the word out FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Authority) has built an extensive website to help citizens plan and prepare.

Ready.gov offers instructions on how to ready your family, your home, your car and even your business for an emergency. The site includes tips specific to disasters common in your area. There are even diagrams on how to seal off your home in the event that the outside air is contaminated. 

Here are five things Patch found that can help you get ready:

1.  Build a tailor made kit

You’re smart enough to build a kit with food and water, but FEMA suggests making sure you include foods your family will actually eat. If you’re kids have never eaten a bean in their life, maybe a disaster isn’t the time to present them with a can of cold red kidney beans. Also don’t forget high-energy foods like protein bars and, FEMA suggests, skip salty foods that will make you thirsty.

2.  How much water is enough?

Speaking of thirsty, FEMA suggests storing one gallon for each person for three days. But if you live some place hot consider storing more. Click here for more tips about what not to use to store your water.

3.  Some non-food items you should have in your kit:

• Duct tape, plastic sheeting and dust masks in case you need to shelter in.
• Whistle to alert responders to your location
• Wrench or pliers to turn off utilities
• Baby wipes and garbage bags for personal sanitation
• A can opener
• (Click here for the full list)

4.  Make a national communication plan.

If you’ve got relatives out of state, they may be just the ones you need when your local friends and family are mired in a disaster. Your Uncle Louie in Detroit or Aunt Emmy in Tampa could be the point person if you and your family become separated. FEMA also offers a PDF family emergency plan you can fill out and email to family and friends. There is also a PDF contact card that kids can carry with them. (We’ve included both above this story below the photo).

5.  What exactly do you say to a terrorist? 

If you received a bomb threat at work, would you know what do? FEMA has put together a list of questions to ask the caller, which you can view here. If you are caught in a explosion did you know that whistling to a rescuer could save you? FEMA says shouting could lead to inhaling dangerous amounts of dust.

For more information on how to prepare for everything from a black out to a cyber attack, visit www.Ready.gov.

CROSSVILLE —
I went to the Fall Gardeners Festival at Plateau Discovery Gardens on the grounds of the University of Tennessee AgResearch and Education Center near Crossville at the end of August to pick up continuing education credits for my annual Master Gardener certification and to get the latest scoop from the experts on growing, maintaining and arranging plants in home landscapes so I could pass that information along to “Plateau Gardening” readers. Of course, that is the reason for the education requirement — to ensure Tennessee Master Gardeners have research-based, up-to-date information when answering residents’ horticulture questions.

Since so many folks ask me about hydrangeas, attending Mark Windham’s talk “Hydrangeas: Winners, Losers and How to Care for Them” was a top priority (I caught the question and answer segment at the tail end of his 11 a.m. hydrangea presentation then circled back to hear the entire talk at 2 p.m.) 

Dr. Windham’s area of study is entomology (the scientific study of insects) and plant pathology (study and diagnosis of disease) rather than horticulture. Plants stressed by insect infestations, infectious diseases, extreme temperatures (too much heat as well as too much cold) or the wrong amount of sun, moisture and soil fertility don’t perform as well as plants which are free of insect pests and/or health problems and are also installed in a suitable environment. Such university studies into a species or individual plant variety’s tolerance for these various stressors helps when trying to find the best plants for conditions in your gardens and landscape.

Windham has an on-going hydrangea trial at Discovery Gardens to evaluate resistance of various cultivars to the foliar diseases powdery mildew and black spot. For those who may be wondering, the term “cultivar” is horticultural shorthand for “cultivated varieties.” Just think cultivar equals variety. Stop at Discovery Gardens for a self-guided tour and stroll through the hydrangea plot to evaluate how healthy the leaves of different hydrangea cultivars look. Summarized in general, findings indicate hydrangeas that get too much shade exhibit more leaf spot; those receiving too much sun have more powdery mildew.

Tip for those raising hydrangeas at home: To avoid powdery mildew, don’t locate hydrangeas in full shade. To avoid black spot, don’t locate hydrangeas in full sun. When the particular hydrangea specimen you wish to add to your yard is described as needing “full or part sun” or as best in “full to part shade” find a spot to install it that gets  at least six hours of mid-season sun early in the day (until 11 a.m. or noon) then shade for the rest of the day.

If you are on site at this hydrangea trial garden also be aware of how few blooms there are. When most of a plant’s energy goes into foliage production there are few flowers. To produce lots of leaves for disease analysis, these hydrangeas have an irrigation system that regularly supplies them with both water and fertilizer. If you want an abundance of blooms, don’t coddle your hydrangea by over-watering and over-fertilizing it. Turn off automatic irrigation. Manually water the hydrangea when there has been scant natural rainfall and its leaves appear wilted in the morning (don’t jump the gun — despite wilted foliage in the afternoon, hold off irrigating until morning). Hydrangeas don’t like wet feet. Where soil is soggy, a hydrangea won’t perform well no matter what you do. Use a mild, broad spectrum fertilizer not one heavy in nitrogen. Fertilize hydrangeas that are remondant (re-blooming) two times per season. Fertilize those that bloom once one time.

•••

Plateau Gardening is written by Master Gardeners for gardeners in Tennessee’s Upper Cumberland Region.  UT Extension Cumberland County at P.O. Box 483, Crossville, TN 38557 (484-6743) has answers to horticulture questions, free publications and details on how to become a Master Gardener. Send email comments or yard and garden inquiries to Master Gardener Rae, mgardenerrae@frontiernet.net.

The Bainbridge Island Garden Club will hold its first monthly meeting of the new season at 9:30 a.m. Monday, Sept. 10 at the First Baptist Church.

The program will be “Tips-Tricks For Simple to Elaborate Floral Designs” presented by Bethany Shippen and Ted Avery of Changing Seasons Florists of Bainbridge. All are welcome.

For more information, call Mary Lou Teske at 206-451-4230.

 

Comment on this story.

WITH a wide choice of spring bulbs now available in garden centres and from bulb specialists, it’s difficult to know which varieties to choose and is often tempting to stay with old favourites.

But there is a flurry of new bulbs worth trying, according to a trial of daffodils and tulips by Which? Gardening, the Consumers’ Association magazine, which also suggests that new varieties produce better results than some of the older types.

Triallists found that the new bulbs had a more regular height and consistent flowering time, giving an overall better display than the older ones.

Last autumn, triallists tested 53 new types of spring-flowering daffodils and tulips, growing them alongside five well-established varieties to use as a comparison. The bulbs were planted in early November, the narcissus twice their own depth and tulips three times their depth.

The bulbs had to withstand baking sun, high winds and torrential rain in spring.

Among the recommended daffodils were Narcissus ‘Lieke’ (Walkers Bulbs), which was the longest-lasting bloom, whose dainty flowers have a green eye and delicious scent. It bloomed for 45 days, producing three stems from each bulb and three flowers on each stem from April to May, the 45cm stems staying upright despite heavy downpours.

Other daffodil winners included the dwarf ‘Sweet Love’ (Peter Nyssen; Unwins), which produced the best scent, while the small, nodding, cream flowers with a yellow centre shed the rain with ease, and ‘Swoop’ (De Jaeger), another pint-sized type which produced the most flowers of all the varieties. From 23 bulbs, more than 80 stems were produced, with swept-back yellow petals and nodding heads, perfect for naturalising around trees and woodland.

Many of the new tulips trialled also gave an excellent display, including Tulipa ‘Dior’ (HW Hyde Son), which began to flower early, in April, producing several large double flowers in a luxurious shade of pink at the top of each stem.

If you’re looking for unusual, the tulip ‘Green Star’ (Sarah Raven) may suit you, with its slender, elegant green flowers with cream tips held on long straight stems, daring enough to catch the eye but without jarring. They were grown in pots with other tulips and found to be great companions for pinks, whites, purples and striped varieties, flowering in May and reaching a height of 45cm.

Other stars of the show included T. ‘Black Jack’ (Peter Nyssen), one of the darkest varieties with blooms with a velvety sheen which flowered earlier than old favourite ‘Queen of Night’ and persisted for five weeks. They have long straight stems which would be good for cutting and combine well with white and pink tulips.

Those who want their tulips to withstand pounding rain should plump for T. ‘La Belle Epoque’, whose fully double apricot flowers, reminiscent of a peony, continued flowering through the rain.

The best new parrot tulip was ‘Irene Parrot’ (Peter Nyssen), bred from the popular ‘Prinses Irene’ and has mid-sized orange flowers that are frilled, cut and flamed to give an exotic look. Unlike other parrot tulips, it didn’t flop under the weight of heavy rain during the trial and continued to flower for 31 days.

Stocks of new varieties of bulb can be limited so order them now.

Full details of the trial are in the September issue of Which? Gardening. Sign up to Which? for a one-month trial for £1. For more information, visit

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ATLANTA –

Pike Nurseries’ Bryant Teefey joined Good Day Atlanta on Friday and had some tips on what you should be doing to prep your garden for the fall season.

Tips:

In the Garden

• Fall is for Planting! The mild fall weather makes it a great time to plant just about everything.When you plant in the fall it gives plants time to establish before the summer heat

• Plant Perennials Now! Perennials come back year after year. Favorites include aster, helleborus, ornamental grass, and heuchera (coral bells).

• Plant Spring Blooming Bulbs! Mix spring flowering bulbs like daffodils, tulips and more into your landscape and container gardens for a lovely show come early spring. Bulbs are easy – plant them pointy side up

• Plant Annual Color!When temps cool down (usually in the middle or end of the month), plant cool season annuals like pansies and violas

• Plant Food! There are several cool season vegetables that you can plant now and harvest throughout the fall. Try cabbage, lettuce, beets, turnips, spinach, radishes, collards and broccoli, and be sure to water thoroughly after planting.
  

For the Lawn

• Prevent Winter Lawn Weeds! In the middle of the month apply Pike Crabgrass Preventer to prevent winter lawn weeds, and apply it to Bermuda, Zoysia and Centipede lawns

• Time to Reseed or Lay Sod! Fall is the perfect time to reseed your lawn – especially fescue lawns or lay sod. Sod is available by the piece or pallet at Pike Nurseries; for a large order call ahead!
  

Houseplants

• Watch the Water! As the humidity decreases you may need to adjust your watering frequency. If the plants are wilting, increase the watering. If you see yellow spots on the tips of the foliage, reduce watering.

Less is more when it comes to designing a front garden, writes Justin Newcombe.

How much time do you spend at the front of your property? You probably just drive up the road, pull into your driveway, maybe pause to check the mail for the letter congratulating you on your incredibly good fortune because you are the winner of $10 million and to “qualify” you just need to invest in an Albanian Government-approved pyramid scheme. The rest is just bank statements, Inland Revenue letters and parking fines. I’m always surprised just how much of it the snails in my letterbox can eat.

Back to the smart front, the point is you don’t spend very much time at all looking at the front of your house from the street and nor does anybody else. If someone did spend more than a minute or two looking at the front of your house, you’d probably take down their rego as a precaution.

Which leads me to the design of the front yard. How much garden can we take in during the 10 seconds or so of cursory glance that form first impressions, street appeal or what the Yanks call “kerb culture”? No matter what your tastes, life philosophy or budget, your front garden is what represents your property – even if the rest of it is an unholy mess. In my case I’m guilty of being a winter garden sloth, so this year the unholy mess basically started at the front and, as far as I could tell when I bothered to look, went right to the back.

There are some nice plants in the front of my place and the fence still looks okay. Although, to rub salt into the wound, just as I began writing this story my fence was tagged.

The thing that is missing is good continuity. It is all a bit directionless, as over the years I have just banged in a few plants here and there. Quite honestly, it looked like it. Remedying this unfortunate state of affairs has required me to take stock and apply my top five front yard or “kerb culture” tips to myself.

1. Less is more.
When creating street appeal, the person viewing your property doesn’t have a lot of time to take in the information in front of them. It is important that they view the garden as complete, so having lots of different plants as eye candy or different materials thrown in is distracting. Your front garden will look … wait for it … distracted. On the other hand, a restricted plant choice with maybe one hard landscape material is easy to “get”, giving the viewer a sense of coherence.

2. Clean lines are easy and quick to evaluate, again adding to the sense of coherence.
There are plenty of examples of seemingly random elements looking quite good from the roadfront. But look more closely and I’ll bet you’ll find the best examples of these have some sort of logic or linear sequence, which makes them stand out as “well designed”.

3. Work with the surrounding landscape.
This is an excellent way to develop ideas and tie your property into its environment. Look for materials and plants that appeal and think about the geography of your property. If you’re near the beach, look for plantings or materials that complement the natural plants you see around you.

4. Be realistic about maintenance.
No matter how good your ideas are, if your good idea has gone bad it looks like a bad idea. My main problem has always been weeds, so I’ve applied a huge amount of mulch over cardboard to suppress them. To keep in the mulch, I built a small retaining wall to hold back the mulch.

5. Be practical first and decorative second.
The best place to start is with the practical things. If you solve things like maintenance, access and privacy, you can dress up your section in any way you want. What you will end up with is a front garden that is that is functional as well as appealing.

By Justin Newcombe | Email Justin

Excellent time to plant trees and shrubs or to move trees and shrubs.

Divide peonies and replant immediately.

Shop early to get the best pick of spring-flowering bulbs.

Spring-flowering English daisies, wallflowers, violas and primula can also be planted.

Keep your hydrangeas producing deep blue flowers by adding aluminum sulphate to the soil around the roots.

Pumpkins and squash should be ready for harvest. If not, keep watering to prevent thwarting their growth.

Plant garlic and shallots.

Dig up potatoes and let them dry for two to three hours before storing. Store only healthy tubers in sacks or boxes.

Grab some of the large pots of chrysanthemums on sale this month. They are great for injecting a fresh splash of colour.

Click photo to enlarge

With the summer garden starting to fade, it’s time to take a look at what worked and, more importantly, what didn’t and why.

Master Gardener Terry Lippert, who spoke at Our Garden this week, addressed what may have gone wrong in our vegetable gardens and how to fix it for next season.

She also gave tips for avoiding problems in our winter gardens. Here are her suggestions:

Problem: Young zucchini shriveled and dropped from the vine without developing.

Solution: Most likely, Lippert says, the blossoms weren’t pollinated, and the “zucchini” actually was just a part of the female flower. To encourage pollinators to visit your garden, plant flowers around your vegetables. You also can try your hand at being a bee; use a small paint brush or cotton swab to gather pollen from the male flower and deposit it inside the female blossom.

Problem: My zucchini started to grow then rotted.

Solution: You have blossom-end rot, which is common in squash and tomatoes. The issue is a lack of calcium in the developing fruit, but the real problem is irregular watering, which prevents the plant from drawing calcium from the soil. Try to maintain a regular watering schedule that compensates for hot, dry days.

Problem: The tomatoes developed cracks on the top of the fruit, near the stems.

Solution: That likely is caused by a watering problem — too much or too little. Sudden hot spells also

can create cracking. There’s not much you can do about the heat, but watch the water.

Problem: The tomatoes developed cracks on the bottom of the fruit, on the blossom end.

Solution: This is called cat-facing, and it likely was caused by fluctuations in temperature. The tomatoes don’t look attractive, but they taste just the same.

Problem: Some of my tomatoes and peppers have white, leathery spots on them.

Solution: These are caused by sun scald, or sunburn. Try to keep fruit protected with the plant’s own foliage, or use shade cloth during the hottest times of the year. The white spots are dead tissue; once the fruit ripens, just cut it out.

Problem: My green beans have brown spots on the leaves.

Solution: It’s sun burn, again.

Winter gardens

Problem: Something is eating the leaves of my broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and Swiss kale.

Solution: You have a caterpillar in your garden, most likely an imported cabbageworm or a cabbage looper. Handpicking the eggs and caterpillars from the plants is the most effective method of control, but you can also spray with Bacillus thuringiensis (BT). Using row covers may also help keep the moths and butterflies from laying eggs on the plants in the first place.

Problem: My broccoli and cabbages form heads, but they never get very large.

Solution: You likely planted them too late in the season. Now is the time to plant most winter crops (Brussels sprouts should have been planted a month ago); waiting until October or November means your plants won’t have time to develop before the cold weather hits.

Problem: The broccoli bolts (flowers) before it is ready for harvest.

Solution: Blame temperatures for this one. A sudden warm spell in the winter can mislead the plant into thinking it’s spring and time to make flowers and seed.

Problem: My onions grow flowers, but they never make bulbs.

Solution: Try growing from seedlings or seeds, rather than bulbs. Onions are biennial, making fruit (onions) the first year and seed the next. With bulb sets, the plant may think it’s in its second year. Also, look for onion seeds designated as “short day” varieties.

(Lippert will repeat this talk at 10 a.m. Sept. 22 in the Pittsburg Community Garden, at Leland and Loveridge roads in Pittsburg.)

Next time

Tired of mowing your yard and paying the water bill to keep it green? Come learn about alternatives to lawns and sheet mulching.

The free classes are at 10 a.m. Wednesdays at the Contra Costa Times, 2640 Shadelands Drive, Walnut Creek, through October. Master Gardeners are on hand to answer questions, diagnose sick plants and identify pests. Winter vegetable seedlings and ornamental plants also are available for sale.

— Joan Morris

Like us at Facebook.com/bang.home.garden. For a complete list of classes, go to mercurynews.com/our-community-garden.