Strawberries can be grown in home gardens throughout the state.  Temperatures between 50 to 80° F (10 and 27°C) and day lengths 14 hours or fewer are required for the development of flowers and fruit on most strawberry varieties.  In the U.S. these conditions occur only for a short period in late summer or fall, and again briefly in spring.  In our area, however, this combination of day length and temperature exists for much of the fall, winter and spring.  Single-crown (stem) strawberry plants are planted in Florida during the fall, from late September to early November.  Flowering and fruit production generally beings in November and continues into April or May.  Fruit production over this period is not constant, but occurs in two or three cycles, and can be interrupted by freezing weather.  Because the highest quality fruit are produced on relatively young plants with not more than four or five branched crowns, plants are usually tilled under at the end of the fruiting season, and new plants are planted the following fall.

Currently, we suggest three varieties for the Florida home garden:  Camarosa, Sweet Charlie, and Festival, all three varieties produce attractive, flavorful berries suitable for eating fresh or for freezing.  Camarosa has been the most productive variety in North Florida, while Festival has been the most productive variety in Central Florida.  These varieties are capable of producing 1 to 2 pints of fruit per plant over the season.  Strawberries grow best in a location receiving at least 8 hours of direct sunlight per day.  If a full sun location is not available, try to choose a spot that is sunny during the morning and early afternoon.  The soil should be well drained and slightly acidic (pH 5.5 to 6.5).

IFAS specialist recommends planting strawberries on raised bed which are two feet wide and spaced two feet apart.  The beds should be mounded so they’re six inches high along the edges and about eight inches high in the middle. 

In preparing the beds you begin with fertilization.  For a ten-by-ten foot strawberry patch, broadcast about two-and-a-half pounds of 8-8-8 fertilizer and till it into the soil.  Then from the beds and apply another two-and-a-half pounds of fertilizer this time in a narrow band about six inches deep down the middle of the beds.  If you’re just starting to grow strawberries you should also include a complete mixture of minor elements in the first season fertilizer application.

When the bed is properly formed, fertilized and moistened, cover with a sheet of landscaping mesh fabric which will block weeds and allow water to penetrate.  The, cut slits in the fabric where the plants will be inserted.  Plants should be set in double rows, one row on each side of the bed about six inches from the edge.  Plants should be spaced 12 inches apart in the row.  Be sure that no plants are set directly over the fertilizer band down the middle of the bed because this can lead to salt burn.

Be sure to use certified, disease-free plants.  Keep them moist before planting and plant in moist soil.  Spread the roots in a fan shape, set the plant at the correct depth in the soil, and pack the soil firmly around the roots.

For more information on growing strawberries contact the Gulf County Extension Service @ 639-3200 or visit our website:  http://gulf.ifas.ufl.edu  or www.http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu  and see Circular HS 1154

View full sizeRose expert Patti Jacko gets spectacular blooms in summer by properly preparing her rose garden for winter. Lynn Ischay, The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Whenever someone complains that they can’t grow roses, Patti Jacko asks if the gardener pruned in the fall. If the answer is yes, the mystery is solved.

“Pruning in fall will kill them,” said Jacko, a rose expert who grows 158 varieties at her home in Hinckley. Pruned roses lose food stored in the branches that will keep roots healthy over winter. “They need that extra nutrition,” said Jacko, a member of the American Rose and the Western Reserve Rose societies.

Fall pruning also signals roses that it’s time to grow, but the new growth will die in when cold temperatures arrive, said Peter Schneider, a rose enthusiast who raises more than 1,200 varieties at his Freedom Gardens in Portage Co. “It starts at a disadvantage in spring,” he said. “It’s much better for the rose if you resist pruning until spring.”

OK, message received – no pruning. Stop deadheading and fertilizing too, say rose experts, to signal to the plants that it’s time to go dormant.

There are steps rose growers can take to be sure their gardens get off to a good start next spring.

Make sure that the graft point on grafted or hybridized roses is completely covered under soil. Otherwise, the thaw-freeze cycle in winter will kill the plant, Jacko said.

You can tell if your rose was grafted – a propagation method in which the roots of one variety are attached to stems from another variety – if all of the branches are coming out of a golf-ball-sized root. That ball must be well protected from winter weather, she said.

Growers who hybridize roses are collecting the rose hips, or seed pods, to save them for spring, Schneider said. Some roses have colorful rose hips that add winter interest to gardens. “Birds will be feasting on those (rose hips) in winter,” he said.

Many rose growers believe roses must be covered during the winter. “No, you don’t have to do that in this zone,” Jacko said. She stopped putting burlap over her roses about five years ago, mainly because the bags were a pain to put on and take off. She ties up climbers if they might suffer wind damage.

It used to be popular to put Styrofoam cones over roses for winter, but that made it necessary to cut the plants low to fit in the cone, Schneider said. That meant the plant was starting from almost zero come spring, so the cones have largely fallen out of favor, he said.

He does put burlap bags filled with straw over his tree roses, which are varieties that grow straight up and bloom high off the ground. The bag protects against winter damage and the lack of light keeps the plant dormant. Any new plant growth that takes place during mild spells will die when temperatures turn cold again, he said.

Cucumber bugs and Japanese beetles have mostly left the garden by now, but diseases such as black spot and powdery mildew are still factors. Clean out dead leaves and debris that could carry black spot from around rose bushes, Jacko said. You can also spray for black spot, but be sure to choose a product that doesn’t include fertilizer.

She sprinkles lime sulfur on her roses to kill dormant black spot spores lurking in the soil.

“That’s the last thing you will do before you walk way and say, ‘OK, guys, you’re on your own’,” Jacko said.

THURSDAY: The Rose Garden at Cleveland Botanical Garden (video).

FRIDAY: Tips for your putting your rose garden to bed.

Dana Winters
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Super-jumbo pots in my book are those that are at least 32 inches in diameter. I often have to chuckle to myself when I ask someone, “What size pot do you have?” They tell me it is a “really big pot” and when I ask them to measure it, they say it is 18” or maybe even 20”. In the desert heat, for successful full sun potted gardens, we must plant in large pots. But when I refer to large pots, I am talking about nothing smaller than 20” and I prefer much larger. With the soil volume you have in these larger pots, the roots of your plants have a fighting chance to keep their cool. For the sake of conversation, let’s refer to “really big pots” as “RBP’s”.

Since they do take up a lot of space, you want to think about using RBP’s where they can serve a specific function in your home’s exterior design. They might become a focal point — with or without a planting. They might break up the monotony of a large flat wall of your back yard. Another use might be to support a large planting of a vine, shrub or small tree. This planting may serve the purpose of hiding an eyesore, provide screening from your nosy neighbors or provide you with fruit from a fruit tree.

• A Really Big Pot at Harlow Gardens

Your best bet when deciding what to plant in super-sized pots is to choose plants that you will either be replacing each year such as annual flowers or to plant slow growing plants. Most nursery plant tags will say what the rate of growth is for that particular plant. I made the mistake one year of planting evergreen pistache trees in 32” pots. Those trees, with all the love and care of regular water and food outgrew the pots in less than a year. The trees were not overly large but the root system could not grow large enough in the pots to support their canopy.

Here are some basic tips on how to handle your RBP’”.

1. Make a firm decision as to where you want the pot placed before planting it. Ever tried to lift a 22” container garden filled with dirt and plants? I have, and it can be overwhelmingly heavy. Once planted, an “RBP” will be virtually impossible to move. To do so will require that you empty it of all the plants and soil. Therefore — be sure!!

2. This is the question I get asked the most: If you know you are planting shallow or medium rooted plants in an RBP, do not fill the entire pot with soil. If you are planting small perennials or annuals, you can fill the lower 2/3 of the pot with other material. When planting a small shrub type plant, you need more soil volume but you can still fill the bottom 1/3 with non-organic material. Gardeners have used soda bottles or cans, packing peanuts and nursery cans to bottom fill their pots. (DO NOT use rocks!! — they just make the pot heavier!)
NOTE: I recommend that you cover whatever material you use with a sheet of landscape fabric. This will also water to go through but will help maintain the soil above the fillers.

3. Do not fill your pot with soil from your garden — even if your garden has the very best soil on the planet. Garden soil is heavy and “dirty” (you know, replete with weed seeds, bugs and their eggs, bacteria — stuff that you don’t want in your pots), and it will not drain properly in a pot.
Instead, use a good potting soil (also called potting mix or container mix). Potting soil is well aerated, sterile, lightweight, and made of a good balance of organic material and mineral particles like peat, sand, or perlite. (Potting soil is actually soil less. That is, it doesn’t contain any dirt.) When choosing a potting soil, it should smell and feel rich. It will not be sandy or smell like manure.

4. When planting a tree in an RBP, DO fill it completely full with soil. Trees also need to be planted in solidly based pots in order to reduce the tipping factor. The base of the pot should be almost as large as the top of the pot when a tree is planted. Our desert winds have been known to blow over many pots even when super-sized!

5. If you plant a large plant in an RBP, you do not need to change out all the soil every few years like you do in smaller pots. Instead, each year remove a top layer of old soil and add new soil along with time-release fertilizer. Mix it all in with the old soil as much as you can without severely disturbing the root system. Keep the soil level at the same depth as before to not entirely cover the root or trunk any deeper than it was originally planted.

By following these guidelines and standard methods of planting in pots, you can enjoy terrific potted gardens for many, many years!

If you would like to receive Monthly Potted Garden tips – sign up for the Potted Desert Newsletter.

Marylee is the founder and former owner of Tucson’s The Contained Gardener. With more than 15 years of successfully designing and growing potted gardens in the desert’s challenging and oftentimes harsh climate, Marylee has become known as the Desert’s Potted Garden Expert. Marylee is available for in-home or digital consultations and you can always email her with your questions and comments. Follow The Potted Desert on Facebook!

Your garden defines and introduces you to the world outside. A tidy and well designed garden reflects your character and who you are. Its also your responsibility to maintain a litter free and clean garden to maintain your health and that of your neighbours. Lot of diseases and viral fevers are spread due to standing water and waste lying around in your garden. Hence its very important to regularly clean your garden.

Cleaning and maintaining your garden can be made easy with proper planning. It starts from the time of designing your garden itself and hiring or purchasing handy tools that help you clean your garden with ease. Since gardens are open spaces, you have to accept the fact that accumulation of dirt and litter is a part and parcel that comes with having a garden. Hence you have to be prepared and not constantly whine about it.

Different seasons bring different challenges to maintaining your garden. During the months of March to May you have dry spells in India resulting in trees shedding their leaves. This brings a different cleaning schedule compared to monsoon that follows the dry spell where in you have to make sure water does not stagnate after the rain. Though we do not have extreme winters with snow in most parts of India, you have regional factors like sand storms in parts of Rajasthan that bring about different challenges.

Designing
The first step is to design your garden in a well thought out manner so that maintenance and cleaning it is easy. Placing trees, vegetable garden, manure pits and paths in the right places helps in cleaning and maintenance the garden over time.

Tools
Have right kind of tools at your disposal to maintain and clean your garden with ease. Cleaning your garden is physically exhausting and challenging, hence seek help from handy equipments like mowers and sprinklers help.

Moderation
Though it is easy to excitedly begin big and bold, don’t overdo it. Set achievable goals for cleaning your garden. Divide the garden into portions that can be cleaned in a day without strain.

Schedule
Always set schedules for different parts of the garden. If there are water bodies, set certain day of every month for its cleaning. Set a separate day for cleaning of passages and hard floors and similarly for mowing grass at regular intervals.

Right slopes
Make sure you have right slopes leading to drains. Uneven surfaces result in water logging. Hence make sure there is even surface and all the slope tilts towards drains that collects the water. This is particularly important during monsoon season.

Grass
Grass is the most essential aspect of your garden. Grassed areas should always be kept at a reasonable height and weeds should be kept under control. Know the right schedule for mowing the grass from your supplier.

Vegetable gardens
If you have a vegetable growing in your garden, make sure its separated by a small wooden fence or a concrete separator. The soil and manure from the vegetable garden should not blot into your grass and rest of your garden.

Manure pits
Manure pits are best kept in backyard corner. It is important to be well maintained and closed properly so that stench and insect issues does not affect you and your neighbours. Make sure you clean the pit after every manure cycle and apply disinfectants.

Water right
Always make sure you water the lawn and plants the right way with right supply of water. Too much or too little results in improper growth of grass and plants resulting in messy look of your garden. Make sure you use right sprinklers and regulate water that is sprayed.

Q uestion: I have some questions about my small fruits. I have a few strawberry plots and the plants are so thick, I think I need to thin them for air circulation. Can I take some of the runners off the plants and just move them, or do I need to dig up and move the entire plant?

Also, do high-bush blueberries pollinate low-bush varieties, or do they all have to be the same type for cross-pollination?

Lastly, I have a bunch of different raspberries, but I can’t tell the varieties apart. Is there some way I can prune them all that won’t hurt any of them?

Answer: Let’s take each of these questions in turn.

Strawberry patches typically need to be redone every three or four years. The best way to do this is to dig out about half to three-quarters of the mother plants, leaving all the newly rooted runners intact. These mother plants should be discarded, as they won’t fruit as well after one or two seasons of production. The remaining runners also should be amply spaced. If they are too close, dig some of them out and move them to a new site.

High-bush blueberry varieties will indeed pollinate low-bush selections and vice versa. Nearly all blueberry types (including my favorite, the half-high varieties) will cross-pollinate with each other as long as they are in bloom at the same time. Blueberries are pollinated primarily by our native bumblebees. The vibrations they generate are required for loosening and transferring the pollen in the plants’ bell-shaped flowers.

As for your raspberries, there are two ways you can prune all the plants without having to worry about which one is which (though it’s far better to specialize your pruning techniques according to the particular raspberry type — a topic I’ve covered many times in this column).

You have two options. In the late fall or very early spring, cut all the canes that produced fruits during the previous season to the ground. Once raspberry canes have fruited, they will not do so again. Leave the canes that have not fruited intact, as they have yet to produce.

The second option is to cut all the canes clear back to the ground in early spring. This makes for a “clean� raspberry patch, but will prevent any varieties that produce two crops per year (one in early summer and another in late fall) from doing so. Cutting all the canes back to the ground means only one crop per year, and it will occur in mid-summer.

Send your gardening or landscaping questions to tribliving@tribweb.com or The Good Earth, 503 Martindale St., 3rd Floor, D.L. Clark Building, Pittsburgh, PA 15212.

How much watering do I need to do after I put down grass seed? Once a day? Twice? Will dew keep it wet?

Once grass seed absorbs water, it must stay wet until it germinates. If wet seed dries up, it is killed. So the aim of your watering is to keep the seed wet, and how much watering that requires depends several factors. Higher temperatures, low humidity, lack of cloud cover, breeziness and drought will all hasten evaporation and require you to water more frequently. A thin layer of an organic material, such as Leafgro or compost, will hold in some moisture. And a sparse covering of straw gives shade and wind protection. Dew is tricky, because we can have dew even when the soil is bone dry. You’ll have to inspect your grass seed once or twice daily at least and water accordingly.

If a dogwood tree is leaning over and has most of its growth on one side, would pruning that side back help balance the growth? It might be leaning to get light.

If it is leaning to reach more sunlight, pruning will not change its growth habit. You could prune back any trees shading it however. On the other hand, if it is unbalanced because it was pushed or fell over or lost branches on one side to storm damage, pruning may stimulate some growth on the less dense side.

University of Maryland Extension’s Home and Garden Information Center offers free gardening and pest information. Call 800-342-2507 or send a question to the website at extension.umd.edu/hgic.

Plant of the Week

Drift Rose ‘Pink Drift’

Rose x ‘Meijocos’ (Pink Drift)

Roses once had a reputation as so fussy, needy, and high maintenance that gardeners left them out of their landscapes. New roses have come a long way — and not just “Knock-Out” shrub roses. ‘Drift’ and ‘Carpet’ roses also flower repeatedly throughout the growing season with improved disease resistance and winter hardiness, plus these low varieties can be ground covers.

Pink Drift grows about 18 inches high and spreads 3 feet wide. Its bright cherry-pink single flowers have white centers and bright yellow anthers. Though each flower is small, they compensate with a profusion of clusters. They flower best in full sun, blooming repeatedly (with short rests to set new buds) until hard frost. Though not necessary, removal of spent blooms makes for a tidier look and speeds the rebudding process. Once established, they are generally carefree, except for pruning them back to about 6 inches in early spring. — Christine McComas

The autumn rain is a sign for many green thumbs that it’s time to prepare their garden soil for the spring.

For other gardeners, however, the change in season means it’s time to make the switch to those winter vegetables that thrive in cold weather.

Bardia Khaledi designs gardens and helped build the Steveston Educational Garden. He says you can have a profusion of vegetables throughout the winter.

Khaledi says the great thing about fall gardening is you don’t have to keep watering your plants. If you can stand a little rain, you can enjoy garden-to-plate meals all year round. 

Here’s his winter gardening advice:  

• Make sure your garden plot has good drainage, particularly if your beds are in the ground and not raised.
• If you are putting your garden to bed, you can grow a cover crop to put nitrogen back in the soil, such as rye or clover or legumes (different kinds of peas). 
• You can also collect seeds for next year, including nasturtiums, soy beans, peas, and broad beans, as well as tomatoes. 

Here are five vegetables that do well when the weather gets chilly:

• Garlic (should be planted in October) 
• Brassicas — broccoli, turnips, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts
• Leafy greens — kale, Swiss chard
• Fava beans

It is balmy now, but Jack Frost could be back by the end of this month.

October is a month of changes and a busy time in the garden. But what a joy it is to work outside, now that summer’s skeeters, heat and humidity are finally gone!

October is prime time to plant new landscape plants and move plants around in your yard (something that painter and passionate gardener Claude Monet is reported to have done constantly at Giverny).

Hold off on pruning, though, until after plants drop leaves and go dormant. And stay strictly away from early bloomers such as azaleas if you want spring flowers.

Be on the lookout for fall plant sales, which are great places to find the right plant to put in this autumn. Here are a couple coming up:

• UNC Charlotte Fall Plant Sale: Oct. 18-20 (Oct. 17 for members only). Excellent place to find native plants, plus much more. 704-687-0719. http://gardens.uncc.edu.

• Winghaven Fall Plant Sale: Oct. 10-12. Wide variety of fine landscape plants, including herbs. 704-331-0664. www.winghavengardens.com.

Keep your eyes open at local big-box garden centers, too. They clean out inventory in the fall, and you can sometimes find exceptional deals on worthy plants.

October can be fairly dry, so be sure your plants don’t get water-stressed, especially such shallow-rooted varieties as camellias and azaleas, container plants and fall veggies. Use the hose or irrigation system to supplement rainfall, as needed.

Clean up garden beds now, pulling out annual flowers and vegetables as they start to look ratty. Except for diseased plants, put everything in your compost piles, which will soon be expanding after leaves begin to drop.

This is a great time to plant a cover crop on vegetable beds and other areas you won’t be using over the winter. Cereal rye (different from ryegrass) is an excellent choice. So are oats, which are easier to cut and dig into the soil in the early spring (it may be a little late for clover).

Annual ryegrass will also work as a cover crop, but you’ll need to cut it before seed heads form, since it can go to seed in the spring and become weedy.

Before frost arrives, usually around the end of the month (watch the weather report; it can be unpredictable), dig your sweet potatoes and cut and clean up any squash or gourd vines. The morning after the first frost, leaves of all those plants morph into a black slimy mess.

Pick all your green tomatoes, wrap them in newspaper, and you can have tomatoes for a few more weeks. Pick peppers and okra, too.

Leave cool-season crops such as broccoli, kale, collards and cabbage in the garden, however, since they taste even better after a frost.

October is too late for home and community gardeners to start garden vegetables outside a greenhouse, with one big exception: garlic.

Plant a good variety (I like Music) around the middle of the October in a sunny place where it can grow undisturbed until next June or July. Garlic does very well here, and it’s great fun to grow your own.

Flowering bulbs, especially daffodils, are also good to plant now. Some daffodils will naturalize, meaning they reliably come back every year on their own (something not true for most types of tulips).

Daffies do great in natural areas with lots of sun, though they also do OK under hardwood trees with branches high above the ground. If you are in an anarchistic mood, grab a handful of bulbs, turn your back, and toss them over your shoulder, and plant them where they land.

The following varieties are proven performers, year after year: Ice Follies (white), Mount Hood (white), Carlton (yellow) and Tête a Tête (a small and charming yellow type).

Lawn maintenance is a worthy chore in October, including aeration with a core aerator. You can also seed whole lawns or fix patches. When you seed, keep the area evenly moist and very gently remove any fallen tree leaves daily. You can fertilize fescue this month; see www.turffiles.ncsu.edu/articles/tf0017.aspx for directions.

Of course, it always make sense to consider shrinking your lawn, one of the most resource-intensive and costly parts of your landscape. Try replacing part of your lawn with an edible garden in sunny spots, or with natural landscaping and native plants in the shade (where a lawn won’t thrive, anyway, no matter how many chemicals you add).

October is a good time to start the transformation by preparing the site and soil.

Halloween is coming soon, and there are some local you-picks, such as the Hodges farms on Rocky River Road just past the entrance to Reedy Creek Park, where you can select your own pumpkin out in the field. It’s fun, and a boo-tiful way to support local farmers.

Courtesy
Golden Thyralis is in full bloom in full sun in the IDEA Garden of the Tyler Rose Garden. It is a tough perennial.

Fall has finally arrived, with welcome rains and milder weather. Yellow and white wild rain lilies also welcomed the rain, and popped out their flowers in abundance across the county. This milder weather should also encourage some gardening activity. After all, fall is our second gardening season m…

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