Paul Szmal: FLX Morning continues, it is 816 sunny skies, temperature at 45. And I am joined now by Russ Welser, he is from the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ontario County. We're going to be talking a little bit about fall gardening and getting ready for the following year's garden. Russ, good morning, how are you this morning?
Russ Welser: I'm doing quite well, thank you. Let's start by talking about some of the tasks that you need to go through here to set up the garden for the upcoming winter months. First one, obviously, is cleaning the garden up. What's involved with that?
Paul Szmal: So cleaning up that vegetable garden, basically you're pulling out all of the plant debris that's there, your tomato plants, all your squashes, you know, any of those sorts of things, getting them all cleaned up. The other thing, too, is you'd still have time to put in a winter rye as a cover crop, just to help protect that soil, take up some of that nitrogen fertilizer that's still left in the soil. It's a good practice, very few home gardeners really do it, though.
Russ Welser: Planting that winter rye, so that helps to keep the soil together over the winter, it keeps nutrients in the soil?
Paul Szmal: Yes, instead of the nitrogen fertilizer being leached through by water, the plant's taking it up and holding it. And then when you dig it under next year, it again dies, decays, and returns that nutrients back to the soil area for your next crop that you have there. So it's basically trying to hold on to the nitrogen fertilizer so you can keep recycling it and it just doesn't get lost down through the soil profile and into the groundwater.
Russ Welser: Right. And the next step would be, do you do any kind of compost material laying down for the winter months, or is that something that you're going to stockpile for the spring?
Paul Szmal: So with the compost, essentially all those plant materials that you're removing from the garden at this time, you'd put them into your compost pile. During the winter months, very little composting, decomposing is going on. It's just too cold unless you have a large pile. And when I say a large pile, I'm talking a pile that's probably six feet high and eight feet long and eight foot wide, you know, the normal little two by two, three by three type of a pile that home gardeners have just never get hot enough to keep functioning during the winter months. But at the same time, yes, next spring when things warm back up and everything, those compost piles will begin to work and break down. And by the following year, you probably have some material there ready to put back into the garden area.
Russ Welser: Are there any things that you can plant in the fall or you should plant in the fall to have ready for the spring, so to speak?
Paul Szmal: So in the vegetable garden, absolutely. Garlic would be one of those. Right now would be the time to be planting your garlic if you're so inclined. In the flower bed, definitely any and all of the spring bulb plants, if you haven't already planted them, you still have an opportunity to get them in as well. So yes, there's definitely some things there that we could still plant.
Russ Welser: And so the garlic will germinate in the spring or?
Paul Szmal: So again, it's a clove that you're planting. And just like any tulip bulb or daffodil bulb, you put it in the ground, the soil is still warm enough that it's going to produce roots and you may even get a little top growth to start peeking out before the winter shows up. And then early in the spring, it just takes off with all your other plants and becomes a gorgeous garlic crop for you that you harvest in July.
Russ Welser: We're talking with Russ Wilser from Ontario County Cooperative Extension. We're talking a little bit about gardening, but also you've got if you've got outdoor plants, you're going to need to take care of these and get them ready for the winter months as well.
Paul Szmal: That's true. Hopefully, you know, after we get a good hard frost, by now you've got the task of bringing in some of those dahlia tubers or your canna tubers, or even gladiolas if you still have those out there. And some folks will even bring in their geraniums, and that's perfectly fine too. But when you dig these up, just shake the soil off from them. There's no real need to give them a thorough washing. And then you're going to want to store them someplace where it's cool, you know, somewheres in that 50 degree, 55 range would be the ideal, and where it's rather humid, not super dry. You can overcome, you know, your heated basement syndrome by packing these materials into a slightly dampened peat moss type material. And that will stop them from shriveling up and drying out on you. So a good way to store them and keep them. And then in the spring, that's when you'd cut them apart and divide them and then get ready for replanting in the spring.
Russ Welser: I didn't know you could recycle flowers like that.
Paul Szmal: We do it all the time. You have to do it, otherwise they're going to die. It gets too expensive to go and buy new tubers every year.
Russ Welser: Let's talk about lawns and lawn care, getting ready for the winter months. We've already had a little bit of frost. Does that have an effect on what you would do or not so much?
Paul Szmal: No, the frost has little to do with what we're going to do with the lawn. Basically, as long as that lawn keeps growing, you're going to continue to mow it. On your last mowing, what you perceive to be, you're going to be your last mowing, you'd want to drop the mower height down to about two inches and mow it at that height. And again, the reason for doing that is just so we don't have a lot of grass that would mat over and then be more prone to disease such as white mold. As far as fertilization, we hear some folks saying, I need to put on my winterizing fertilizer. You could, but for the most part, the plants aren't really going to be taking up much of that fertilizer at this time. If you really have already fertilized your lawn back, say in September, that's plenty. It doesn't need to have any additional fertilizers at this time.
Russ Welser: Would you put any kind of seed down in the fall for springtime growth?
Paul Szmal: So that's a good question. Right now, it would be sort of an iffy thing because it might start to germinate and then it would just die off. But if we hold off and did what we call a dormant seeding, so this would be probably more towards late November, early December, there's some merit to that. The action of the freezing and thawing would help to bury that seed and then it would hopefully come to life in the spring of the year when all the other plants are germinating and coming up. So we could do that if you had thin, bare areas and you have not done anything with them at this time. So you could.
Russ Welser: What about seeds that are left over? Is there a way to keep those and then be able to use them in the springtime to plant?
Paul Szmal: Absolutely. So any of our flower or vegetable seeds that you have, the best thing to do with them is to just place them into a plastic bag and place them in your refrigerator.
Russ Welser: In the refrigerator?
Paul Szmal: In the refrigerator. That's the best place to stick them.
Russ Welser: Wow. I would not have thought of that. That keeps them cool but not too cold and keeps them from trying to germinate?
Paul Szmal: Correct. So the plastic bag is there just so that the seed doesn't continue to dry out just like anything else that you just stick in the refrigerator without a plastic bag, it dries out. So yep, plastic bag in the refrigerator. Works great.
Russ Welser: Hmm. Never would have thought of that. Okay. I wanted to ask you about the Master Gardener Volunteer Program and how that works and who can volunteer for that?
Paul Szmal: So the Master Gardener Volunteer Program, this is a program where individuals will go through a 10 to 12 week training. It's one day a week. There is a fee involved, depends on the year, but somewhere around $100 to $200 is what the fee would be for that. Anybody can become a Master Gardener Volunteer. Basically, I'm just looking for individuals who have a love of gardening and an interest in sharing that knowledge with others. So I'm not looking for folks with degrees in horticulture or anything of that nature. Individuals would first go through an interview with myself. They got to get through that interview first with me. Not everybody does, but again, it's just for me to get an understanding of them up front as well as for them to get an understanding of me and what really we're expecting from the program. So with this program, after their training, they give back 100 hours of volunteer time over a two-year period to Cooperative Extension. And in Ontario County, we're basically looking for them to do some educational programs for the general public. So that's the real goal, is for them to give back in terms of doing some trainings for the general public.
Russ Welser: All right. Russ, I appreciate the information this morning. Thanks for sharing, and hopefully people will be busy getting their gardens ready for the winter months and then ready to get at it again when the snow melts in the springtime.
Paul Szmal: Absolutely. It is 826 on FLX Morning on Finger Lakes Newsradio.
