Add more mulch for the winter. As the cold season approaches, the roots of the trees, shrubs, and other perennials need a little more protection and natural mulch will do the trick. Put it on about 2-3 inches deep—the more the better. Be sure to keep it away from the trunk of the plants so you don’t invite pest and/or disease invasion. In addition, natural mulch will decompose over the winter and add valuable organic matter to your soil for next spring.
If you saved a poinsettia from last year and are trying to get it to “bloom” again, remember that it needs 14 hours of total darkness and then 10 hours of bright sunshine. To accomplish this many people take the plants into the house, place them in a closet all night and then take them back outside the next day. Be sure that you don’t turn on the closet light during those 14 hours. Total darkness means just that for the whole time. Good luck.
This is the time to plant new perennials in the landscape. By planting them now, they have time to get a good root system established before the hot summer comes next year. It’s also a great time to plant trees and shrubs—for the same reason.
Get Ready – It’s Coming
The first freeze—it’s coming sometime in the next week or two if everything goes like it’s supposed to go. It’ll probably be a light freeze, but it’s gonna kill those tropical plants if you don’t protect them some way. Our nights have been getting progressively colder and our plants have been going gradually into dormancy. If we get a light freeze and then some warm days (like we usually do) you’ve got to be extra careful that your plants don’t put on any tender new growth that could easily freeze when the next one comes… especially if it’s a “blue norther.” Just be especially careful when we’re going to have still air, no cloud cover, bright stars, low humidity, and low temperatures—especially in the early evening. If it gets down to about 40-45F by 10 pm or so with these conditions, we’ll probably get some frost. That’s just the way it is around here. Of course, the best protection is to plant native and adapted plants that can handle a little frost and not die. If you can’t do anything else, put an old sheet over those tender plants—that’ll give you 3-4 degrees of protection. Cardboard boxes will do the same thing if you have the right size boxes. Be sure to remove any of these protective devices early the next morning. And remember; don’t use plastic because any leaves that touch the plastic will freeze.
Outdoor Winter Color
Outdoor winter flowering plants include cyclamen—kind of expensive, but beautiful in bloom. It’s in stock now at most nurseries. It will bloom all winter if it is kept out of direct sunlight and watered LIGHTLY; i.e., moist, not soggy soil. You should consider them annual plants, however, as they’re very hard to keep over the summer. Other outside blooming plants for this area include pansies. (Yeah, the deer love ‘em, too.) They need sunshine all day in order to bloom well. Plant in well-composted beds and feed them every 3-4 weeks with your favorite fertilizer that’s high in nitrogen.
If you have full sun, consider stocks, snapdragons, ornamental kale, alyssum, dianthus (pinks) and nasturtium for your winter beds. But remember, they’re all annuals, they won’t come back.
I’ve been working on a shelter for the tomatoes (and cantaloupe vine) and I finally got it finished. It’s not necessarily a pretty thing but it works, so I really don’t care what it looks like right now. Maybe later I’ll dress it up a little. I took a lot of pictures while I was doing it and then made a PowerPoint presentation out of all the pix. I made a .pdf file out of it so that it’s just a little under 2 mega-bites in size. If you’d like to see how the shelter went together, write me at firstname.lastname@example.org and I’ll send you a copy right back for your perusal. Is that a deal or what?
Send your comments and/or questions to email@example.com or see the website at www.thehillcountrygardener.com.