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Jill and Rick Van Duyvendyk answer all your gardening questions in Garden Talk on 650 CKOM and 980 CJME every Sunday morning at 9 a.m. Here are some questions and answers from the Sept. 14 show:
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- Garden Talk: Will the recent cold snap stop my corn from maturing?
- Garden Talk: Can I grow potatoes from seeds harvested out of the pods?
- Garden Talk: What can I do about mushrooms in my lawn?
These questions and answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: Can I winterize my Collie Mullens hibiscus plant?
A: Absolutely. You can bring that indoors if you want. You can take cuttings from it after you bring it inside, or you can just bring it in the planter and just treat it like a house plant.
Now is the time to bring it indoors and give it a pruning. I would remove all the flowers, because that’s where all the insects are hanging around right now. If you put it in a bright window, like facing south or facing west, it’ll re-bloom again, especially after you prune it.
Q: How do you get rid of maple bugs?
A: First of all, in the fall you should be going around sealing up any cracks around your house to prevent any insects or mice from getting in. There are lots of places where there’s cracks where bugs can get in.
Just take your foam or your caulking, and, you know, go around and do your fall chores around the yard. Basement windows is a good one example of a spot to hit, and make sure your screens are good.
You can use soap and water, you can use Bug X-OUT, you can use End All, there are all kinds of different things you can use to get them. I like using my shop vac or blasting them with cold water.
Q: Some of my potatoes didn’t come through this year and they’re green, can I use them as seed potatoes?
A: You could probably use them as seed potatoes. They just won’t form right. I just don’t know if it’ll be a healthy plant. You want to use your best seeds because whenever you use your less best seeds, it seems like you don’t get a great crop.
Q: It’s coming to be that time of year to start moving our plants around. What are the exceptions?
A: I don’t like moving poplars in the fall, I like doing that in the spring. Most of the perennials you can move, but the biggest thing you want to make sure you do is that you want to wait. You want to do it at the right time when it’s not too hot, like it was this last week. But then you want to move early enough so they get a bit of rooting in.
One thing that I always say that tells me when to move the plants is when they have had a hit of frost. If you have to move something, like you’re selling your house and want to take the plants with you, take a clump of dirt with it.
Q: Can Mandevilla and Dipladenia plants be kept over winter?
A: It’s not going to survive outside in the pot or in the ground. You’d have to dig it up and repot it into smaller pots to bring indoors or find a way to bring those big pots into your garage as long as it doesn’t get colder than -5 C in there.
I’d let it go a bit dormant, but not freezing hard. Some light frost is okay, but if it freezes hard, you should put a blanket over it. Only give it moisture about once a month.
Q: I’ve got Northwest poplar trees that became overcrowded by our garden. We finally moved them to their new home about a month ago, we have been watering them every five to seven days, but all the leaves have dried up after planting. Will the tree still be viable come spring?
A: You can check the buds. Sometimes the buds will go into “emergency mode” in and around August. Take your fingernail and scrape the bark, and if you can still see green, they’ll be okay. But if they’re brown underneath, they’re done. Those trees you would want to move when the leaves turn colour, not any earlier. Or in my opinion, the best time to harvest a poplar is in the spring.
Q: Can I plant my garlic now or will it not grow?
A: If you want early garlic next year, now’s the time to plant garlic.
Just make sure to mark where you put the garlic, because you don’t want to go and start planting other garden plants way over top of where the garlic was last year.
Q: What’s the best practice for planting fall garlic bulbs?
A: Just make sure you have well-drained soil. Put them not in a spot where the water all runs to in your garden. Put it on the high side and then mark them so that you don’t rototill them up in the spring, or plant a potato right on top of them, you know?
Q: When do you harvest Jerusalem artichokes?
A: We’re in the middle of September, so we’re getting to that time right now.
Q: Our peaches and cream corn came up great this year and last year. However, they tasted woody. What could cause woody corn?
A: They need a lot of nutrients from compost and even manure to help get that good taste. So you have to make sure the nutrients are there, and use organic vegetable fertilizers because it has all the magnesium and borons and everything else that’s going to give us this taste.
Q: My cupid cherry tree is growing to be four feet tall. Should I cut it before the winter and how do I protect it?
A: You can trim it down, but I like waiting till the leaves start turning colour. If you want to leave it in the pot, bury the pot put it all into the ground. If you leave it above ground, it’ll freeze and won’t survive the winter.
Q: A lot of my tomatoes are still green. Should I leave them outside as long as possible? Or should I pick them while they’re green?
A: I like leaving mine out there as long as I can. But you just have to watch the frost. If you want them to green up quicker, you put a frost blanket over them for the nighttime temperatures.
Q: I have a Brazilian Jasmine, which is doing well outside. Can I bring it inside for the winter? If so, how?
A: Jasmine’s you have to bring inside for the wintertime and treat it like a houseplant. Trim it, put it in a pot and make sure to de-bug it before bringing it inside.
Q: We have a row of five-year-old Tartarian maples. The leaves are full of tiny black spots. What would cause this?
A: The black spots are just fungal. You can spray them, but I find when picking up the leaves and then getting rid of them, don’t put them in your compost, is probably the best way to do that. It all depends on the weather and everything else, especially if you get a lot of rainy years, you will get that black spot. But otherwise it won’t really hurt the plant. So, clean up all your leaves really well, and don’t leave them around where they can go back up into the tree the next year.
Q: Our town has Canadian Nightcrawler worms that are migrating from yard to yard. They leave the lawn with lots of patchy grass. Is there an effective way to get rid of these worms?
A: This one is tricky because all the insecticides are gone at this time. But for your own yard, starting next spring, get yourself a bird bath, or anything to attract robins to your yard. The Robins will clean up a lot of those kinds of things. You get a couple of nests of Robins around those guys, they want to feed their hungry young,
Q: We have watermelons the size of ice cream pails. When is the best time to harvest them?
A: It’s just like when you go to the store, just kind of give them a knock. It’s got to feel like someone is home; it can’t feel empty. And if you have multiple, you can taste one of them and you’ll see pretty quick if it’s good or if you should wait a bit longer.
Q: How do I keep Calla lily bulbs over the winter?
A: Wait till the frost hits them and knocks them down. Or you can dig them up, and you can hang them, just like you do an onion to dry them out. Then you store them in a paper bag, or a perforated plastic bag with some sort of peat moss with just a hint of moisture to it.
And then put them in a cool place, and just monitor them monthly so that peat moss around them doesn’t go totally dry. But I stress it has to be only a hint of moisture. If it’s too much, the moult will rot. Then in April, you can plant them up again!
Q: How do I keep geraniums over the winter?
A: You can’t let them get too hard of a frost. Anytime now, you can bring them in, have them in a pot, and then cut them back to about four inches off the pot, and then put them in a cooler room with less light.
My mother-in-law used to put them in her basement window. Just let them be. Water them very sparingly, about once a month. Then, once you start getting to January, February, bring them up to the sun, and start watering them.
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