Garden Talk: Snap traps the best solution for voles

Read more: 

• Garden Talk: Autumn leaves changing colour is a good sign to prune
• Garden Talk: How to start winterizing some of your plants
• Garden Talk: Will the recent cold snap stop my corn from maturing?

These questions and answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Q: Would cutting a lawn shorter help prevent or reduce the vole damage over winter?

A: Yes but not too short. Cut it down to like 1 3/4 inches or 2 inches.

If you have voles, the best thing to do it right now is locate places where they might be hiding, like underneath a shed or stack of wood. Put a shoe box there and cut some little holes so they can get into and put a whole bunch of cheap wooden snap traps baited with peanut butter with a craisen or raisin on top. Put them in a box so birds don’t get trapped as well.

Also if you have young trees put a tree guard on them to prevent voles chewing up the bark underneath the snow. Poison doesn’t work on voles very well.

Houseplant hydrageas need to kept indoor for the winter. (Supplied)

Q: Will my hydrangea survive in the ground over winter?

A: This hydrangea (pictured above) looks like one that you pick up around Easter that’s more of a houseplant hydrangea. You can get a hydrangea that looks similar to that called Endless Summer, which is hearty, but with that one pictured, you need bring it inside before any hard frost.

You can leave the blooms on it but put it into a large pot and keep it in a bright indirect window in your home. When it finished flowering cut it down about a third.

Q: Is there any advantage to cutting hydrangeas to the ground in the fall?

A: You don’t want to do that. You don’t need to, it’ll take too long for them to come back.  Just take the tops off  and in the spring cut them back a third. Pinnacle hydrangeas, which are your rounder hydrangeas, bloom off the old wood so if you trim them down to the ground, they’re not gonna have any blooms.

Q: Can I move a patio rose inside for the winter?

A: There’s one way you can keep it in the garden. Take a big cardboard box and open up the flaps then stick it around the plant, adding some dirt to hold the box, then fill it full of leaves. You can dig a hole for the pot and pull it up in spring as long as it’s not a ceramic pot. If you leave the plant in the pot above the ground, not going to make it.

Q: Can I prune my weeping fig or mock orange in October?

A: You can prune them now but I find that it’s best to prune in March, because then they are going to get more sunlight. Right now they’re starting to go dormant and you might see some leaf drop.

Q: Can I take seeds from corn that I grew this year and plant them for next year?

A: Some varieties of corn that are hybrids, and you can’t collect seed from them, but otherwise you could collect seed.

You can lay them the corn kernels to dry them, then store them in a cool, dark, dry place in an envelope. Then plant them next spring.

Q: What fertilizer should I use in flower beds in the fall?

A: You could add some alfalfa pellets or compost now and work it into the soil and then next spring use a water soluble 20-20 fertilizer as well as a granular slow release fertilizer .

Q: Is there anything we should not be tilling into the vegetable garden?

A: The biggest thing is to make sure there’s no disease like powdery mildew or late blight, otherwise anything else is fine.

You can lay the plants on top of the soil for the winter season, and let them decompose and then work them in. The ultimate way doing is to make a compost bin and layer the plants with a little bit of soil, sawdust, compost accelerator, and house scraps to make even a better food source to put back onto your soil. Tilling your soil every season is actually quite hard on your soil.

Q: How do I stop raspberry canes popping up in the grass or raised garden boxes?

A: Dig a trench around your main patch and put plywood, tin or a couple layers of heavy -duty landscape fabric vertically in the ground.

Another option is take a plastic rain barrel and cut a 12-inch ring of it and dig a circular trench but most raspberry patches will be bigger than that.

The barrier has to be at least 12 inches. Landscape fabric works well because you can stick it above the soil a bit so the roots can’t go over top of it.

The barrel suggestion is useful for horseradish, goat weed, Snow on the mountain, Lily of the valley and other plants when you want to control the spread.

Q: Are apples with little brown marks inside safe to eat?

A: Yes. The marks are cause by apple maggots — a fly that lays eggs in July. Maybe make them into applesauce or something, it’s all protein and this time of the year the worm will be gone, but pick them otherwise you will start the cycle all over again.

If you have apples on the ground the maggots will have already gone into the ground and you’re going to have them again next year. You can sacrificing the crop for one year and start picking the apples to break the cycle as well.

Q: How can I achieve a full bloom on a Christmas cactus?

A: You can give them a little bit of fertilizer, and try a cool period but putting them near a cooler window at the time they’re going to bloom.Watch the watering when they’re bloom, you want to allow them to dry out a little bit.

As soon as they start getting the buds forming on them, you want to make sure that they’re kept a little bit more moist so that those blooms don’t drop afterwards. You can also give them a light pruning to cause some new growth. Fertilize them every time you water with a cactus fertilizer.

Q: When’s the best time to prune an apple tree?

A: Closer to the end of October. Once the leaves have all turned yellow and are starting to fall off, and before a major snow comes. Trim off any suckers and put a tree guard around the trunk.

Q: Are there any ticks or tips for transplanting pine trees?

A: Soak them well if you’re going to move them and erect a snow fence so they get covered up with snow for the first year. If we get a warm March and the transplanted trees are sticking through the snow, the tips can turn brown.

You can also put some topsoil into pails and stick them somewhere where you can access them in March, thaw them out inside your shop or whatever and then you can take that soil and sprinkle it over top of the snow around those plants so that it turns the snow dark so you don’t get the reflection to burn them.

Q: Will a rose in a pot survive indoors for the winter?

A: No, it won’t. Dig the pot into the ground. If it has a graft, a little bump on the base of it, that bump needs to be about a foot under the ground and then mulch with leaves or put a box around it and fill it up with leaves. That’s pretty much the only way you’re going to get a rose to survive the winter in Saskatchewan.

You can put it into a cold cellar if you want to and just keep some moisture in it and let it go dormant that way. Or a heated garage works if it is above 0 C.

Q: What plants are good for fall colour in a yard?

A: Burning Bush, cranberries, some of the spireas all turn a nice red in the fall as well

If you want a big tree, an inferno maple or sugar maple gives you lots of colour, but they’re big trees. If you want something smaller, a red rocket maple will be good, or one that works well too is called an amur maple or a hot wings maple.

Perennials like fall chrysanthemums and asters are blooming like crazy right now.

Q: Is there any way to speed up the ripening process on tomatoes?

A: Put them in a dark place like a box or a cupboard or a paper bag with a banana or ripe apple. The ethylene gas from those ripening other fruits will speed up that process and once they start turning red then you can bring them out.

Leave the apple or banana unpeeled and make sure it’s not touching the tomatoes. You can also spread them out on cardboard and put them into a sunny room, but it won’t work as fast as the banana or apple.

Q: How do I overwinter my fuchsia plant?

A: Bring it in just like you would your geraniums and put it in front of a bright window with indirect light. Trim your plant down about a third to a half and then just water it like a normal house plant.

You can even take cuttings off of it in the early spring, root those cuttings and have new plants and then give it another little trim in March.

Q: Should I keeping canna and calla lilies in the soil until after a light frost before digging up the rhizomes?

A: A light frost around the -2 C two to -4 C is perfect. You don’t want it to get colder than that. You could dig them up now and lay them out in the sunshine during the day to let them dry up. Don’t cut the stems off right away, you want the energy to go back into the bulbs.

Q: Can I overwinter a banana plant?

A: They’re tricky because there’s so much foliage on them and they grow so fast and so big.  You’d need to have quite a large space and give them enough light but I would just start again every year. Just let it go.

Q: When should I cover my strawberry patch?

A: It’s a little bit early yet, get them dormant first and by the middle of October, then you can probably cover them when the leaves start to turn yellow.

Read more: 

• Garden Talk: Autumn leaves changing colour is a good sign to prune
• Garden Talk: How to start winterizing some of your plants
• Garden Talk: Will the recent cold snap stop my corn from maturing?