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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 Oct. 26 show:
Read more:
- Garden Talk: Tips for a rosy outlook in your garden next year
- Garden Talk: Last-minute garden activities to take care of this fall
- Garden Talk: Snap traps the best solution for voles
These questions and answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: Can I keep a peony in my house for the winter?
A: Peonies need to go dormant for the winter season, so if you’re going to keep it in your house you need to find like a cold storage area that stays between 3 and 5 C consistently.
If your garage stays that temperature you can store it there, but if it’s not heated garage, it will probably go below that temperature. If you want to, you could build an insulation dome or with foam or insulation so that it stays at that temperature, kind of like what we do with shrubs outside.
You can either keep it in the pot and lightly water it or you can take it out, rinse off the soil and store it in sawdust or peat moss.
The best thing would be to dig a hole in the garden and put the pot in the ground. Mark where it is, then dig it up in early spring.
Q: How much can I prune off the bottom of 30-foot ponderosa pines blocking a path?
A: You can prune them to wherever you want to create a clear walking space underneath them. The best time to prune them is right now when they have gone dormant for the winter. Make sure you do a nice clean cut and put it on a slight angle so the water doesn’t sit there. Fertilize the trees after pruning, too, to prevent stress.
Q: Is it too late to move lilies?
A: You can move them right now if the leaves have died down to the ground. Take a big root ball when you move them.You can move them in the early spring, too. Mark where they are with flags so you knows where they are.
Q: Can I still trim my lilacs?
A: It’s a bit late to prune lilacs, they are usually pruned right after they have finished blooming, cutting them down about about a third.
You can prune them now only if don’t care they are not going to bloom next season. Pruning now means you are going to miss a year of blooms.
If you cut them down to the ground now, they will probably grow five or six feet next year like but will look ugly, like a bunch of thick twigs with dead stuff in the middle. When they are thick they fill up with dead leaves that you can’t get out.
If the lilacs are thick, you can take out dead branches right now, but any harsh pruning will mean losing your buds for a year.
Give them some some 30-10-10 fertilizer in the spring staring around Mother’s Day and then once a month after that until end of July.
Q: Can I grow a new coleus by transplanting the top of the plant?
A: Absolutely you can. Coleus roots really well. You’ll notice on the stem that there’s nodes where the leaves come out. Make sure you’ve got two nodes and cut on a sharp angle about one centimetre underneath a node. It will root at the died-off nodes as long as the stem is firm and hard. It can’t be soft and rotting at all.
You can either put the cutting into a vase with water and allow it to get roots that way or use rooting hormone and stick it into some soil that is kept moist.
Make sure you leave one to two stem nodes if you want to keep it as a mother plant, so it can produce more leaves and don’t go below the first set of leaves for cuttings.
Coleus roots very quickly so you can take cuttings throughout the season and replenish your plants that way, too.
Q: My carmine jewel cherry was quite lush this year, but produced a grand total of three cherries. What can I do in a sure it gets more fruit next year?
A: Make sure your tree stays healthy by fertilizing with a fruit and berry fertilizer. Don’t over fertilize it or give it too much nitrogen.
Also thin out your cherry trees if there is more than one and make sure that there are no crossing branches and lots of sunlight can get to all parts of the tree.
Cherry trees, depending on the variety, usually want to have another cherry tree nearby and make sure you have some pollinators. You can even buy bees if you don’t have any bees in your yard, but also make sure that there’s a water source for pollinators as well.
You can have a nice tree and all the blossoms you want but if there is nothing to pollinate it, you won’t get many cherries.
Some sour cherries are self-pollinating, so you don’t need two necessarily. However, they will produce more fruit if you have more of them around because it attracts more pollinators and more cross-pollinating as well, too.
Q: Can I prune the undergrowth of my cedar trees and red dogwood now?
A: Cedars you can definitely start pruning now. Any evergreens are best pruned once they’ve gone dormant so in the fall and winter. Remember when you’re pruning a cedar if you trim it right to the base and up, it’s never going to get green leaves on that bottom part again.
The other thing with your cedars is as you’re trimming them, making sure that you provide shade from the sun, especially when it reflects off the snow. That’s why we wrap our cedars in the winter as well.
With dogwoods, you can also prune them right now. Dogwoods are pretty vigorous growers so you ou can trim them down even to a half. Wait until the leaves have dropped.
You can save the red sticks and stick them into your annual containers and when the fresh greens come out in first week of November, grab some and stick them in there as well, water it in so it freezes to stop the wind taking them away and you’ve got a beautiful display for the winter.
Q: I have new growth on my hydrangea. Can I bring it inside and get it to bloom again?
A: You can cut them back to the leaf node you can see underneath a bud, which will force some more blooms to come out.
When you take it inside, transplant it into a slightly bigger pot just because then you’re not going to be watering as often and you’ll be able to water it more consistently that way. It also needs to go in a bright window in an east location, or use a grow light.
You can allow them to go dormant a little bit, but also keep them growing then add some aluminum sulfate to your water in March to help them produce new growth and change the colour to blue again.
Q: Is it better to wait for my raspberries to die back before cutting them down or just cut them now?
A: If you want to cut out some, take the third-year canes. Leave the fresh ones that they were producing on this year and then do some like pruning in the spring.
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