Here are a few more chores you may need to do. Remember that it need not be as overwhelming as it seems — doing just 15 minutes a day will yield huge results by the time the snow flies.
• Drain, wind up and put away your hoses.
• Turn off your outside spigots.
• If you have trees you value, then take the advice offered a few years ago by Bob Wheeler, a Forestry Specialist with the Cooperative Extension Service, in an article he wrote for the Master Gardener newsletter.
“For both hardwood trees (such as birch) and evergreen trees (such as white spruce) it is normally recommended that during fall (late August) you begin tapering the water supply to your trees until the hardwood trees have completed fall foliage changes and the leaves from the hardwoods have dropped. Then after the hardwood leaves have dropped you can apply one last deep watering for both the hardwood and evergreen trees before the ground freezes. Traditionally, in Fairbanks, this would most likely be limited to just the last two weeks of September or first week of October. However, times may be changing… {specifically} the amount of fluctuations of temperatures seems to be increasing… {so} dormant trees may be induced to begin to break winter dormancy. Because the soil remains frozen while there is an increasing loss of water from the needles in response to thawing conditions, with each freeze-thaw cycle there is an increasing loss of internal water in the tree… It will be even more important to reduce fall watering in an effort to increase winter hardiness development, but equally important would be the one deep watering recommended after the hardwood leaves have fallen but the soil has not yet froze.”
• Bring in those hanging baskets. They look pathetic flapping about in the winter winds and under the severe environmental conditions they degrade more quickly so you spend money replacing them before you would need to if you had taken the one simple step of storing them for the winter. What I really don’t understand are those folks who string Christmas lights around or even through their dead baskets!
• People who have been reading this column for any length of time know that I don’t care for fuchsias; they look like monkey butts to me. But judging from baskets around town, I am in the minority so to those folks I say: you can keep your fuchsias from year to year by hauling them in to spend the winter as houseplants or bringing them to dormancy and storing them. To turn them into houseplants, cut the branches back to a manageable size, keep them in a cool area but not next to a window, and provide full spectrum artificial lighting. (Actually, I have known folks who skip the lighting part, which will mean no blooms but the main plant should limp along until February.) If you want to store them for the winter, reduce watering, cut the stem so the plant ends up about six inches tall, and store in a dark room that stays between 45 to 50 degrees. Water lightly about every two weeks.
• Then there are geraniums, which I have never cared for much either because they have an off-putting odor. For a number of years, I grew them because my grandmother always had tons of them and I adored her so I aped her. When Grandma, who lived on her own until she died at 99 and 10 months, found out she almost fell over in hysterics — turns out she hated them but grew them for my grandfather and after he died was too thrifty to discard them. That summer I gave all of mine away, with a happy “good riddance.” But then this year I ran across a variety that had deep maroon blossoms with a pinkish center and I was smitten, smell be damned. So here I am, five years after grandma died, back in the geranium business.
I am gone too much in the winter to keep it alive as a houseplant, although if I wanted to I would trim it back severely, keep it cool and put it under artificial lights — just as one does with fuchsias. Instead, I am going to store it by taking it out of the pot, knocking off all the loose dirt and hanging it upside down in a room we use for storage so it is dark but above freezing.
A few years ago, local gardener Nina Megyesi, offered this technique for geranium preservation: “Dig plants up gently and let soil dry before brushing it off. After trimming off flowers and odd shaped branches, let plants dry out completely. Store plants in paper, not plastic, bags. In January, check the plants. They will probably be showing signs of life, such as leaves or buds. Replant in seed medium or good soil, water well…”
• Lest it sound like I don’t care for any container flowers, let me say that I adore tuberous begonias. To save money, you can keep them as houseplants with the usual trimming back and artificial lighting. Or, dig up the corms, slice off any foliage, brush the dirt from the roots, and store them in sawdust, dry peat moss, cat litter, or vermiculite, in a cool but not freezing location. Don’t let the corms touch each other unless you are willing to risk rot or plan to check them every two weeks so you can pull out the ones that are softening before they infect the others.
Rumor has it that some people over-winter tuberous begonias by storing the entire pot, plant and all, in a cool corner of a garage. No cutting back stems, no watering, just a pile of neglected pots that await rescuing in the spring. I have tried this twice, with absolutely no success, but adventuresome readers may want to see if it works for them.
Next week: some final chores.
Linden Staciokas has gardened in the Interior for more than two decades. Send gardening questions to her at dorking@acsalaska.com.
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