F Scott Fitzgerald Life Begins Again When It Is Crisp in Fall
As the 2022 gardening year draws to a close, at present is the fourth dimension to ensure a successful gardening flavor next year, for you or your customers! Sanitation is a cornerstone of integrated pest management and is essential for good institute health management. Throughout the year, nosotros have been plagued with both unusually wet and unusually dry weather sometimes inside weeks of each other. This weather condition incited normally pocket-size affliction problems to epidemic levels, encouraged the development of new illness problems and made for a difficult year to garden, specially for first fourth dimension gardeners. However, now is not the time to give up!
Good sanitation, in the course of removing diseased plant material this autumn will help minimize or fifty-fifty prevent affliction problems adjacent jump. Many disease-causing organisms can survive the winter in infected plant droppings. Cut back infected plants, disposing diseased plants (by burning or the garbage—do not compost!), or tilling under crop debris tin likewise assistance forestall over-wintering of establish disease causing organisms.
Evaluate and Investigate
Figure 1. Failure to divide perennials can result in crown rots.
Before you begin your sanitation program, bring out a notebook to take records of what did and did non piece of work, what will need dividing in the spring, and what needs to be moved to a dissimilar site. Remember to accurately identify which pests you take and what crops they attack!
For numerous perennials, failure to separate is a leading cause of crown (Fig. ane). If y'all haven't started a pest direction, client yard, or gardening log, consider doing so. Make notes about problems and research potential solutions over the winter. Evaluate which varieties did well and which you lot should consider replacing. Did your rose defoliate in July? Look for the many disease resistant roses or investigate what fungicides or insecticides you may wish to buy if you or your customer wants to keep the trouble child. The rose blackspot bulletin can help you with both. Was powdery mildew a problem for your bee-balm? Consider moving information technology to a sunnier location in the bound (with meliorate air menstruum) or remove it and replace it with a powdery mildew resistant variety, similar 'Jacob Cline', or many of the new, petite and disease resistant bee balms.
Go Down and Dirty
After you've filled upwardly several pages of notes, its time to put the notebook down, and put on the heavy gloves. Clean up leaves and crop residues from all gardens. Every bit soon every bit crops are harvested, pull up and dispose of all plant material, including roots. After a hard freeze, remove and compost all disease-costless, but frost-blackened, tender annuals , from African daisy to zinnia, and everything in between.
A common question asked past gardeners is whether diseased plants can be safely composted. The answer is NO! Exercise not compost diseased plants! In Indiana (and most of the Midwest), compost rarely reaches the temperatures required to kill most plant pathogens. Be sure to discard the material properly, by bagging it or past burning it if this is permitted.
Did yous have really bad leaf spots on certain perennials? After your perennials have died back, the leafy textile tin be removed. Advisedly cut the tissue with shears or pair of scissors and dispose of the infected leaves. Consider applying a chlorothalonil-based fungicide next year if foliage spots were peculiarly severe. Some diseases may require multiple applications for adequate control. At that place are many common leaf diseases that good sanitation practices volition help control, such as leaf spot of iris or botrytis of peony, to proper noun a few. Cut dorsum late flowering perennials like asters and chrysanthemums to a few inches. Did your peonies develop spots? Pull out the shears! Peonies can exist cutting to the ground, only exist certain to remove all the infected leafage so it doesn't reinfect the new growth next year. Don't forget the mulch, or a row cover to protect confronting freezing and thawing.
Figure two. This year, many clematis across the land were infected with Ascochyta blight.
Clematis, "Queen of the Vines" unremarkably gets dethroned by a multifariousness of fungal diseases, the most mutual and nearly serious of which is Ascochyta blight (Fig. 2). Remove infected vines and dispose of them. For some varieties, you may lose flowers, especially if they flower on old wood (not commonly grown in the Midwest, just at to the lowest degree you were warned). Mulch heavily with several inches of both soil and mulch—Considering this disease ordinarily attacks at the soil line, by preserving the crown through deep planting or mulching, you can regenerate your clematis subsequently infection—even astringent infection, although the plant may accept several years to recover. In the spring, consider preventative applications of a chlorothalonil based fungicide to minimize the likelihood of reinfection. If powdery mildew is also a problem, exist sure to add a FRAC 3 fungicide, like Hawkeye/Systhane, Torque, Tourney, or Imprint Maxx.
Clematis isn't the only constitute to benefit from mulching: Add together mulch to your perennials to create a protective layer that insulates plant roots from the freeze-thaw damage. Mulch also conserves moisture and improves soil structure. Straw, hay and compost are all excellent mulch materials. Leaves and grass clippings are less effective as mulch textile because neither holds much air space for insulation, but the cost is hard to beat! (Recall in the coming leap to remove the mulch layer promptly, to prevent crown rots from occurring.)
Colorado Purple Spruce Syndrome
Conserving wet isn't enough, though. The dry to drought-like conditions are setting trees and shrubs up for failure come spring. Be certain to thoroughly water all plants every bit we caput into winter. Spruce, pine and other conifers especially can become desiccated by the harsh winter winds if a autumn drought should develop. When symptoms develop in the spring (purple Colorado blue spruce, ruby-red brown white pines and red pines), zero can be done to "cure" the problem. While watering the bigger plants, don't forget sheltered perennials, such every bit those nether the eaves, or under the trees. Plants that go too dry in autumn are less likely to survive the wintertime. And you won't know this until the late spring when they neglect to return!
Install uncomplicated windbreaks, or cover (Fig. iii) the entire tree, or cover the trunk of vulnerable, sparse bark trees with plastic "tree guards." to protect them from drying winter winds. Anything that encourages snowfall aggregating will help provide excellent protection against low temperature or wind desiccation (Fig. 4). Questions regarding the use of anti-transpirants and evergreens need to be put to rest: Anti-transpirants are tools that help plants suffer stressful, short-term periods, like transplant shock. Just the nigh hardcore lover of snowfall and ice could ascertain an Indiana winter as "short term." For this reason, anti-transpirants are not a replacement for proper autumn watering or proper plant selection.
No Shears Here
If there weren't enough chores in the g this time of year, there is one you should non exist doing: Pruning fruit trees. In climates such as ours, pruning should exist washed in jump just every bit the buds begin to swell. Freezing injury and dieback can occur to fruit trees if they are pruned in autumn or early on winter. Even though y'all can't prune, you can remove fallen fruits, or hanging "mummies" (dessicated, infected fruit that frequently serves as an inoculum source for next years infection). Don't forget to protect copse with mouse-vole/rabbit/deer guards. Wrap tree trunks with hardware cloth (¼ inch openings) up to the expected snow-line to provide the necessary protection. Be certain to remove this protection in the late spring to protect the crown of the tree as it continues to grow.
Subsequently the Bulbs of Summertime Accept Gone
Okay, that'south not what Don Henley sang, but you get the idea. Don't forget to lift and harvest tender bulbs and corms (cannas, caladiums, gladiolas, dahlias and tuberous begonias) for side by side year. Lift after a proficient frost blackens their tops. Advisedly dig bulbs/corms and place the bulbs in a well-ventilated location to dry for a 2- to three- week period. This will preclude storage rot from destroying your bulbs. Stems tin can be cut off with a abrupt pocketknife or scissors (except for begonias—keep reading!) near but non at the indicate where they emerge from the seedling. Allow begonia stems to dry until they are breakable enough to break off from the bulbs or cut off the stems almost 1 inch above the tubers. Place the tubers in a cool, dry surface area to cure for 2 to 3 weeks. Later on curing, store tubers between layers of peat moss or vermiculite. Store bulbs in a absurd, night place, that does non drop below 40 degrees F. Consider dusting the bulbs with a preventative fungicide, like captan or, Bordeaux or another copper to preclude storage rot. Consider pouring yourself a fine Bordeaux vino to toast yourself and all the work that you've accomplished!
Lawns
Don't forget to rake and compost fallen leaves. Leaf litter left on lawn provides an infection court for snowfall mold. Be sure to sneak that final mowing in, as well, as long grass provides an excellent place for snow mold, too. Finally, fall is a smashing time to reduce weed levels—besides, you desire your fertilizer to go to the plants you love. And unfortunately for me, no one wins prizes for growing the biggest dandelions!
All photos by Janna Beckerman.
Source: https://www.purduelandscapereport.org/article/life-starts-all-over-again-when-it-gets-crisp-in-the-fall-f-scott-fitzgerald/
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