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October has arrived, and while it may not feel like it at times, so has fall. This week on the Good Growing Podcast, we discuss some of the different things on our fall gardening to-do list, including caring for mums, moving houseplants indoors, planting garlic and woody plants, soil testing, and more!
Watch us on YouTube: https://youtu.be/VbB2p-EyjDY
Skip to what you want to know:
00:35 – Welcome, Ken and preparing for fall invaders.
03:10 – Planting and caring for mums in the fall
08:05 – Moving houseplants indoors
13:50 – Planting garlic
21:20 – Testing soil and where to send it
25:00 – Planting trees and shrubs and protecting them from deer
29:10 – Lawn work and dry weather
35:20 – Wrap-up, thank yous, what’s up next week, and goodbye!
Contact us!
Chris Enroth: cenroth@illinois.edu
Ken Johnson: kjohnso@illinois.edu
Check out the Good Growing Blog: https://go.illinois.edu/goodgrowing
Subscribe to the weekly Good Growing email: https://go.illinois.edu/goodgrowingsubscribe
Any products or companies mentioned during the podcast are in no way a promotion or endorsement of these products or companies.
Barnyard Bash: freesfx.co.uk
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Creators & Guests
What is Good Growing?
Talking all things horticulture, ecology, and design.
00:00:05:00 - 00:00:32:17
Welcome to the Good Growing Podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension coming to you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. What's happening this fall? What's going on in the yards and landscapes? What are Ken and I have on the to do list? But we are going to talk about how we are shutting things down or changing things up, or shifting to a new growing time of year.
00:00:32:19 - 00:00:40:21
And, you know, I'm not doing this by myself. I'm joined, of course, and as always, by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. Hey, Ken.
00:00:40:21 - 00:01:03:12
Hello, Chris. I'm excited for these cooler temperatures can open up the house again. Don’t have to sweat every time I go outside it. It is nice to have those these cooler temperatures. We've also we have been enjoying the screened screens and the, you know, the air that comes through the screens, fresh air.
00:01:03:12 - 00:01:30:12
That's what it's called. But I guess what is my major stumbling block here is with that fresh air is coming. Brown marmorated stink bug. And we have soybeans in the field behind our house. They haven't been harvested yet, but I think we all know what's going to happen once the combine comes through is we are going to be overcome with, lady beetles.
00:01:30:14 - 00:02:00:12
So that looking forward to that again, enjoying the fresh air. Maybe I need to do a little bit better. Caulking, sealing cracks and crevices re screening some windows, maybe, keep them critters out. And maybe some mice, too, when they harvest. Yes, exactly. There will be. You're usually. We we are fortunate that we have, a couple cats that, will at least of our cats.
00:02:00:12 - 00:02:30:11
There are two of them that will just watch the mice run by, they are not hunters. They don't really show any interest in it. But we did have a wild cat. His name name's Jack. He kind of adopted us and said, I'm going to live here. Essentially, we had the door to our house open. We're getting drywall delivered in the middle of winter, and the drywall, delivery folks pointed to a black cat in the corner and said, is that your cat?
00:02:30:12 - 00:02:36:05
And I said, no, I've never seen that cat before in my life. And that's how we got Jack.
00:02:36:05 - 00:02:59:04
Keep the mouse in line for you. He will. He does. He does that. Oh. Well, can I guess today we're going to be chatting about kind of what we're doing out in the yard, what's going on in the landscape and how we are transitioning to maybe not sweating every time we go outside.
00:02:59:06 - 00:03:26:06
But still enjoying the weather in shorts, right? Because there's still shorts weather for you. There's weather till we get in the 30s. Here you go. Well, I, I guess my my first question is, maybe some of the pops of color. Can you, planting any bombs this year? Usually we don't, because my wife is allergic to them, and she complains that she can't breathe, so we don't we don't plan to move.
00:03:26:06 - 00:03:43:08
I know a lot of people do. And it's a popular plant for for many people, for some, it is a four letter word and more ways than one. But it is, you know, the time of year, you know, you go to the I was at a, a garden, our garden, the, home improvement store that is orange.
00:03:44:01 - 00:03:45:08
they had all kinds of mums,
00:03:45:18 - 00:04:00:20
as far as the eye could see. There's also some other stuff you see, like the flowering killer cabbage. Now, it's another popular one this time of year. As far as kind of those more annual crops, that we would buy or plant, even though we know mums are can be perennial.
00:04:00:22 - 00:04:02:04
They are hardy to zone five.
00:04:02:18 - 00:04:19:12
For a lot of them. So we could overwinter them outdoors. And a lot of people try to do that aren't necessarily successful. A couple of reasons for that. One is we're really planting with the wrong time of year. Should be planting these in spring so they get well established. And if we are planting them in the fall sooner rather than later.
00:04:19:14 - 00:04:25:19
Not saying you couldn't establish them now, but we're we're kind of getting on the tail end of being able to do that, depending on where you're at in the state
00:04:26:10 - 00:04:35:04
now, if you are going to be planting them outdoors, you know, like moist soil but not wet feet, so, well, draining. But they still like that moisture.
00:04:35:04 - 00:04:58:03
They're fairly shallow rooted. So mulching those is going to help if you want to try to overwinter them, help with that frost even as that soil freezes and thaws and stuff can work out of the soil. Some mulching, they'll moderate that soil temperature, can help improve that, planting them in a kind of a protected location, prevent some of those cold northern winds and stuff, from getting on them.
00:04:58:05 - 00:05:18:23
So somewhat close to a house can help keep that a little bit warmer and stuff. And one thing I think a lot of people do, if they do plant them outdoors, is when they, you know, break up a hard freeze, that everything starts dying back. They take all that top growth off. It's a good idea to leave that there because that'll help catch the leaves and stuff and again, help insulate that crown, a little bit.
00:05:18:23 - 00:05:21:10
So there's, there's several different ways we can try to.
00:05:22:10 - 00:05:43:07
I guess help the plants to make give them a better chance of getting, established and stuff. Another option would be just leave them in the pot, bring them inside, put them in a cool, dark location. Water them occasionally just to keep that soil kind of damp. Don't want to really wet. And then once growth resumes in the spring, put it back outside and planted.
00:05:43:09 - 00:06:13:08
Might usually wind up just becoming compost so that that's the the end result for my mom's will. We'll usually decorate our front porch with that pumpkins and such. And then we'll we'll Nestle our mums in also in and amongst some of our plantings in the landscape, among the New England aster and our stiff goldenrod. And so, you know, they, they fit in well, well, nice pops of color, just like how we would use something like a petunia or a vinca, in the summer months.
00:06:13:08 - 00:06:32:06
So that's just, another annual. Well, even though it could be perennial, another annual. That's why I use it, to dress up, and give some pops of color, to parts of the yard or maybe to help complement some other plants that we already have flowering at the time.
00:06:32:08 - 00:06:51:19
Yes. Yeah. If you if you want to take on a challenge, try to overwinter them and then because you can get some pretty big plants, if you can overwinter them and successfully and stuff. So. Yes. Now you say that and what immediately came to mind were the poinsettias that we have tried to that we kept alive after Christmas.
00:06:51:19 - 00:07:18:13
And then, then we, grew. Those also become quite large. They're essentially woody shrubs. The next year. So it's, yeah, these plants, which we have for these kind of seasonal things, they, they can become quite big in the right spot. Yeah. Just like tomatoes figure long enough. That's right. Monstrous. Or peppers. Yeah. My peppers this late in the year there starting to develop that woody stem.
00:07:18:15 - 00:07:50:21
And now it is the time for me to decide. Do I, do I just let them die with that first frost or do I try to bring them inside and grow more peppers? Because in the past, when I've done this, I've usually gotten kind of a, I would say a very, little tiny harvest now is not really worth, all the effort, but you can still harvest peppers even in the winter months if you have some going that it's a decision everyone must make for themselves this time of year.
00:07:50:23 - 00:08:06:11
And which space do you have it? How much light do you have? That's right. Yeah. And where are the other inhabitants of your house going to think they don't get a decision in that, or they don't get a say in that decision.
00:08:06:13 - 00:08:32:09
So it's we can stay on that vein and I guess, talk about house plants since we're moving stuff in, so, so what's your what's your houseplant routine or your pepper routine for this time of year? Well, it is always a hope to have a more prepared space for my house plants. I would say what the plan is.
00:08:32:11 - 00:08:54:15
Maybe not what will actually wind up happening, but what the plan is, is, we do have in our basement in this kind of, you know, storage area. I have several light racks set up where I will be moving in a lot of our ginger and turmeric. Which ankle angle? You know, I still have lots of those, I just can't let them die.
00:08:54:17 - 00:09:17:01
Have to keep them going. I could harvest them. I could eat them, but, no, I want to keep growing them. And so most of my space is going to be dedicated to that. I probably have about ten flats worth of that stuff. And, you know, flats are one thing, but you also have to consider the vertical height, too.
00:09:17:06 - 00:09:47:00
Ginger gets pretty tall. Turmeric is tall. Galangal is tall. You know, they're all about waist high. A good, healthy plant. So, my, my light racks pretty much get go from having, like, four shells to maybe two pretty often. It's just one. And the leaves, they'll I'll, I'll remove several of the shells and the leaves will just go up to the top light fixture, until most of the ginger will begin to go dormant in December.
00:09:47:02 - 00:10:09:10
And then I will then, stack those on top of each other, and then I will move my house plants from the garage, which are languishing in the garage, saying, please move us inside. It's cold out here. There's not enough light, and I'll move my house plants into, the house out of the garage. Now, I would really like to pot up or repot some of my house plants.
00:10:09:16 - 00:10:32:17
So I have angel's trumpet. I have a path. Those. I have a couple of house plants that really need to be repotted. And the question is, will that get done? Before that first frost sets in? I'm not sure. So that is my house plant routine. And that's the plan. At least it will probably just wind up being.
00:10:32:19 - 00:10:53:10
Oh, no, tonight it's going to frost. And now I have to do the the house plant shuffle. And get them all in the garage. And then it's going to be a week of nice weather, and I take them back outside so that that will be what I do. I really should be acclimating them to the lower light conditions, which I could probably do in my garage, but, we'll see if it happens.
00:10:53:10 - 00:11:13:05
Can you have more house plants than me, though? Well, no, I don't know what I'm talking about. What do you do? So we've we've started the annual dance of taking them in and out. So we're recording this on Tuesday. I think here in Jacksonville, we're supposed to get down into upper 30s or 40s tonight. So, lunch, I brought some stuff, and we'll bring some more stuff in tonight.
00:11:13:05 - 00:11:33:11
But then later this week, it's going to be back up into the 80s, lows in the 50s. So we've all move back out again. We try to keep stuff out as long as I possibly can sometime, probably a little longer than we should is getting like they don't get really acclimated. And then it's they're in for a rough, month or so as they get acclimated and everything looks really crummy.
00:11:33:13 - 00:11:38:00
Yeah, that's that's kind of where we're at. You know, we should be isolating stuff. So I don't have,
00:11:38:16 - 00:11:54:10
like another giant mealybugs scale outbreak like we did last year. So ideally, that's what we'd be doing. This is definitely a do as I say, not as I do, because it's probably not going to happen the way, the way I should do it.
00:11:54:12 - 00:12:17:04
Right. Well, and and I will also follow up, you know, you talk about mealybugs and scale. You know, those are really things that we bring in from the outside, which natural predators, often they keep to a fairly manageable population, something that most plants can just overcome whatever damage they're encountering. There's predators and parasitoids, things they will manage some of those, those pests for us.
00:12:17:05 - 00:12:43:22
We bring them inside. Well, we don't have those predators. I will say another thing that we can bring inside is, in my case, every year in the middle of winter, I will find toads in my basement. These big old warty toads which have burrowed into some of my house plants outside. They get the conditions just right.
00:12:43:22 - 00:13:07:12
I don't know if it's temperature or moisture or whatever it is. And they pop out and, you know, I'll just be downstairs tending to plants, and all of a sudden scares me to death. I jump and scream and, there's just this big old warty toad just hopping around the basement there, so. And, that's why I also want to repot my house plants.
00:13:07:14 - 00:13:22:05
Maybe I can find them and put them somewhere where they're not going to be in my house over the winter. The answer would be another one. Sometimes I'll build a colony in your house, and sometimes you can flush them out with water.
00:13:22:23 - 00:13:28:16
Other times repotting may be your best bet. If you don't want ants, all over your house.
00:13:28:18 - 00:13:50:08
Exactly. Yes, yes. And they. I guess ants don't scare me as much. I'm not too worried about ants. But you don't want to see colonies of them in your house. They can become a nuisance. Some of them can bite still. So, yeah, you don't have to deal with them.
00:13:51:15 - 00:14:13:11
Well, again, you know, when it comes to fruits and vegetables, pretty much everything we can think of right now, we're pulling things out. But there is one thing that I can think of that we will be planting, and that's garlic. Have you ordered your garlic this year?
00:14:13:13 - 00:14:31:09
And you got here yesterday. It arrived. I got my shipment notification yesterday. So it's all on its way. Garlic is forthwith coming. Yes. Yeah. Well 3 pounds of garlic to plant for the stuff we ordered from, for home. As shown up. Yeah, but
00:14:32:02 - 00:14:39:10
it is. Tis the season for planting garlic. So usually we're doing this. I try, I do it like late September, early October.
00:14:39:10 - 00:14:45:14
You can go later in there than that. And basically you want to you want to get enough time so they can get those roots established.
00:14:46:01 - 00:14:47:12
So basically you're going to take your
00:14:47:18 - 00:14:50:21
your bulb, you're gonna break it apart into the individual cloves and plant those.
00:14:51:03 - 00:14:53:18
You don't want to break that up until you're planting. So don't get it.
00:14:53:18 - 00:15:10:03
And then break it up and then wait a few days. Do that as you're planting. Obviously. Ideally you're just planting the biggest ones. That's going to give you the biggest, the bulbs and stuff plant smaller ones are going to get smaller. Well, just still taste the same. But if you've got limited space to just plant the bigger ones and
00:15:11:04 - 00:15:14:17
give the other ones away or eat them, if you're not going to use them.
00:15:15:17 - 00:15:36:12
Yeah. And as you know, plant those, flat side down. So on that root plate, that's where the roots are going to come from. Plant pointy side up, several inches deep. Cover that up. I like to mulch mine. Because, garlic isn't a terribly good competitor with weeds, so mulch that again, help with that, soil insulation moisture.
00:15:36:14 - 00:15:54:21
All that stuff. Plant that early enough. The roots to start establishing. There's been some years. It was last year we had pretty mild fall and winter actually had green growth coming up. Which is fine. That persists in most of the year. I think the eventually died back, but, it's still sent out new stuff. I still got garlic.
00:15:54:21 - 00:16:16:11
So if you do have stuff poking out, it's not it's not the end of the world. That's not necessarily a bad thing if it starts growing. Yeah. We are planting date for garlic. It is pretty much set in stone every single year. We we plant late. We plant the first weekend of November and that has done very well for us.
00:16:16:13 - 00:16:41:22
Just like can you know, we plant, you know, 2 to 3 times the depth of that, of that, clove, and we mulch over top. And yes, we got lots of green growth last year up until that hard freeze we got in February. And then that growth disappeared for just a little bit. And then it just resumed right back after it warmed up again.
00:16:41:22 - 00:17:07:16
So, yeah. So we plant pretty late. I know you will hear a lot more recommendations to say plant earlier. And I'd say whatever works for your schedule is best. But the later you plant, as Ken mentioned, the less time you have for that root system to establish itself. Before the cold, cold weather sets in, if it ever does set in, you know, hasn't happened a few winters here now.
00:17:07:16 - 00:17:26:04
So, this got to you just got to do what you've been doing. And hopefully weather trends will do what they have also been doing in the past. But that doesn't always seem to be happening. And I think one thing we're going to try at the cemetery at home is take a few and put them in a raised bed.
00:17:26:06 - 00:17:42:14
So we have it in our house. Is is fairly heavy. And it's kind of a pain to dig it, especially if the soil is wet and it's kind of mucky and slimy. So I'm going to try some. I think that just one reason sometimes we get small bulbs and we could just because the, the soil is so heavy.
00:17:43:13 - 00:17:45:10
I'm going to try someone raised beds and
00:17:45:10 - 00:18:00:01
so hard neck. Should we go back and talk about her neck. Soft neck rock so hard not girl because it's going to be the most hardy of the majority of the two. So ideally, in Illinois, especially further north, you get, hard necks going to be your best option of soft neck.
00:18:00:03 - 00:18:09:01
I've planted that a few times, and I usually lose, a decent amount of it. I get some, but not nearly as much as I do hard neck. So,
00:18:09:14 - 00:18:18:23
but that's hard next time. That stuff is is really cold hardy. So raised beds I don't think should be, too much of an issue. Put them in there.
00:18:19:00 - 00:18:40:14
Yeah. I've had a similar conversation with our Master Gardeners with kind of the smaller bulb size that we're we're we're expecting something a bit larger. And in some of our other planting beds, we have gotten a larger, yield, but I think we're going to try, nitrogen fertilizer. To maybe see if we can bump that up a little bit.
00:18:40:14 - 00:19:03:22
Ours have been pretty diminutive recently, in recent years. And so, we've done a soil test and everything shows that soil looks okay. Maybe they're just not getting the nitrogen that they need through the growing season. So we're going to try that this year. We'll report back, you know, to do that planting or later. Well at planting.
00:19:03:22 - 00:19:30:12
Oh good point. The one thing I did forget. So we also so we have like a planting party. I'll have my drill, be drilling it out. We'll have a person with a bucket of compost and they will plop a handful of compost in the planting hole. Another person plops in the, the the, garlic, and then someone else comes behind mounds it up, pulls the mulch back over top, and, yeah.
00:19:30:14 - 00:19:48:14
So it's a multi-person effort. So I don't I hadn't really thought about putting nitrogen down at planting. Now we need an extra person for that, so maybe we can mix it. If it's granular we can mix it in with the compost. Yeah, yeah. So I do have a bag of poultry manure I really need to get rid of.
00:19:48:14 - 00:20:01:17
And I don't like the I don't not like poultry manure. It smells awful. I'm sure it's a great fertilizer, but it's you have to take like five showers after you handle that stuff.
00:20:01:19 - 00:20:22:15
So I usually just dig a trench and put it in there and just probably a lot more work than using a drill, but. Do you have a do you have a bulb logger? Okay. You just slap that thing in your drill or you go try to use it for planting spray bulbs. Once I almost broke my wrist because that soil is just so heavy.
00:20:22:15 - 00:20:45:17
You just caught that thing and you got a bracer between your legs. There, you there. And yeah. Or so. Yeah. When I am doing spring planting, I brace my drill kind of between my knees. I also have a very light touch on the drill. So if it does go south, I, I let go. And that's easier said than done though.
00:20:45:19 - 00:21:08:20
And so you kind of. Yeah. You also however you're bracing it on your leg or something, you sort of know which way it will kick at you if if it stops, if the bits stop spinning, but the drill keeps spinning, that's, that's the thing that gets you. Show up with a sprained MCL. In a way, yes. There you go.
00:21:08:20 - 00:21:20:09
You know what I did and cast on both of my hands? I was planting spring bulbs in my clay soil in a brick.
00:21:20:11 - 00:21:40:19
So, speaking of soils, and you've mentioned this already, but soil testing. So this is another thing we can be doing this time of year. And I will admit, this is another do as I say, not as I do. I've never soil test you. You're not know if I should be admitting that, but you've I let's I should I need to do let's do better.
00:21:40:19 - 00:22:00:21
Ken. We we can soil test our garden I so that is something I am going to do this year after struggling with my maybe my peppers. So I had poblano one in ground, one in container. The ones in the containers are plants a little bit later than the ones and ground and the container ones just flourished.
00:22:01:01 - 00:22:23:24
The ones in the soil barely did anything, and yeah, I is it light levels? I don't think so because they were pretty close to each other. Same lighting conditions. The main difference was the soil and planting time too. But the ones that I planted sooner were the ones in the ground. So I they should have been more farther along.
00:22:23:24 - 00:22:49:00
And they weren't, by the way, I am harvesting my, my poblano peppers, right now so they, they can be harvested green. But I waited until they turned red. I have red, which is trident. And then there's the orange one, which I'm forgetting the name of right now. Not delicious. I need to find, like, authentic Mexican cheese, though, to stuff these with.
00:22:49:00 - 00:23:15:10
Because that's that's the hard thing. And the comb is finding some good ingredients of stuff. But anyway, so we're talking about soil. I guess I'm hungry. I'm going to soil test this year. Long story short, it's going to happen and fall is a great time to do it. Yeah, I need to. I've noticed our our yields on stuff have dropped off a little bit, but that's necessarily a bad thing because you can eat so many tomatoes and cucumbers and stuff.
00:23:15:10 - 00:23:36:05
But it's it's not quite as good as when we started that garden 6 or 7 years ago. So, you're leaving the golden era of that garden? It's getting old. So maybe, maybe this weekend that'll be on the to do list. And then we can have a show by talking about our results. And there you go. There you go.
00:23:36:05 - 00:23:57:24
That's a great idea. And because this always comes up when I talk about soil testing, where do we send those tests? Boy, which you by extension did that, but we do not accept soil samples. We refer folks to, that we have a web page, Illinois soil testing. I guess you could ask the internet, just type this in Illinois.
00:23:57:24 - 00:24:23:05
Soil testing, labs and our web page should be one of the first ones up. It's a pretty popular one. And there is a link on there. There's basically three links. The first link will take you to a list of commercial certified labs, which is what we recommend. These labs have been certified to, they've had met certain standards, for their testing.
00:24:23:07 - 00:24:52:24
We also have a link to other land grant universities that still do soil testing in their labs. There's a link to those there. And then I think we have another one. Indiana. Illinois sea Grant has a list of soil labs also, which pretty much mirrors the commercial lab. One link that I mentioned first off there, but that's where we recommend sending them costs about, I guess these days, 20 bucks for a soil, test.
00:24:53:01 - 00:25:00:20
And yeah, I'd say shop around and we have more resources on that website. If you have questions about how to sample or test your soil.
00:25:02:03 - 00:25:24:14
Well, again, after you test your soil this year, what you will do now, are you going to be planting, you got any room for trees and shrubs in your yard? I've been there, and you grow a lot of things, so you might not have space for these, but, that's one thing we do recommend this time of year is not that it is a good time for planting woody plants.
00:25:24:14 - 00:25:52:10
So you planting anything like that? Woody's not. We don't have any ways. We do our planting summer basis perennials. And the other thing you play on the farm, and no. I think there. Yeah, I think that all our business. Oh, no worries. This year, maybe next year. Throw some more in there. And. Yeah, especially since we told everybody not to plant stuff the spring from last fall.
00:25:52:12 - 00:26:00:02
Yes, people probably have a backlog of stuff you want to plant if you if you listen to us and if you didn't maybe know.
00:26:00:18 - 00:26:19:20
Yeah. Now that hopefully, you know, the rain continues typically our typical fall we get, you know, pretty consistent moisture. So you know we're planting these. You can get good established man. Get those roots established before cold weather comes in and and even you know, as that that top kind of goes dormant. Those roots are still growing.
00:26:19:20 - 00:26:47:11
And and reaching out into the soil and stuff. So yeah, fall is another good time. There are some other usually evergreens. We should do those in the spring. Yeah, we like evergreens in the spring, mainly because it gives them longer, time where the soil is not frozen, where they can establish the root system because unlike deciduous plants, evergreens hold on to their foliage.
00:26:47:17 - 00:27:12:23
So they even in the winter, they are at risk to drought, desiccation. Winburn. Things like that, that can that can occur to their, to their leaves, whereas it cannot happen with our deciduous plants that are dropping their leaves in the fall. So, yeah, we usually say with evergreens, if ideal time for planting is going to be in spring, deciduous plants, spring or fall.
00:27:13:03 - 00:27:41:24
And why is that? Because, well, usually it is the most reliable time of year for rainfall, to help get those plants established. I guess you could plant. I've planted, trees and shrubs in the 100 degree weather. I planted them in the middle of winter. It just however much you want to baby them and, you know, limp them along to better weather that is more conducive to their root growth.
00:27:42:01 - 00:28:08:07
Hey, you can really plant any time of year, but fall for at least deciduous plants. That's, a really great time. That's usually when I will be planting my deciduous plants. And even if it does stay dry, you know, it's not as hot. So that water isn't not losing as much of that from the soil either. So your you're still going to need to water, and not as much as if you were planting in 100 degree weather in July or August.
00:28:08:09 - 00:28:29:06
And mulch, you know, can help insulate that and hold some of that moisture in there, protect those roots. And the other thing that will need protection, is from Bambi. You will, because this time of year, especially our ducks, as they develop new antlers. Well, they are itchy, I guess. And they really like younger trees to rub their antlers on.
00:28:29:08 - 00:28:50:21
And so, this can start as early as September, but I really start seeing a lot of tree damage from bucks and rubbing. And starting in October, that's when I usually will see it in my neck of the woods. And then, you know, all winter long, we'll go on hikes and we'll see all these trees that just get, you know, massacred by these bucks coming through.
00:28:50:23 - 00:28:54:06
It's in their antlers on them.
00:28:54:10 - 00:29:08:15
I we got deer, cage them. Yes. Put cage around and put them in jail. Physical exclusion. It's the best way to go about it, because then you have to deal with them wanting to eat them in the winter. If it's a pretty hard winter.
00:29:09:06 - 00:29:18:06
All right. One last thing we've got on our list is lawn stuff. So again, nail falls. Another good time to
00:29:18:06 - 00:29:30:23
catch up on that lawn work that maybe you've put off or or haven't done ever. Yep, yep. I know again you still have a really nice lawn though for not doing anything to it. You do mow it though, right?
00:29:31:00 - 00:29:48:23
I do obviously have them look very cool. It's it's green, but it's it's not the grass. I don't know, it looks nice to me when I was at your house last summer, like, man, Ken's got a nice yard. He's got this nice lawn, he's got lots of native plants. He's got all kinds of vegetables growing everywhere. We got got a little bit of everything.
00:29:49:00 - 00:30:11:04
So, but when it comes to lawn care, boy, it is October 1st. A lot of times I would be talking about this August 1st. It's it feels like we're a little bit late, but we at least here in my neck of the woods, we're so delayed and a lot of the things because it has been incredibly dry.
00:30:11:06 - 00:30:42:11
Like, I think I've only mowed my lawn. I mowed it this past weekend, but it was mainly just to push some of the leaves away from certain spots. So I don't know if I should count that, but I think that would make four times the summer. And now fall. It's been so dry here. And very often what I will do is I'll oversee with a newer variety of,
00:30:42:13 - 00:31:06:24
Lately it's been turf type tall fescue. This year I over seeded with, Xanadu. Which if you ever heard, I think it's like a 1970s movie. I watched it once as a little kid, and I was like, this is weird. But the name stuck in my head. And so I wanted to try the turf grass, which actually also ranked very high in the National Turf Grass Evaluation program.
00:31:07:01 - 00:31:33:02
And so, so I've over seeded with that. But there's been no rain. And so they've really just sort of been on hold with my Xanadu seed, hoping it's going to rain soon so I can put my seed down. The problem with turf type tall fescue, though, is that as a young seedling, it's not as cold hardy, and so a hard frost could come in in October and just totally wipe out everything that that might germinate.
00:31:33:02 - 00:31:59:04
So I might not be putting seed down this year. I have one spot where I had to seed, where we had mulch delivered and we killed a large part of the lawn. So I had to supplement that with, a little sprinkler. But I think I'm just going to not over seed this year. I have not fertilized either, because, again, there's been no rain.
00:31:59:06 - 00:32:24:23
There's been nothing to water it in. So here I sit, with all my lawn chores and no rain to do anything with them. So we did get our cover crop down last weekend before we got all that. So I guess two weekends ago when we got all that rain, I got it in hand, checked the radar. So I put the sprinkler on, you know, watered for an hour or so.
00:32:24:23 - 00:32:53:08
And then the rains came. And so now I've got some pretty good, ryegrass coming up. The only reason it rained is because you were watered. Pretty much. Yes. You're in you're in Jackson area. You're welcome. It's the only reason. Yeah. We did get a good rainfall. I think that was, a good slow day of rain. Things kind of perked back up, but we've had fall leaf drop early September.
00:32:53:08 - 00:33:18:10
Just because everything's so dry. The trees are dropping their leaves. A lot of non-native Norway maples, which are not very well adapted to this type of weather. I see around town. They look awful, so I'm guessing they're going to get cut down coming up, and I. I have one in my front yard, which I have been, cursing at and and insulting and, and saying, you need to die.
00:33:18:12 - 00:33:44:18
And hey, I think it's about to die. After our awful drought that we've had these last few years. So, I'll have some Norway maple firewood and have the kids practice weed whacking around it. Yes. There you go. Well, it does a pretty good job of that itself. It's got some nice girdling roots, I imagine. Underneath the soil there, which is Norwood Maple is notorious for that.
00:33:44:20 - 00:33:57:06
I think we've mentioned this a few times on the podcast this year. Our our disdain of Norway maple for tree didn't want to be planted here, so we brought it over here.
00:33:57:08 - 00:34:31:23
So suffering will be over soon, though. It will be. But anyway, lawn stuff on hold. Even corporation you can't do that. And dry soil. So you just you just wait. Extended forecast, at least in, Macomb, is no rain for the next ten days. So nice and dry. Yeah, I think we're the same here. We were, you know, the radar the past week with the hurricane, we were just, west and north of everything and just barely missed.
00:34:32:00 - 00:35:02:19
So we got spit a little bit here and there, but missed all the and and usually cool dry falls are good for fall color when it comes to our deciduous plants. But a lot of folks are saying it's it might be more of a kind of tannish brown fall, because tree leaves are just giving up the ghost there, right at the very end that, you know, as the chlorophyl fades, all the other pigments have also faded.
00:35:02:21 - 00:35:18:24
And so we might not have a very good fall color, but that remains to be seen. You know, maybe trees in your area have tapped into a sewer pipe or something somewhere, and they're doing just fine. They're going to have some gray fall color.
00:35:20:12 - 00:35:37:23
well, that was a lot of great information about things that we could be doing around this time of year as we go from summer into fall and we start putting on our hoodies, or as Ken says, just keep wearing shorts. Well, the good growing podcast production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by Kent Johnson.
00:35:37:24 - 00:35:54:22
And a special thank you to Kent Johnson. Kuhn. Thank you for hanging out with me this week. It's good to see you again after a couple of weeks off. You know, as we galavanting around the state doing other extension things. Good to talk to you today. Yes. Good talking to you, too. I'm going to
00:35:54:22 - 00:35:56:23
go get my shorts and do a soil test.
00:36:00:21 - 00:36:19:24
And let's do this again next week. Oh, we shall do this again next week. Now the fall season has begun and the. Yeah, we're busier than ever. So, we we look forward to next week's show and where we will talk about more gardening topics. So listeners, thank you for doing what you do best. And that is listening.
00:36:19:24 - 00:36:26:09
Or if you're watching us on YouTube, watching. And as always, keep on growing.