Garden Talk! for the Heartland Garden Enthusiast

Worn out garden

Master Gardener volunteer hours due November 30

Mum’s not the word

Gardening tips for October

Winterizing the landscape class offered in Moberly

Upcoming events

http://extension.missouri.edu/adair/gardentalk.aspx October 2016

University of Missouri System, Lincoln University, U.S. Department of Agriculture & Local University Extension Councils Cooperating

Equal opportunity/ADA institution

Jennifer Schutter University of Missouri Extension Horticulture Specialist 660-665-9866 schutterjl@missouri.edu

If you need this newsletter in alternative format, please contact

Jennifer Schutter at the Adair County Extension Center.

FALL GARDENING TASKS There are several tasks to do in the garden during the month of October.

Finish fall seeding of lawns by October 15. MU Extension has several guides on lawn care including a lawn care calendar which explains what should be done in the yard each month of the year. Contact your county Extension center to request these guides or download them at http://extension.missouri.edu/.

Fall is a good time to plant trees and shrubs. The warm soil and cool air is good for root development. In some cases, plants that are put into the ground in the fall tend to establish themselves better than ones planted in the spring. This is because they have fall and the following spring to get established before the most stressful time of the year for plants, the summer.

Plant spring flowering bulbs like tulips and daffodils before the ground freezes. When planting bulbs, plant them in clusters. Dig a hole 6 to 8 inches in diameter and put 5 to 7 bulbs in each hole. Planting them like this will create a "bouquet" look. Bulbs can be planted at different levels in the same hole to ex-tend the time that they bloom. If you dig a hole 8" deep you can place 3 or 4 bulbs at 8" deep and then cover them with soil and then plant 3 or 4 more at 6" deep. By doing this, the bulbs planted at 8" deep will start flowering when the ones at 6" are almost finished.

Extend the vegetable harvest by using floating row cover. Row cover can add a few extra degrees of protection against frost. Floating row cover is a trans-lucent, spun polyester material that traps the soil’s latent heat underneath it when it is spread over plants. Since sunlight can pass through, it can be left in place for several days during a cold snap. This product is relatively inexpensive, can be found at many local garden centers and can be reused for several years.

Dig sweet potatoes before a killing frost. Harvest pumpkins when they have developed a deep, uniform, orange color and the rind is hard. Pumpkins can re-main in the garden through a light, vine-killing frost. All mature pumpkins should be harvested before temperatures drop into the mid to low 20’s. Green, imma-ture pumpkins will not turn orange after a killing frost.

The most popular use of pumpkins is for decoration as jack-o-lanterns. Besides being used as jack-o'-lanterns at Halloween, pumpkins are used to make pumpkin butter, pies, custard, bread, cookies and soup. When selecting a pump-kin for cooking, the best selection is a "pie pumpkin" or "sweet pumpkin." These are smaller than the large jack-o-lantern pumpkins and the flesh is sweeter and less watery. However, you can substitute the jack-o-lantern variety with fairly good results.

Pumpkins and gourds are readily available in October. Gourds are ready for harvest when the stems dry and turn brown. It is best to harvest gourds be-fore frost. Mature gourds that have a hardened shell will survive a light frost, but less developed gourds will be damaged.

What’s Inside

I have had several gardeners tell me lately that their vegetable gardens are worn out from too many years of gardening. If this is truly the case, then they are gardening wrong or the gardening season is to blame. Many things can go wrong with the garden season to make one think their garden is worn out. Too hot, too cold, too wet and too dry can cause plants to perform poorly. The last two years have been challenging to say the least. It could certainly be enough to make someone question whether there is something wrong with the soil.

It’s easy for gardeners to neglect adding nutrients and amendments back into the soil which have been removed from years of growing vegetables. These gardeners have spent years and years robbing the soil leaving it depleted and plants growing poorly. Vegetable gardening can be seen as a give and take. You feed the garden and the garden will give back to you in produce.

A garden soil is “living.” It is teaming with living microbes and it needs to be taken care of. It needs to be fed by adding organic matter. Adding leaves, grass clippings, and vegetable refuse can greatly improve the soils organic matter content. Another way of adding organic matter is growing cover crops which can be turned into green manure.

Soil testing in this situation is a must! If your soil pH is too high or too low or your soil is depleted of nutri-ents and low in organic matter, the soil test will let you know. Soil testing should be done every 3 years. We com-monly find where one nutrient is low and it is that nutrient causing the poor garden conditions. Once corrected many gardeners see a great improvement.

If you have been adding “amendments,” what have you been adding? Too much manure, too much wood ash, too much sand or too much saw dust can get a garden in terribly bad shape. “More is not always better!” Years of manure can lead to high salts. Years of wood ash can lead to high pH and potassium. Too much saw dust is way too much carbon.

Another problem we see is tilling for weed control. Gardeners love operating their tillers. Tilling every week or even a couple of times a month can destroy soil structure and cause soil compaction making plants not grow well. Limiting tilling to just a few times a year is a good practice to follow.

If you have questions about garden problems, one of the best things you can do is to call your local horti-culturist. It’s good to be able to talk and hash out some of the garden issues. We see many problems that come across our desk and you can count on if we don’t know the answer, we will surely find it out for you!

MASTER GARDENER VOLUNTEER HOURS DUE NOVEMBER 30 It’s time once again to begin compiling your volunteer hours for 2016. Report forms should be submitted to your club advisor at your November meeting, or the preferred method is to submit your hours online in the Master Gardener volunteer reporting system at .

It is an easy way to keep track of your hours. If I have been recording your hours for you in the online sys-tem and now you are going to do it, you must contact me and get your username and password. If you decide to enroll in the online reporting system and create your own username and password you will be in the system twice or you may have issues since you are already in there. So, please contact me for this information. Everyone who has a computer with internet access should be recording their own volunteer hours. The process of entering everyone’s hours that turns in a form, along with writing summaries for my 11 counties, takes hours and hours of time. So, if you will record your own hours in the system it will be greatly appreciated, but you must contact me for your username and password if I have been doing this for you in the past.

I include the volunteer hours in Extension annual reports for each county I serve in the northeast region. I will start pulling reports from the online system and tallying all reports received, the first week of December. Eve-ryone’s hours are important! Please do not be late or your hours will not be included in your county’s report. Don’t think just because you only did 20 hours or maybe less, that they are not important.

Please remember to use the correct project codes for your activities. Also, 45 minutes is recorded as .75, 30 minutes is .5, and 15 minutes is .25.

Thanks for all you do for the Master Gardener program and University of Missouri Extension! Keep up the good work!

WORN OUT GARDEN? By: Donna Aufdenberg, University of Missouri Extension horticulture specialist

They are big, beautiful and bold. Their show-stopping flowers pack a wallop of color. Few flowers signal fall’s arrival more than the cheerful chrysanthemum, mum for short, says University of Missouri Extension horti-culturist David Trinklein. Mums’ long-lasting blooms show off for weeks, long after other flowers have clocked out for the season. Not only are mums marvelous for fall decorating, but they also come with a history. Mums are one of the oldest known flowers. The Chinese raised them for ornamental and medicinal purposes more than 2,000 years ago. The Japanese emperor placed the chrysanthemum on his country’s official seal in the eighth century. Families used a mum insignia on family crests to boast of prominence. In ancient Japan, Japanese warri-ors etched images of mums onto their swords. In other cultures, they serve as grave decorations, and they are November’s official flower.

Now new varieties developed by plant breeders are making mums more popular than ever. A myriad of new colors, flower types and bloom dates abound each year. Mum lovers delight in new cultivars with improved growth habits and garden performance. A relative newcomer, the Belgium or European garden chrysanthemum, is a popular choice because of its spectacular size and showy color. Chrysanthemum is a ‘cultigen’. It has six sets of chromosomes, instead of the normal two. This makes mums sterile. If not for human intervention, mums as we know them today would not exist. Plant breeders also work to produce plants to bloom at specific times. Mums need long periods of darkness each day to be induced to bloom. In the past, many bloomed in mid- to late- sum-mer, depending on cultivar and temperature. Many of today’s popular cultivars bloom between late September and mid-October. Because of the cooler temperatures at this time of the year, they tend to remain attractive long-er. Garden mums are available in the spring as rooted cuttings established in small containers or during the fall as large, mature plants in or near full-bloom. Trinklein shares several tips for maintaining successful mums in the garden.

MUM'S NOT THE WORD: CHRYSANTHEMUMS SHOUT WITH BOLD COLORS

For spring mums:

Select a well-drained planting site that receives at least eight hours of sunlight. Space smaller plants far enough apart — 18 to 24 inches — to allow for the future growth. Space 30 to 36 inch-es apart for more vigorous cultivars.

Apply a granular fertilizer such as 5-10-5 or equivalent at the rate of two or three pounds per 100 square feet of surface area, and mix it into the soil. Apply a soluble starter fertilizer high in phosphorus (e.g. 15-30-15) immediately after transplanting.

Pinch spring-planted garden mums every three to four weeks for bushy, compact growth and more flowers. For most, pinch no later than July 4 to avoid removal of flower buds.

Garden chrysanthemums need about 1.5 inches of water weekly during the growing season.

Mulch plants with bark, wood chips or other or-ganic materials. This saves moisture and controls weeds. Check for aphids, two-spotted mite and powdery mildew. Garden chrysanthemums are mostly insect and disease free.

For fall mums:

Choose plants that are beginning to show color. These produce blooms for the longest time. Ex-pect bright colors even after light frosts and the colors to fade after heavy frosts.

Most potted mums grow in soilless growing me-dium high in organic matter. Plant in well-drained soil in the garden or flowerbeds. The roots of fall-planted mums find it hard to adapt to heavy garden soils when planted.

After transplanting, water to nourish and estab-lish roots but avoid applying fertilizer.

The National Chrysanthemum Society has 35 chapters across the nation. For more information, visit the Society’s website at mums.org.

Source: Dr. David Trinklein, state horticulture specialist, University of Missouri Extension

Produced monthly at the Adair County University of Missouri

Extension Center, 503 E. Northtown Road,

Kirksville, MO 63501 Ph. 660-665-9866 Fax 660-665-9876

Editor: Jennifer Schutter Production: Vanessa Miller, Jill Belling and our fabulous Master Gardener volunteers

University of Missouri Extension provides equal opportunity to all participants in extension programs and activities, and for all employees and applicants for employment on the basis of their demonstrated ability and competence without discrimination on

the basis of their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability or status as a protected veteran.

Garden Talk!

UPCOMING EVENTS

October 1: Red Barn Arts and Crafts Festival, 9 am-4 pm, Kirksville square.

October 4: Salt River Master Gardener meeting will be at the J. Thad Ray Memorial Conser-vation Area parking lot across from Clover Road Christian Church on Route W in Hannibal at 6:00 p.m. Kyle Monroe, For-ester from the Missouri Conser-vation Department in Hannibal will present a program on plant-ing and caring for native trees in Missouri. He will demonstrate planting a tree on site. Everyone is invited to attend.

October 14: Winterizing the Landscape class, 1-3 pm, Little Dixie Library, 111 N. 4th St., Moberly, MO. No cost to attend, but please pre-register by calling 660-665-9866.

December 2-3: Missouri Live-stock Symposium, William Mat-thew Middle School, Kirksville. www.missourilivestock.com

July 10-14, 2017: International Master Gardener Conference, Portland, OR. See the gardens of the Pacific northwest.

GARDENING TIPS FOR OCTOBER

ORNAMENTALS Plant spring bulb flowers. Continue watering, especially evergreens if soils are dry. Container grown and balled & burlapped trees and shrubs can be plant-

ed. Loosen the soil in an area 5 times the diameter of the root ball before planting. Mulch well after watering.

For best bloom this winter, Christmas Cactus, potted azaleas, and kalan-choe may be left outdoors until night temperatures drop to about 40 de-grees.

Cannas and dahlias can be dug when frost nips their foliage. Allow plants to dry in an airy, frost-free place before storage.

Spring bulbs for forcing can be potted up now and stored in a cool, frost-free place until it is time to bring indoors, usually for 12-15 weeks.

Transplant deciduous trees after they have dropped their leaves.

FRUIT Persimmons start to ripen, especially after frost. Monitor fruit plantings for mouse activity and take steps for their own

control if present. Place wire guards around trunks of young fruit trees for protection

against mice and rabbits.

VEGETABLES Continue harvesting tender crops before frost. Harvest winter squash and pumpkins before frost. Dig sweet potatoes before a hard freeze. Gourds should be harvested. Sow cover crops such as winter rye after crops are harvested.

TURFGRASS Seeding should be finished by October 15. Broadleaf herbicides can be applied now to control cool season weeds

such as chickweed and dandelion. Continue mowing lawns until growth stops. Keep leaves raked off grass to prevent smothering grass. Now is a good time to apply lime if soil tests indicate the need. Winterize lawn mowers before storage.

MISCELLANEOUS Week 1-Fall color begins. Week 3-Begin peak fall color in maples, hickories, and oaks. Week 4-End of peak fall color.

-Missouri Botanical Garden-

WINTERIZING THE LANDSCAPE CLASS TO BE OFFERED IN MOBERLY

A class on winterizing the landscape and preparing plants for winter will be held from 1-3 pm on Friday, October 14 at the Little Dixie Library, 111 N. 4th St., Moberly, MO. There is no cost to attend, but please pre-register by calling 660-665-9866. This program is open to all interested persons.