Wash plants before returning to indoor space

By Bev Johnson | The Daily Journal

Published Saturday, September 8, 2007

If you put your houseplants out in the shade for the summer, start watching the night temperatures. When they are in the 40s, it is time to bring them in for the winter.

Before you do, however, be sure to give them a good bath with the hose set on strong spray. You don't want hitch hikers.

You can inadvertently bring in spiders, spidermites, aphids and who knows what else if you skip the spray bath. If you have coleus that you want to save, cut off the growing tips. These can easily be rooted in water. Most other plants will not do as well with just water roots.

Keep weeding. It is a pain but the weeds you remove now won't go to seed and make a zillion new plants next spring.

Potted trees and shrubs are a bargain this time of the year.

We have enough time before hard frost for them to get well rooted.

Do mulch them. This will keep them from freezing quite as quickly and preserve any moisture we get.

Water the snot out of all your trees and shrubs unless we get a very wet fall, or you could well see trees die next summer if they aren't watered well now.

Your flowerbeds may need water too. Mulch them after you have weeded and you will save yourself a lot of work now and in the spring.

You will want about a foot of mulch on flowers for the winter of course. Straw is ideal if you can get weed free straw. Leaves have no weeds but will pack down so you will need more of them to get the same protection. Forget what you have heard about oak leaves not being good mulch.

Just chop them a bit to disrupt the waxy cover on them and they will rot as well as any other leaf.

Adding pine needles to mulch lightens the mulch. It won't pack as much with the needles between the leaves. As the needles rot, they also add air spaces in the soil — a good thing.

Let a few flowers go to seed. Hybrids will grow all sorts of odd flowers. They don't come true. Others like poppies, calendula, dome and cosmos will readily reseed. More than some gardeners like actually.

It is easy to transplant or pull out the extras in the spring. California poppies especially like to go to seed before you are ready for them to.

Bev Johnson is a master gardener for West Otter Tail County.