Winter Planning for a Successful Season

The weather outside may be frightful, but there’s still plenty of gardening related tasks to be accomplished during the winter season. Here are some things that can be done over the next few months in order to prepare for a successful gardening season to come.

• Help prevent damage to outside plants by gently brushing snow off of heavily laden shrubs and trees to prevent breakage and avoid burying shrubs and perennials when shoveling or blowing snow.
• Prune dead, diseased, or damaged wood on trees, shrubs & vines as soon as it is observed. A few minutes of tidying up now can save time later and give you some winter exercise.
• Add organic material to the compost pile or bin.
• Avoid walking on frozen lawns as it can break grass blades and damage crowns of the plants. Stick to driveways, sidewalks, and walking paths.
• Bare soil invites winter weeds into the garden. Cover bare areas with mulch and pull any weeds that appear to prevent them from going to seed in the spring.
• Monitor evergreens for bagworms sacks and remove them if found. Clip them off and bag them up to be disposed of with your household trash. Do not compost them. Bagworms can be highly destructive to trees such as arborvitae, spruce and cypress so clip the 1-2” sacks now to prevent the hundreds of eggs from hatching in the spring.
• Provide food and habitat for winter wildlife by keeping bird feeders and birdbaths filled throughout the season. You may even consider a birdbath heater which will keep the water just above freezing and available to wildlife that will desperately need it. Wait to cut back shrubs and perennials until the spring so that wildlife will have some winter cover. This will also increase the visual interest in your garden throughout the season.
• Read gardening books and magazines and plan for next year’s garden designs.
• Plant bulbs until the ground freezes or during a thaw or store in the refrigerator.
• Cut evergreens for fresh, indoor decorations.
• Keep firewood outside until 1-2 days before burning to prevent critters from waking up inside your home.
• Order seeds for next season.
• Clean & disinfect pots & containers.
• Have your soil tested before purchasing or applying any fertilizers or soil amendments.

Also, don't neglect your trusty tools!  Here are some tips on caring for your tools this winter so they'll be at their best when you need them next season.

• Check hoses and sprinklers for leaks. Small leaks can result in large quantities of wasted water and higher utility bills. Drain, coil & store hoses in a dry, protected area where they will not freeze.
• Remove any soil, vegetation, or rust from all tools using a strong stream of water, a wire brush, or scraper. Grill cleaning brushes work great for this task.
• Lubricate all tool pivot points and springs.
• Sharpen hoes, spades, loppers, pruners, and saws.
• Check all tools thoroughly for loose screws or nuts and tighten them accordingly. Replace or repair broken handles and other bent or broken parts.
• Spray all bare metal parts and cutting edges with a penetrating oil to prevent rust.
• Sand wooden handles smooth and wipe with boiled linseed oil to help prevent wood from cracking and drying or paint handles a bright color for quick and easy location in the garden.
• Repair or replace any tools with bent blades or teeth.
• All sprayer parts should be thoroughly washed and rinsed before storing. Most pesticide labels recommend a triple rinsing of sprayers. Oil any moving parts as instructed in the owner’s manual. Store sprayer upside down to allow it to drain and dry thoroughly.
• Store any chemicals out of the weather where they will not freeze. Check chemical labels for expiration dates. If expired, dispose of them as hazardous waste.
• Clean wheelbarrows, carts, and wagons thoroughly and remove and rust before touching up paint chips with spray paint to prevent rust in the future. Check tire pressure, inflate if needed, and grease wheels to keep them rolling smoothly and prevent squeaking. Store in a dry area.
• Clean and service lawn mowers and other power equipment such as tillers, chippers, trimmers, or weed eaters according to the instructions in the owner’s manual and store in a dry area.
• Avoid storing gasoline over the winter as old gasoline does not ignite easily, making the machines using it work harder, and often leading to frustration getting them to start. If you do store fuel, be sure it is in a will ventilated area away from your dwelling space.

Beat the Heat!

For those of you working in the garden or field this week, you're probably already aware that our area is under an excessive heat warning until at least mid-week, with temperatures in the high 90's and heat index values reaching into the 100's.  Please don't take this lightly.  Heat can kill!  If you're spending time outdoors, be sure you know the signs of heat related illness and take the proper measures to avoid it all together.  The National Weather Service has a great article on the subject so check it out and learn how to be prepared here: NWS Heat: A Major Killer.

Late Blight Rears Its Ugly Head Again

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but late blight, the disease caused by the fungal-like pathogen Phytopthera infestans, has been confirmed on a farm in Mercer County, NJ.  This is the first confirmed case of the disease in NJ for 2013.  This devastating disease of tomatoes, potatoes and other solanaceaous plants is notorious for it's ability to quickly wipe out entire crops, from a few plants in a home garden to entire commercially cultivated fields, putting farmers at serious financial risk.  Remember the Irish Potato Famine back in the mid 19th century?  Yup, that was late blight.  So if you're growing tomatoes in any capacity this year, I can't encourage you enough familiarize yourself with the symptoms of this disease, to check your plants at least twice a week (more frequently when the weather is as wet as it has been lately), and destroy diseased plants immediately.  If you're growing tomatoes and visit any other gardens or farms also growing tomatoes, especially any "you pick" fields, be sure to clean your hands, clothing, gloves, shoes and any tools used with hot, soapy water between locations to help prevent the spread as well.  For more information from Cornell University on late blight, including how to identify infected plants, go to http://nysipm.cornell.edu/publications/blight/.  Not sure if you have late blight or not?  Reach out to your county's Rutgers Master Gardener Helpline.  For Burlington County, contact the RMG Helpline at (609) 265-5050 or mgburlingtoncounty@gmail.com.  For other counties in NJ, check here: http://njaes.rutgers.edu/mastergardeners/helplines.asp.  For other states, check with your state land grant university cooperative extension program.

Late blight on mature green tomato fruit.
Rutgers Cooperative Research & Extension, (NJAES,)
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Late blight on mature green tomato fruit.
Rutgers Cooperative Research & Extension, (NJAES,)
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Rutgers Master Gardeners of Burl. Co. Spring into Action!

Well, it seemed as if it may never come, but spring finally made an appearance in Burlington County and now, following a frost two weeks ago, this week it's feeling more like summer!  The Rutgers Master Gardeners of Burlington County (RMGBC) and I have been hard at work, wrapping up our 2013 Initial Training Program, opening the growing season with the 2nd Annual Burlington County Garden Expo, and getting our eager hands into the soil at our many projects throughout the county.

Our training wrapped up with our annual tour of the Rutgers EcoComplex where Pat Evans told us all about how their bio-reactor landfill system works, and Russel Wright lead our group through the state-of-the-art research and demonstration greenhouse.  During these tours we learned how the energy demands of the greenhouse are met through the capture and utilization of gases from the landfill, as well as about the incubator businesses operating in the greenhouse and how the aquaculture system provides nutrients to their growing plants through the recirculating hydroponic irrigation system.

Bio-reactive landfill tour with Pat Evans

Greenhouse tour with Russel Wright

Even though most of New Jersey saw heavy rains and thunderstorms during the day, we managed to stay dry out at the Burlington County Community Agricultural Center (BCCAC) for the Garden Expo on Saturday, May 11.  In addition to the "Ask a Rutgers Master Gardener" table, the RMGBC had a Ramapo tomato plant sale, led educational programs on subjects such as The Climate-Friendly Gardener, Flower Arranging: Thinking Outside the Vase, and Gardening to Protect Water Quality, as well as ran the Children's Make-and-Take activities for the day.  Our Make-and-Take activities included potting up a few herbs and/or flowers as a Mother's Day gift for mom while learning about the importance of soils and making a radish seed necklace while learning the basics of how seeds germinate.  We all had a lot of fun and enjoyed the mild weather.  Thank you to everyone who came out and helped to make this event a success!

'American Gothic' photo prop

RMGBC Children's Make-and-Take area

Flower arrangements by RMGBC Educator Joan Johnson

We've dug on in (ha!) to all of our community projects for the year as well, including our ongoing projects such as our Demonstration Plots and IPM Scouting Team at the BCCAC, Donation Garden at Medford Leas, our Kitchen and Blended Gardens at the Pinelands Preservation Alliance, and the Children's and Butterfly Gardens at the Rancocas Nature Center, as well as a new project working with the Eagle Scouts to help design a teaching garden at Evans Elementary School.  Stay tuned for more updates on these projects as the season progresses!

Cleaning up the BCCAC Rain Garden

Bill Bamka, RCE Agricultural Agent
demonstrating the use of a square for
measuring thresholds for the IPM scouts.

Installing a new cold frame at the Medford Leas Donation Garden.

Snow? Really?

Well, here it is folks!  The reason I always urge gardeners to wait until early April before seeding and early May before transplanting anything into the ground in Burlington County.  Think back to the second week of March when the sun was shining and it felt downright toasty topping 60 degrees outside.  It seems a rather distant memory now as the snow continues to fall but back during that warm, sunny week the Rutgers Master Gardener Helpline phone here at RCE Burlington County was nearly ringing off the hook with callers anxious to know if it was safe to start their spring planting.  As tempting as it was, even for myself, I towed the frost date line and cautioned everyone to wait.  Aren't you glad you did?

Winning Winter Squash

Yesterday we harvested our trial field for new winter squash varieties two hybrid stars really shone!  The first is a new, round, pie pumpkin called 'Trickster'.  It's very similar to the 'Prankster' variety, but we saw much more uniform orange color with the 'Trickster' as well as greater stem quality and a touch better disease resistance.  The second, and a bit unexpected, winner was the 'Quantum' butternut squash.  Wow, what a producer!  High yield, amazing uniformity of color, size and shape with really nice, thick necks and, to be in a field with a fairly significant amount of both downy and powdery mildews present, it was virtually disease free.  If you're considering new varieties of winter squash for your garden next year, it would be hard to go wrong with these!

'Trickster'

'Quantum'

Save Seeds, Money, & Biodiversity!

With all of the variety that September garden harvests can offer, it's the perfect time to start saving seed for next year's garden, but you'll want to make sure to do it the right way in order to protect next season's bounty.  Seed saving can be a wonderful way to save costs in your garden as well as to preserve many of the lovely and tasty heirloom varieties, but there are several potential pitfalls you'll want to be careful to avoid.

First, keep in mind that every plant's seeds are not worth saving.  Hybrid plants, those created by cross breeding separate parent plants for specific features, often produce sterile seed or seed with such a high degree of genetic variability that the resulting progeny may not resemble your original plant at all, such as seen with the strawberry plant (Fragaria x ananassa).  Because of these genetic possibilities seed from hybridized plants are not recommended for saving.

Second, many garden plants are open pollinated.  That means that their flowers do not self pollinate but instead are pollinated via insects or wind, or a combination thereof, by nearby plants of the same family.  Open pollinated plants include many cucurbits (squash, cucumbers, melons), brassicas (cabbage, chard, broccoli, mustard greens, spinach cauliflower, kale, radish) and a variety of other plants such as beets, onions and basil.  These open pollinated plants will naturally cross with others plants of the same family growing in their vicinity, so in order for them to reproduce identical plants from seed they must be isolated from all other plants in their family that may pollinate them.  It is very difficult, if not impossible, for home gardeners to isolate plant varieties and avoid unwanted cross-pollination as these plants must be secluded by large distances to maintain the original variety.  Having plants with more variety from year to year may not sound like that big of a deal, but be aware that this cross-pollination will likely result in the gradual deterioration or "running out" of the seed to be harvested.

A third concern is that of seed transmitted diseases.  If a disease infects a plant at the end of the season it may not cause much visible damage at the time.  But, if seed is saved from the diseased plant, it may result in severe injury to or even death of young plants in the next season.

If after heeding these warnings you are still interested in trying your hand at seed saving, here are a few pointers on how to do so successfully.  To begin, always harvest from the best plants of each type.  Select disease-free individuals with the qualities of traits, such as flavor, color, size, shape, harvest time or flower you find desirable.  Remember that in order for seed to be viable, it must be mature.  This will likely mean that the fruit you take the seed from will be beyond the stage where it is desirable to eat.  So, you will have to decide which fruits to harvest to eat and which to let fully ripen to harvest for seed.  Seed set tends to discourage further fruit production as well as reduce the overall vigor of a plant, so you'll want to wait until the end of the season for each particular plant type to harvest seed.

Typically seeds are ripe when they have turned from white to somewhere between cream colored and dark brown, depending on the plant.  Flower seeds are mature when the flowers have faded and dried.  This will apply to many vegetable plants that you may not think of as flowers, such as lettuce, carrots, onions and most herbs.  Plants with pods, such as beans and peas, have mature seed when the pods have turned brown and dried.  Most seeds of fruiting plants, such as tomatoes and peppers, will be ready once they are past the peak of ripeness.  The catch to this is that if you wait for all of the seeds of a plant to ripen you may lose most if the seeds to birds or animals, so you'll want to try to harvest when most of the seeds are ripe.

Once seeds are harvested, they must be properly prepared in order to be viable.  Most seeds of pods and flowers should be prepared by the dry method.  This means that the seeds should be allowed to mature and dry on the plant as long as possible.  After harvest, complete the drying process by spreading them in a single layer on a screen in a well-ventilated area with low humidity.  You will know they are ready when the chaff (the dry, scaly protective casings of the seed) can be easily removed by blowing or gently rolling the seed in your hand.  For very small and lightweight seed, such as lettuce or carrot, you may want to put the seed in a paper bag to dry as the paper will help wick moisture away from the seed while also containing the seeds.

Seeds harvested from fleshy fruits should be prepared by the wet method.  This is done by scooping out the seed masses and soaking them in a little bit of warm water in some sort of container for three to four days, stirring daily.  This will allow the seed coatings to ferment, a process which kills some diseases and separates the good seeds, which will sink to the bottom, from the bad ones and the remaining fruit pulp, which will float at the top.  You can then pour off the pulp, water, bad seeds and any other undesirable material that may have floated up.  Remove the good seeds and spread them on a screen or paper towel and allow to dry completely, otherwise they may mold in storage.

Now your seeds are ready to be stored.  You can put them in envelopes, jars or plastic freezer safe containers, making sure to label containers with the seed type, variety and date harvested.  Toss them in the freezer for a day or two to kill off any pests that may have hitched a ride.  Finally, store the containers in a cool, dry location.  Keep in mind that seed viability will decrease with time.  Most seed should be used within three years of harvest but others, such as corn, onion and parsley, must be used within one year.

I wouldn't recommend planning your entire garden around saved seeds, as many things can go wrong, but it can be a great way to supplement catalog or store bought seeds and save yourself a few bucks in the process.  Start small and see how it works for you.  And remember, seed saving isn't only good for preserving unusual and heirloom varieties of vegetables, but also for many flowers and native plants as well!