22 November 25, 2009

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. In the minds of many people, Friday is the beginning of winter. The calendars may not agree, but it is usually all down hill from here in the weather department.

Hopefully, you have finished all of your garden chores. The leaves should all be raked and composted. Remember, the leaves that were diseased should be sent out for disposal. They can be composted, but if the temperatures do not get hot enough in your compost pile, you run the risk of having spores of the fungus disease still living in your compost. When you spread the compost around your plants, you run the risk of infecting your plants with a fungus disease.

Your broadleaf evergreens should be covered with burlap to protect them from the drying wind. Rosebushes and hydrangea should be covered up as well. If you don’t like the look of burlap-covered shrubs, you can apply an anti-desiccant spray to the shrubs. This spray is applied when temperatures are above 40 degrees. It must be allowed to dry in daylight hours to allow the UV rays to properly “ set” the wax.  As a little side note, you can use this spray to treat wreaths and evergreen garland. This will help to lessen the drying out of these holiday greens.

We have had rainy weather and relatively warm weather. This means that the grass is still growing. You do not want to have your lawn go into the winter with long blades of grass. If you do, the blades tend to fall over under the weight of the snow. This causes the blades to mat down. When this happens, the spring thaw will bring with it a fungus disease called snow mold. Snow mold will kill large areas of lawn. If you are looking forward to re-seeding large portions of your lawn next spring, then just forget to do that final lawn mowing this fall.

Many of you visit our garden center during the regular planting season. If you have not been by in the holiday decorating season, you should stop by after Thanksgiving. You will find that we have all of the things that you need for holiday decorating. We have been doing this for the past 27 years. A stop by our store at the holiday season, will allow you to see how different we look for the holidays.

Well, that’s all for this week. Drive safely and I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving.

I’ll talk to you again next week.