452-The Cure for Boredom: Gardening

Hi everybody, this is Joe Lample, the Joe Behind Joe Gardener and welcome to the Joe Gardener show. So here I sit on New Year's Day, excited to have this conversation with you about why when you're a Gardener, life is never boring. And I started thinking about this a lot after a month ago, I was interviewing Dr. Alan Armitage on episode 447. If you want to go back and check this one out, if you haven't heard it. But we had a great conversation. He is a retired professor emeritus at the University of Georgia and a widely respected horticulturist. But he loves gardening too and he's been doing it for over four decades. But during our casual conversation, he was just talking about a recent book that he had written called The Common Sense Gardener. And as sophisticated as he is and with all the many academic related and industry related books that he's written, I think it's 16 currently, he said, you know, the great thing about gardening is just never boring. He gave a few examples. But one of the ones he said that just really resonated with me particularly was, you know, in the fall when you're planting your daffodil bulbs, you are looking forward to the spring time when you know your one time efforts from the fall are going to give you years of joy in the following springs. And I can relate to that because I've done that and I'm looking forward to my early spring, flowering bulb lawn from all of the things that I've planted and some other things we'll talk about in a minute. But anyway, that got me thinking, wow, you know, for anybody that is a gardener that is feeling a little bored at any time of the year, they're missing opportunities. And I wanted to just nudge you a little bit to be thinking about this because we're really fortunate to be gardeners and never be bored or the potential to never be bored. And one other little story I want to share at this point before I get into specifics because what I've done is I've chronicled a typical year for me. And I think this will apply to most of you. And I understand in many cases, it's region specific. But I think you'll be able to extract many of these things I'm going to share with you that will keep you busy all year long, whether you have to tweak the month or two. Still, these are things that we should all be doing. But I want to take you back to something that I recall from a long time ago. Shortly after college, I was in my professional life and I was still wearing a suit and tie coming out of the business world degree and into that kind of job. And it wasn't where my heart was. But anyway, I found myself in this group of movers and shakers, young executive young guns that were really ambitious and doing very well in their careers at a very early age. And I happened to be in this group. I think it was called a 1% club. Anyway, it was in Atlanta, Georgia where I still live. But as I got to know these guys, I think it was maybe a group of 25 to 30 of us. As we got to know each other and we had an opportunity to share what our passions were or what we really like doing, I made it clear that I am a gardener. I love gardening and it's what I live for. I'm excited on Friday nights so I can get up early in the morning on Saturday and go out and garden. And unbeknownst to me, I had so many of those professionals coming up to me and literally saying, you know, you are so lucky to know what your passion is and to have such an interest that you're excited about it every day. I clearly had made that point. But then they went on to say, you know, I wish I had a passion. I don't even know what my passion is. I don't really have one. And for whatever reason that would be, I, it never dawned on me that there are people out there that don't have that passion or that thing to look forward to every day. And it made me realize and appreciate that there were so many things we could do as gardeners. And if you're new to this, you may not even have a clue as to how many things you could be doing in the months that you think there's nothing to do. And that's where I want to help you a little bit today. So indulge me as I go through some of these items and let me tell you, I know when I finished this episode, I'm going to remember or think of a ton of things I didn't have a chance to mention to you today that I should have. But it's okay because we still have a lot of things on my list. I make an outline and just some bullet points and it prompts me to share with you some of those things I had in mind. So that's how this episode came about. Sorry for the long intro, but I wanted to give you the backstory on what I wanted to talk to you about today. And hopefully this will inspire you because here we are. Obviously it's dead of winter and there's so much to do at this time of year that I don't want you to miss the opportunity. So let's get into all of that. 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One of the things I've shared with you in the past is a metaphor that I often use for the winter time. I refer to the freight train metaphor a lot and that is about this notion of being proactive versus reactive as a gardener. You can apply this to anything in life but as gardeners, you know, mother nature, we don't control any part about that. It's coming, she's got things that are going to be barreling down the tracks, hence the metaphor for the train. But as a proactive gardener, you could be or a reactive gardener. Let's do that. Let's say you're crossing the train tracks and you look way down the tracks and you can see a train way off in the distance and you don't think much of it because it's so far away. That train is moving faster than you realize and you can't tell it from that far away. You just know it's coming but you're not worried about it. A minute or so later it's making some good headway and the next thing you know, it's barreling down on you and if you don't get out of the way, it's going to run you over. That's the way I think of the winter time for gardening. This is the opportunity that we have. Whether or not we can do some physical gardening which we can and I'll tell you those, there is such a great opportunity for sharpening the saw, honing your skills, educating yourself, becoming a better, smarter, more confident gardener because the thing about gardening is I'm sure you're well aware. You can never know it all no matter how much you know now and for me is nearly a lifetime gardener from the age of eight until today and until I'm compost. I'm going to continue to try to improve my skills every day and this is the ideal time to be taking advantage of that. With that, let me just give you some examples of things you're probably already thinking of or doing but I'm going to remind you and let you know some of the things personally that I do all throughout the year starting every day but right now because here we are in New Year's Day. Classes. I love taking advantage of in-person classes. Fortunately for me, I'm involved in some certification programs through the University of Georgia and there are in-person classes as well as online classes but an example would be winter tree ID and we'll walk out into the woodland area of the state botanical garden in Georgia and we'll learn to identify trees in the winter time because of their unique aspects that sometimes you don't notice in the summer and seed cleaning. I went to a class with the Native Plant Society two weeks ago on cleaning your seeds that you would harvest in the fall and we'll talk about that when we get to that point but you need to let them go through a cycle of drying and ripening before they're ready to be cleaned to sow. There's a skill involved in that and there's a lot of nuances that if you don't know them, you may miss even identifying what the seed is versus the chaff but it's fascinating to me and if you're not into seed starting yet, I hope that you will add that to your interest as far as your gardening activities because this is something that really can fill your winter time and spill into spring and fall in other parts of the year too and it's just the most exciting thing for me is seed, seed starting and understanding how seeds work and just the miracle of a seed in all that comes from that. Okay, so winter tree ID, seed starting, seed cleaning, these are in-person classes or you can do these online and they're probably in wherever the main city is where you live or the small town that you're in. Maybe there's a master gardener group that's teaching these but just be on the lookout for it, subscribe to local newsletters, go online to the Extension Services for your area and find those because yes, we could do all of this online. We could watch YouTube videos but there's something about being with your people face to face, older to shoulder when it's cold outside but you all are geeking out on learning something about gardening and it's a hands-on activity and I love it. I'll never get tired of that and I am looking forward to all the courses and classes I'll be doing this winter time and I do that every year and then there are symposiums and gardening shows, garden shows. I have for years been very busy on the speaking circuit, not nearly as busy as I used to be because I've chosen not to be but for a long time I was gone for many of the weekends from January through March and sometimes into early April doing my speaking opportunities. It's major flower shows like the Philadelphia flower show and the Northwest flower and garden show and there are great garden shows all around the country and the world for that matter. But the reason these shows are so popular from January and to late winter is that people have cabin fever. They can't really do what they'll be doing soon in the spring in the summertime without or gardening activities but they want to be inspired and they want to get out of the house and what better venue than a gardening show for that and they really are inspiring and they're, you know, the educational opportunities, the garden setups that they always have, the displays where you can really get some good ideas and inspiration and then of course the vendor section of the shows where you can come home with a lot of plants and garden chauchki or whatever it is that you or seed packets or whatever it may be but there's just the skies the limit on all the things that you could learn and bring home with you from these gardening shows and symposiums especially than symposiums because those are educationally focused and your your local botanical garden probably has them as well as you just have to kind of look around your native plant society especially and I just would love for you not to miss these opportunities because once you get busy once that freight train has come down the tracks and it's very close to you you don't have time for all these things to get ready for the gardening season and to sharpen your skills with these in-person events so yes I'm very excited about this time of year in fact my busy is for my company and for me I don't think there's any way that I'm any busier the rest of the year than I am from January through March getting ready for what's to come but a lot of that has to do with education so here are a few more specific things now obviously books you can't be a good gardening book and I have a lot but I every day in the morning and in the evening I make a point and it's become a habit but it's something I look forward to is and this is year round reading to get some good information from really great books so I'm always looking for really great books that can feed what it is that I'm really looking to increase my knowledge on and there's no shortage of those but and I don't have a shortage of books either so it's a matter of which book do I read next but it is just something I hope that you know you may not be a reader but maybe you can you like audio books there's a lot of gardening books now through audible and that you can listen to and so there's other other ways to still consume the information without you know reading the physical copy but for me I love to read and of course the pictures of the diagrams that go with it always help something else an activity for wintertime as we speak I have I think 1472 cell trays that I sowed pepper seeds in five days ago and some of them are already germinating now I know you're saying well that's really early in the year why are you doing that well depending on what you're growing sometimes they take a long time to germinate or they take a long time to mature to the point that in April when they're ready for transplanting they're of decent size and for me that's the case with these pepper seeds that I've started and it's exciting that because today is the very first day I've seen a lot of germination in those trays so already on New Year's Day I'm getting off to a great start with some excitement on seedlings that are starting to germinate but whether or not you are into vegetable gardening which in my case because of the peppers those are edibles and not everybody's a vegetable gardener but what if you are a native perennial grower you want to have more native plants and flowers in your garden this year winter sowing is one of the best opportunities that you can do that doesn't require any special skill set because these are flower seeds that oftentimes need a period of cold weather exposure combined with moisture before they will be triggered to sprout and it takes oftentimes two months or more of whether that's cold and then maybe wet and then maybe warm and just the cycles of nature is basically what I'm saying and by April a lot of times you will have all kinds of seedlings that have sprouted and you it's been a very hands-off activity for you but it's something that you can look forward to from the easy bit of seed sowing that you can sprinkle across some cell trays or into plastic bags with some damp soil and then you really just set them outside in a somewhat protected area and kind of forget about them you put a little bit of protection over them to keep the critters away but that's about it and I'm telling you it's really that easy but that's something that you could look into and I've got some podcast episodes that talk about that specifically if you'd like to know more we will put links in the show notes for that on where you can go listen and watch or whatever it is that we've created for you to help you with some of these things such as winter sowing or using the milk jugs that's another form of winter sowing and we've got you covered on both of those winter pruning now sometime between January and late March is when I do all of my heavy pruning when plants and trees are dormant because that's really the time you want to do that type of pruning you're heavy pruning when the leaves are off and you can see what you're doing and you can reshape your plants or cut them back and rejuvenate them this is the time that that happens and so you can stay very busy depending on the size of your landscape or property or your garden that can take up many days and it's a fun activity too and sometimes people feel intimidated by it but if you do maybe it's a book that you're going to read on pruning or maybe there's a pruning course or online classes or something like that that you could be taking right now just ahead of that I don't do any heavy pruning after the wintertime unless it's dead diseased or crossing and you can do that really anytime for the health of the plants you're trying to save you can get those out but for the rejuvenation or the reshaping or the reinvigoration this is the time to do that well I like to wait until late February for me or sometime by mid March right before the growing season kicks in I don't want those cuts to be exposed for too long before the new growth comes on I don't want to create an opportunity for those open wounds to sit there too long now they do heal themselves but anyway I don't want to get into the weeds on this one because I have a lot to cover but there are things to know volunteer opportunities for example again the native plant society for me they have great volunteer opportunities for working with the plant propagation department or other areas but if you're looking for an activity that you again can get with fellow gardeners and do something productive while you are learning this is great so look for those volunteer opportunities plus obviously you feel really good in the time that you invest in those as well all right here's another one that's really good for this time of year speaking of dormancy taking out some of the invasive non-native plants and vines and trees that you're struggling to get a handle on this is a really good time to do that because you can clearly see things that maybe get camouflaged in with all of the other things in a dense area of woodland or your yard I always bookmark this time of year knowing that I'm going to get out with my handheld matik which is a way to chop into the vine that's coming out of the ground and sever it or dig out the roots preferably you're just getting the whole root out if you can and do it that way there are a number of things you can do to cut back or take out those invasive non-native plants including if you had to this is an opportunity where there's an argument to be made for using herbicide in a very controlled single use application that's highly targeted specifically to what it is that you're trying to eradicate so for example if you have an invasive vine that's growing up a tree and you really can't trace it all the way back to its origin because it's just entrenched too deep into the soil and you can't really even find out where that is if you make a cut just above the surface and then you can dip the part that's closest to the roots into a bottle that may have some herbicide in it so the wounded part of the cut is in contact to absorb some of that herbicide or maybe it's a it's kind of a squirt style bottle that can have maybe a little flip top on it that opens it up so that you can apply it but then you can close it again so that doesn't accidentally apply more so that would be a good example of maybe using some herbicide right onto the stem cut where it gets absorbed in so you're not spraying anywhere outside of it you're not getting any drift onto your clothes or onto your skin and wear some gloves of course but things to think about but a great opportunity to take advantage of a time where you may not have it otherwise as good and ways to do that I've just given you a couple examples but that will get you thinking these are all just under the category this time of year and as you well know it's seed catalog time and probably a lot of these have shown up for you already I got both of these yesterday in the mail two of my favorite companies for my seeds and these are just not what you use to order your seeds these are books these are full of education and information and if you take the time to scroll through them be careful because obviously you want to order more than you planned on so use that discipline but also enjoy all the extra information that is provided in these catalogs because they've really gotten good at doing double duty for you to inspire you get into some seed starting but learn a lot along the way so don't forget about diving into those catalogs this time of year or anytime for that matter one more thing I want to say before we move on and I recognize this really took a lot of time but there's a lot to do this time of year think about this as we move on to other parts of the year I mentioned the metaphor for the freight train being proactive versus reactive and trying to do all the things you can when you think there's not much to do but there is and these are the time this is the time to be doing that before you don't have a choice and the freight train has arrived and now it's all hands on deck because you've got to get those plants in the ground and get them watered and mulched and on we go but I was watching Gardner's world one of my my favorite gardening show on TV other than mine I'll be biased about that but no it really is it's better than mine it's the best gardening show out there Gardner's world through the BBC they were featuring a garden it was a late fall wintery scene and these gardeners were being interviewed and doing their thing as the camera was just kind of following them along but one of the gardeners was so passionate about this time of year he just loves doing the work in this time of years and it was wet snow and it was it just looked cold sitting in my warm den watching this show but I tell you that just to let you know this phrase that he said that really summed it up for me and I'm in so back to this freight train metaphor he said something that really means the same thing he said you know the thing about winter is it's the one time of year you can catch up with nature that instantly resonated with me for the reasons I've just told you but he's right mother nature is kind of taking a break and you can catch up otherwise it's all over but let's move on and I promise you these other months of the year won't take nearly as long but it does emphasize how much there is to do right now so don't miss that opportunity so that you can proactively be ready for when mother nature wakes up and starts throwing all kinds of to do is at you so let's just kind of move into March I grouped winter into January February and into March but there's some overlap in each of these categories but in March whether or not you are a vegetable gardener or not this is a great time before everything is waking up for you to get out into your beds whether they're raised beds or in ground beds whether it's edibles or flowers or both prepping your beds top dressing with compost making sure you've kind of scuffled out all the weeds that you can see because there are winter weeds and summer weeds so you're going to see some weed activity but go ahead and either pull them out or take your scuffle hole or whatever your weeder of choice is and go ahead and clear the deck there and get some mulch down whether it's you know natural wood mulch or if you've got a leaf corral that you've set aside for some of your leaves whatever it is for you but before you go ahead and take on everything you're about to do with planting enrich the soil maybe it's top dress as I often do or always do with compost just ahead of my spring planting I top dress with one to two inches of compost sometimes I'll work it into the soil but the reason why this is such a good time to do that is you have a blank slate especially if you have a vegetable garden or even in your flower garden when things are still dormant you can liberally drop down a nice layer of compost and leave it there and let it do its thing it will work its way down the microbes and the earthworms and the arthropods and everything in the soil food web will bring it down and incorporate it into your existing soil this is when you want to do that and it's a good time to do that's the best time to do that not that there's a bad time but this is definitely a great time for that so prepping your beds and especially with compost now if you are into growing food and you are into succession planting or extending the season and you can get a cool season crop of plants in the early part of the year as well as in the fall you want to have those seeds started and seedlings ready to go into the ground in March now you may need to supplement that with some frost cloth or you know a low tunnel or something to keep the the warmth of the soil trapped inside that plastic or whatever that frost blanket is for you but I've been able to get the most incredible crops of cool season plants you know my broccoli my cabbage my kale all of those things starting in March and a lot of times I'll do those seeds in January so that they're ready to transplant and there we go but they're able to mature so that I can get the harvest before it gets too hot and that's the beauty of having two seasons for that using this the early spring late winter for that so you get to take advantage of two times in the year potentially and even if you live in a part of the country where you think it may be very cold mega cowden will tell you otherwise who lives in the northern side of Minnesota and she's doing succession planting and getting a lot of cool season crop activity more than just the time that you think would be appropriate for that now before I move on into April May obviously that wasn't a lot of activities that I mentioned for you in March but there's a lot of carryover for activities that you may have started in January and probably February such as seed starting and for me I've already mentioned how much I love seed starting so I've by this time well before now now being where we are in this timeline of March I've started in my case probably 3500 to 4000 seedlings because my daughter and I have a little seedling business for April sales to our community for vegetables and herbs and some perennials so we got to get those started so we are busy obviously not just sewing the seeds but then transplanting them about four weeks after they germinate which would put that into early March and then ongoing you know irrigation and maintenance and blah blah blah it's all fun to me but let me tell you you're never going to be bored if you want to just add seed starting to your list of gardening activities you will be busy in a very good way I look forward to it every day and it just brings me lots of joy and I'm sure it would be for you too so the seed starting whether it's winter sewing or proactively working with seeds in your seed starting room or a room in your house or maybe you have a greenhouse or wherever it is you don't need a lot of equipment you don't need to spend a lot of money but you can easily start some seeds and bring great joy to your the dull drums of the gloomy time of year all right so let's move into April and May it is time to plant your seedlings no matter where you live between April and May you've got seedlings that you either purchased at the nursery or garden center or you've started those seedlings and once the soil warms up enough and you've passed the risk of frost and that just depends on where you live and you can easily google that to find out your last expected frost date you and after that go ahead and you can reliably sow those seedlings into the ground and you're off to the races and obviously this is going to keep you busy through harvest time which can be two months three months four months five months or until frost kills it in the in the fall so you're going to be busy obviously so planting your warm season garden and as I mentioned top dressing if you have it by now you want a top dress with some compost if you've got it or you can find it and then add your mulch because that's going to help cut down on the weeds and retain the moisture and do all kinds of good things that mulch does and then if you need to get your trellis is ready for your climbing plants or the support for your tomato plants or your pole beans or whatever may be that's going to be climbing and if you're doing cool season crops in March spilling over into through June you're going to need a trellis for your sweet your peas for example so these are the things that you want to really jump on now before you realize gosh those plants are getting away from me and I need to get that infrastructure in place well don't wait for that do that right after you get those seedlings in the ground because you know you're going to need them so you might as well have them ready before you know you're in triage mode and you're just trying to prevent chaos back to plant sales I just mentioned I grow a lot of seedlings with my daughter a lot of seeds to sell as seedlings and for us it's April for you it may be May like my friend Pete it'll be you know sometime mid to late May for all the his seedlings sales but the point is it's a wonderful time to shop the market shop the farmers market shop your local purveyor your local grower whoever that person is that you can trust to sell you reliable seedlings and you can look forward to that and whether it's edibles or whether it's native plants one of my favorite activities in early April is to scope out the the native plant societies annual plant sale it's a fundraiser for them as it probably is for many of the places that you would be going to but these are seedlings that have been grown out by the people in the organizations or they've been donated by nurseries or started from seed somewhere else but generally you can rely on these being really high quality plants at a very good price and you can find things that aren't carried generally at your garden centers or nurseries oftentimes these are really what you're going to want if you're trying to build your native plant garden this is where you want to go you want to keep your eye out for those native plant sales and so check your native plant society for wherever you live whatever state you're in I think there's there in every state so be on a lookout for that another activity in May starting in May but carrying over thank goodness through the summertime is plant propagation now this is not seed starting this is moving on to taking cuttings and there are different times of year that you can take cuttings depending on the plant some respond better later in the year when it's semi hardwood or hardwood cuttings but there are some plants where you can take the cuttings as soft wood cuttings when they're as the name implies their soft wood they haven't really started getting woody yet but they respond well and they root out quickly at that time of year so for me that happens in May and I love propagation it's a very fun activity and talking about something you can always look forward to not only is the activity fun but like planting the bulbs in the fall when you take that cutting and you pot it up and you set it aside in a matter of weeks to a month or two you're going to have roots growing and that plant is going to show new growth and then you're going to probably pot it up or transplant it outside but all of that is very exciting and you did that for free and the sky is the limit on what you can propagate so many plants take well to propagation once you just know some simple techniques on how to do it based on that plant and again there are plenty of books on that there's courses and there's videos for everything like that but if you're wanting to expand your gardening horizons and learn a new skill and grow out your garden for free do it with cuttings and plant propagation and for you that's going to start like for me sometime early late spring early summer let's say and then ongoing after that okay I'm going to move on to more into the summertime here and we'll pick June and July so now we're into the height of summertime June and July are really when everything is kicked into gear it's warm enough in the soil the weather's great and the plants are taking off in the northern hemisphere southern hemisphere it's flipped so my shout out to all of you I recognize that this is not exactly the right timing for you but you get it anyway let's say June and July is everything is kicking in for us flower garden the vegetable garden the native plants the trees are now you know beyond their initial leafy now and so there's plenty to do maintenance wise and you're well aware of some of the things you have to do we have to do the weeding we have to do the disease control we have to keep an eye out for the the pests that may be causing some damage the insects or the critters as well so that's plenty of to do's on their own but if you're not busy this time of year you need to ask yourself why that is maybe you need to be telling me some things I need to incorporate even if everything is going well one of the reasons for that is because of the proactive nature where we're out there in our gardens as often as we possibly can circumventing problems that we may see coming on and that's one of the best things that I love about being out in the garden often even with hand watering you know we're doing irrigating too if we're in the absence of rain but for me I love to hand water with my watering one and as I do I'm standing there over plants and I'm looking at them because you have to stand still for a matter of seconds whether it's 30 seconds or a minute and you're seeing things that maybe you wouldn't have seen otherwise by nature the fact that you're not moving and you're usually almost in direct contact eye to eye with the plants and you can see those things and you can kind of ward off those potential threats but that goes on through June, July into August and lots to do there but plant propagation is a carryover from May and most of my plant propagation is in June and July when things go to semi-hardwood because that's a very conducive time for plants to be receptive to rooting out once they you've taken them as a cutting and I have a great podcast episode that I did on plant propagation with Bre Arthur she's one of the best plant propagators anywhere we did a great conversation about that so if you want to learn more about that and then have ideas on how to get started we'll have the link in the show notes for that episode as well for plant propagation it's a good one one of my favorites in fact so the June and July activities I didn't spend a lot of time there because I think you already know what you need to know and you're not going to be not busy that time of year so I trust that you will be out in your garden often enough that we can move on to August when a lot of people think that okay I'm done you know plants are dying back they've had it they're they're haggard and the diseases have gotten to them and I'm tired and it's hot and you know all those reasons that we kind of dial it back or throw in the towel by the time August gets here fair enough but I'm here to tell you that I would hate for you to just call it a day for the year in August because some of the best things that I grow here in my garden and for many of you it's the cool season edibles that happen in the fall time but here's the thing you just can't all of a sudden when you get to September start planning your seeds thinking you're going to have enough time you will not you need to be thinking of those back up the truck to July and start sewing those seeds if you're a seed starter and I would actually recommend that you do start seeds for this because I haven't seen many nurseries or garden centers providing a lot of inventory options for you to have cool season crops when you want to plant them as seedlings at the proper time which generally is late August or early September and it may seem counterintuitive that I'm talking about cool season crops in the hottest time of the year but here's the thing for you to know with seedlings young seedlings which is what you're going to be planting they can handle some heat at the beginning of the season but they don't want to mature in the heat they're not going to produce their crops that you're looking to harvest a few months from now when it's super hot but by the time we get past the heat that's when the productivity of those plants starts to put on what we're going to be harvesting but they can start when it's hot and they need to because you're going to need that time because what happens if you wait too late you're never going to get to the harvest because once the day length drops to 10 hours a day the plants basically go into a dormant state they just don't continue to grow they don't continue to produce and they just are kind of in a static state so you need to hope that you've started early enough so that your broccoli is ready to harvest when you get to what's called the persiphony period and that is that time where the day length is 10 hours or less and the light is lower in the sky and just things change so you will notice that if you haven't yet be mindful of that and that is why we want to be busy with our cool season crops that are going to be growing in the fall during the late summer time when I start my seeds for those crops in mid-July inside in a controlled environment where it's not too hot and I can control the lighting and the temperatures just generally the ambient temperature of my home so let's just say that's 72 degrees that's perfect for what I would be sewing and then they just grow out over the next six weeks and then by then it's you know time to get them into the ground and then again it's okay because the soil even though it may be warm and the weather's still hot they're okay at that point and they'll continue to grow something else that you can be doing related to an activity that's going to happen in the future and that is to order your bulbs and whether that is your flowering bulbs like your daffodils and your tulips and your snow drops and your irises and all of those early spring late winter flowering bulbs that are what we look forward to that gets us excited well you need to order those so that you have them in your hands to plant in October or November because they need that time before they're going to do what they do as they emerge the following year now the reason why you need to do this in August is if you're wanting certain varieties especially you'll need to order those before they sell out and even though bulb companies have done a better job building up their inventory all too often for many of the things I'm looking for if I've waited too late they're sold out and that includes you know looking for those in September when you're not even going to plant them until November they're already sold and this is also true for garlic so even if you're not a flower bulb planter if you're wanting to have your garlic and you want the best varieties I encourage you to take that August time frame and map out what you want and place your order and then they'll wait to ship them to you won't have to worry about storing them until planting time they'll usually time it so that they have your zip code so they know the ideal time to send them to you and then they'll take care of the storage for you that's the best of both worlds but don't forget that and be on the lookout too for those ones you want and get those orders in another activity I'm still doing is cuttings I'm taking now some semi hardwood and I'm moving into more the hardwood cuttings as the year progresses but still it's a nice window of opportunity where you can get those rooted out before it gets too cold and they go dormant also if you have wanted to do some certain trials or experiments that you just never had time to do because you were so busy with all your other gardening activities for the other times of year one of the things I always wished I would have done and I never end up having time because I don't make the time for it or certain trials and one in particular just to give you an example is other types of soil medium that I could be using for seed starting now I have my favorite Pro Mix BX and it's a Pete based product and I've talked about this several times I'd rather not use Pete Moss although it's the industry standard it's very good it's easy to work with it does its job but there's some issues with you know using Pete that has some environmental impact that we should be thinking about so I would love to find an alternative for that but I need to trust that what I would switch to is going to be reliable enough to work and I don't regret it when I it's time has gotten away from me and now it's too late to start over such as the 3500 to 4000 seeds that I start in the winter time I need to know that what I'm sewing them into is going to work but I don't have time to experiment with that then I need to be ready to go it's go time but in August I have time for that and I could do that inside so if I wanted to use something I'm working with Pete Moss it's a paper based seed starting medium that's been very good it holds a lot of moisture there's a little bit of a learning curve to getting used to working with it when you're used to working with something else but I really want to perfect my craft with that so August would be a great time for me to do that or whatever the other activity would be that you want to just kind of tinker around with that you haven't had time to do related to gardening well August would be a nice month maybe for you to find an indoor activity that allows you to get to that when other times of the year just don't suit that as well I'm going to add one more thing here I just thought about for August yes the garden many parts of it have kind of stopped or slowed down or I've extracted some plants that are just done and not as much to do in August compared to the rest of the summer but it is a very good time to do a project so if you have something on your list maybe it's to build a potting bench or a rose arbor like these are things that I've actually done in August or expand my nursery area next to my greenhouse I choose August for that time because I I'm freed up from some of the other chores I would normally be doing and these are projects I want to have for my garden but I know I'm not going to be able to get to them at other times of the year so if you agree that August or whatever month you decide is the best inactive time compared to every other part of the year pick your project for that year and get it done you will feel so good about having it done and just watching your gardening infrastructure grow or whatever it is that you're trying to get to dedicate some time and make it happen you will not regret it okay so now we're into September we have our cool season crops started and ready for transplant or already transplanted like I do in late August but definitely by early September for me here in zone eight a and land a Georgia area timing wise you'll just match that up for you and once you get your edibles planted again it's still hot so be sure that you have mulched because that's going to cool the roots at the surface it's going to help hold in the moisture and it's going to give your plants a little more opportunity to adjust without so much of that heat coming down right at the surface also irrigation because the mulch is good for holding in the moisture you just need to make sure that there's consistent moisture don't over water but don't let them dry out either so consistent moisture is always the key that would be an activity that's going to keep you on your toes at least until everything is established and things start to cool down and also prepare for upcoming frost now cool season plants they can all handle some level of frost but how much depends on the plant this is that freight train metaphor again where you want to be ready before all of a sudden you've got a severe freeze warning happening tonight and you're not ready so get your frost cloth or your blanket or your hoops or whatever it is that you're going to use to protect your plants in ground so that they're not dine off and you can extend the season and just keep it going but if you wait obviously you may be scrambling to find that material or wonder what you're going to do and let me tell you having been there it's not fun to have to do that in the moment something else I just thought about here that applies not only to September but once your flowers start really putting on their displays you need to deadhead them in order to continue to have them produce more flowers that will stimulate more flower growth and you'll get twice as many from your cut if you cut it at the right place for every one stem cut you'll get two new stems coming up the sides I know September is a really nice time of the year for your zinnias and your dalias coming on but many that you'll be planting need to be deadheaded what I do is I cut them and bring them inside cutting them back is really key to more production and as we move through the fall September and October I do think if there's a time of year where you can really catch your breath it is the fall and as for fall in general as far as growing especially vegetable garden if you're not doing that and you love the taste of fresh fall vegetables the cool season the broccoli the cabbage the cauliflower the kale the Brussels sprouts the peas all of those delicious crops the lettuce is on and on they don't grow in the summertime and if they did they're better they're just not happy they need the cool weather and you're missing that opportunity because let me just tell you this there's nothing better than homegrown fresh fill in the blank of your cool season crops spinach kale all those other things I just mentioned the snow peas the snap peas all of that when you grow them yourself try it you'll compare the grocery store to your own homegrown no comparison don't miss that opportunity and probably for everything I'm talking about especially this right here the cool season vegetable garden I've got lots of podcast on it and blog posts and things and again we'll have those links in the show notes but I have a lot of information that can really dig into everything I'm talking about so be sure to check out all the links that we're going to be posting here for those things that I'm mentioning October is also a really good time if you like working with mulch especially arborist wood chips to put into your native plant beds or wherever you would be using the mulch maybe your pathways for me it is putting in all my landscape beds around the property outside of my vegetable garden but I use chip drop which is a free service in some major cities that allow you to get the wood chips that an arborist company has collected from a tree job they've just had that maybe in your neighborhood they've cut down trees they've shredded them up and now they need a place to take their wood chips and they really like having a place close by so they don't have to go to wherever they usually go and probably pay a tipping fee for the offloading of it and I love that mulch and so you might want to check that out but I like dispersing all of that mulch usually it's a full truckload size so that I think that's 10 cubic yards and maybe more around my bed so that they're there before the leaves fall because that's the other thing we're going to talk about next but it helps improve the soil and it helps keep the weeds down and it continues to just add organic matter slowly over time into those beds so this would be a good time October's my favorite month to really take advantage of and make sure that all of that gets dispersed before the leaves start falling because I like the leaves to be the layer on top so since I'm talking about leaves let's go there next there was a time where many of us were really trying to do everything we could and some of us still are to get the leaves off our property and we now know that leaving the leaves is a very good idea for wildlife and amphibious creatures and lots of insects that overwinter there and the caterpillars that do that that the birds rely on when they have their clutches of little baby birds that need to eat thousands of caterpillars before they fledged the nest so all of those things are examples of why we now know that leaving the leaves not necessarily on our lawn but just getting them moved a little bit but not taking them off our property so leaf management is something that has taken on a different look these days rather than a big job of removal so with those leaves now yes don't let them build up into a thick layer on your lawn but also please find another place on your property if possible for them and maybe it's just the beds off to the side of your lawn area like it is for me that's what I do and just let them build up plus those leaves will break down and improve your soil even more in time so rather than thinking to leaves as a nuisance think of them as a gift to gardeners and wildlife it happens in October November okay still in October November but if you've got native perennials that are going to seed now you know the flowers are fading and the asters and the jow pie weed and the iron weed and the solodoggo or golden rod all of these are going to seed and we can save those seeds to clean them as I talked about at the start of this podcast and get them ready to winter sow and plant back out but that happens in the fall so we need to be ready for that and many of these seeds are so tiny once the seed heads dry and they start releasing the seed if we are not ready for those we're going to miss that opportunity and so there are things you could do ahead of time such as get those organzo bags that you the mesh bags with the little pull tie on it that you can put over the flower heads so that as those seeds may drop out you've got those collected now you could cut the stems ahead of time but I prefer to let my seeds mature on the plant but I don't want to lose the seeds and that's why those are organzo bags really work well for that and there's other things you can do but I'm just giving you a heads up that there's some activity that you can really be doing to make sure that you collect those seeds and again these are free and a great way for you to expand your garden especially with your native plants and perennials now there are some maintenance jobs you need to do and if you're growing values you'll probably want to lift those tubers this time of year and bring in all those non-hardy plants so if you've got a lot of container plants outside they're tropical or can't take the cold weather you need to find a place for those so that job is my least favorite gardening activity if you want to put that in a category of gardening but you need to do that so that you can get them back out obviously once it warms up again but I would say my favorite activities for November here are planting my bulbs in the fall that will bloom in late winter early spring and then the seed collecting of my native perennials but back to when Alan Armitage mentioned that in our conversation in episode 447 about just all the things that we have to look forward to that's one that easily stands out is the fall planting because that's such a reward again for that one-time effort that you would put in to get those planted and they're so easy to do they're kind of goofproof and then you have a lifetime of enjoyment every year after that but this year in November I planted 2,000 more snow drops, Galanthus and in my woodland garden and I will continue to plant more bulbs until I have enough to extract from the bulb clumps themselves because each year they expand their own they make their own bulbs and then you can dig them up in the green once they're done flowering but they still have some top growth and then divide those and then spread those around and that's going to be a fun activity as well and that would happen in late winter early spring but the bulb planting time is in November I planted 2,000 bulbs they go pretty fast it's not hard it's my point and it's kind of fun because you're out in beautiful weather it's cool some leaves are dropping and you're just pulling open some soil and dropping a few bulbs in and covering it back up but it goes pretty fast and you can just listen to the nature you can have a good guarding podcast in your ears whatever it is for you but it's not a job to dread and in fact for me it's a job I enjoy doing especially when you think about the rewards that come from that single effort and finally December yes there's a lot going on in December that competes with what we need to do gardening related but you can't miss this month because it is so important for what's to come in fact I call fall into December not the end of the previous year but the beginning of the next gardening year because so much of what happens following year happened because I was doing planning in December and even earlier than that so let me just give you a couple of examples of what I'm talking about tool care we need to work with the best tools that we can afford because quality matters with gardening you don't want to cheap stuff because you'll be replacing it so quickly and there's no point in doing that just invest up front and take care of your tools and December is a great time to take some steel wool to the blades and sharpen them clean them up if it's wood handles take some linseed oil and rub it onto the wood and let that absorb in and then wipe it down I have a video on how to clean your tools and get those ready and it goes into depth on exactly what you should do and how you should sharpen them and what you should use so that link will be in the show notes as well it is so important especially with your cutting tools that the blades be sharp a clean cut prevents any wounds or open areas that could lead to infection or an opportunity for pest insects to get in at a later date so you always want a clean cut and it's easy to keep those blades sharp and not that you should wait until winter to do that or December to do that keeping those blades sharp all through the season is very important so have your tool ready to do that but your big cleaning project or your big putting your tools to bed so to speak happens in December and you'll do that with everything basically your shovels your knives your pruners your hori hori knife your wooden handles your loppers etc and you know that recurring theme I talk about being a planner versus a planter being proactive versus reactive December is my favorite time I look forward to this in the evenings after you know everybody's kind of settled down for the night I'll go open a spreadsheet on my computer and I'll be working on my seed orders or what it is that I want to order and what I need or where I'm lacking and I need to increase my inventory whatever it is for you that spreadsheet or on paper whatever again works for you is an amazing tool to help you feel organized and calm before the storm and you're not panicked and you see what you need to order and you get it done because you've thought about it and I'm speaking here from just this past December how proud I was yeah I'll go with that how proud I was to know that I had done that work that very important work on time to get to the point where I'd ordered all my seed so every seed that I needed for everything I was going to grow was already in hand by before Christmas because of the planning and the ordering and all of that that I had done but I knew exactly what I needed to do but I only knew because I sat down and worked through that and once you build that base amount of information then it's just a matter of updating it year to year and that's why you know an online spreadsheet really is a very good tool it's unlimited opportunity for you to customize it however you want can be very sophisticated it can be very simple but whatever it is if you're bored in December do this and you won't be bored anymore and I think you'll you may really like it but it is a powerful tool to equip you to be ready and feel really good about coming into the new year knowing that you have what you need lastly gift for yourself and for that special gardener in your life this is a great time taking those seed catalogs or scrolling online thinking about what it is that you don't have that you need and maybe making suggestions to those people that might be and trying to give you what you ask for and conversely for the people that you want to provide something for those gardeners in your life that you'll be giving a gift to this is a great time for you to go ahead and make sure you get that order in on time and know what it is that you want to give okay that's going to do it for now not an exhaustive list whatsoever but enough that should keep you busy all year long without exhausting you and certainly one or more steps closer to a boredom free gardening life now I mentioned a lot of links today to take you deeper into several of the topics I discussed throughout this episode all of those links and more can be found in the show notes for this episode exclusively from our website and also on our YouTube channel for this episode the website is joegardener.com look for the podcast tab and this is episode number 452 and if you want to watch this episode you can find the links in the notes section below the video I invite you to do that on our YouTube channel joegardener tv and again this is episode number 452 as for announcements we are getting very close to our relaunch dates for our most popular course in the online gardening academy starting with our most popular master seed starting this is the course that covers it all no matter where you are in your seed starting journey this course will take you to the next level and beyond we'll be sharing more with you in a week or two but for now I just wanted this to get on your radar it's not a course that you can just enroll in any time of the year it's a narrow window and it's coming up soon so listen out for more details right here in the next couple of weeks otherwise that's going to do it for today thanks as always to Amy Prentice Brendan O'Reilly and Christine LaFond for their hard work every week getting these podcasts ready to go and thank you for joining me today my goal for every episode is to help you take the guesswork out of gardening by teaching you the why do behind the how to so that you can become a better smarter more confident gardener you can find me right back here next Thursday for our latest episode of the Joe Gardner Show and I look forward to having you right back here to join me for that until then have a great week take care and I'll see you back here really soon thanks for listening to the Joe Gardner Show the podcast where it's all about gardening and learning to grow like a pro no experience required for more information podcasts and how to videos visit us online at jogardner.com