Gardening: Tips for the Fall

I can’t stress it enough – if you don’t plant a fall and winter garden in Fayette County, you’re really missing out. This is probably the best time of year for growing vegetables in our area.

Our spring and summer gardens were pitiful this year. We could barely grow anything in our vegetable garden this year due to months of hundred-degree heat and drought. But now, the temperatures have dropped and we’re finally getting some rain.

Janessa and I planted some cabbage, kale, collard greens, bok choi, mustard greens, broccoli and cauliflower around Oct. 1. I think we’ll be able to cook our first pot of kale or mustard greens this weekend. Most of these vegetables will survive through the coldest months of the winter. Freezing weather will damage the heads of broccoli and cauliflower, but you can always cover them up on cold nights.

I especially love kale, collards and the various Asian greens like bok choi because you can harvest a few leaves at a time and allow the plants to continue growing through the season. They’ll produce for months 

on end. And they grow so quickly. Our plants are ready to harvest now after just 40 days from transplanting. You can still plant any of these crops now.

Fertilizing Tips

If you planted a fall/winter garden, don’t forget to fertilize. I use only organic or natural fertilizers and soil amendments in my garden. I also use a combination of dry granular fertilizer that I incorporate into the soil and liquid fertilizer that I apply periodically as a foliar spray.

Back at the beginning of last month when I planted the greens, I sprinkled a handful of MicroLife Multipurpose 6-24 fertilizer around each of the transplants. Last week, I applied the first round of liquid fertilizer. I should have done it sooner. I used MicroLife Ocean Harvest 4-2-3. I mixed two ounces of the fertilizer concentrate to a gallon of water and applied it with a pump-up sprayer.

When applying liquid fertilizer as a foliar spray, you want to do it in the early morning or late evening when the pores in the plant leaves are open. Plants close their pores during the day to retain moisture. If you spray during the heat of the day, the fertilizer will drip off the leaves or dry without the plant ever absorbing it.

You also want to spray a fine mist. Spray until you see heavy dripping from the leaves. Try to spray the underside of leaves as well. I try to spray my plants with liquid fertilizer at least once a month. You can do it as often as every two weeks. I don’t think there’s much benefit to spraying more often than that. In my experience, liquid fertilizer works wonders to keep your plants healthy, green, flowering and productive. Healthy plants resist bugs and disease.

Pest Management

We began using garden mesh netting this year to help control pests, and it’s been a gamechanger for us. We started out using tule fabric that we bought from Walmart. It worked okay at keeping grasshoppers out. We have since switched to special garden netting that has an ultrafine mesh size of 0.04 inches, which keeps out all but the smallest of bugs. Grasshoppers continue to plague our garden, and the netting does a very good job of keeping them out.

Most years at this time, we begin seeing caterpillar damage to our greens. But the netting seems to keep moths and butterflies from laying eggs on our crops.

Eliminating Ants

The recent rains have energized ants in our garden. Molasses and orange oil is the best natural way to get rid of fire ants. Here’s how you do it: You’ll need a two-gallon watering can that pours in a solid stream. Many watering cans allow you to unscrew the shower head to accomplish this. Fill the can with water and mix in three ounces of liquid garden molasses and three ounces of orange oil (make sure the orange oil label says d-limonene, I use the Medina brand). Mix it well. You can buy both orange oil and garden molasses at most farm and ranch stores and garden centers.

Gently walk up to the ant mound. If you disturb the mound or make a bunch of noise, the worker ants will protect the queen by moving her deep into the ground. You need to kill the queen to kill the mound. Now identify the center of the ant mound. Pour most the mixture in a strong stream directly in the center of the mound. Then move the stream in a circle to drench the outsides of the mound. Two gallons of the mixture will usually do the job for each mound. The orange oil kills any ants that it contacts, hopefully including the queen. If you kill the queen, any surviving ants will abandon the mound.

The molasses acts as a repellent. It sounds counter-intuitive. One would think that a sugary substance like molasses attracts ants. But for some reason, perhaps due to the sulfur in molasses, ants are repelled by it. So even if you manage to miss killing the queen, the ants will usually abandon the mound and move elsewhere.

By the way, orange oil has a whole bunch of other uses around the house. Add an ounce to your laundry with detergent for some extra cleaning power and a wonderful smell. It’s also a great addition to the mop bucket, especially for cleaning wood floors. You can use a few drops of it to deodorize trash cans. You can also use it by the drop to clean heavy grease from surfaces.