Gardeners Checklist: Here Is What to Do on the Week of Oct. 14

By Ron Kujawski

* Take note of trees, other than maples, birches and ash, with great fall color. They could make nice additions to your home landscape. One to consider is sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua), whose shiny leaves turn brilliant yellow, purple, and red in fall. 

* Leave late varieties of potatoes in the ground if you have no place to store them. If covered with a thick layer of straw, they can be harvested as needed through early winter. The downside is that the straw often makes a cozy home for mice, who also like a meal of fresh potatoes.

* Harvest and dry perennial herbs, such as oregano, sage, and thyme, for a winter supply. Cut some stems and place them in a paper bag, or hang them in a dark, dry, and airy spot, or dry them in a food dehydrator. We do the latter, and it takes less than a day to dry most herbs.

* Reduce pest and disease problems of fruit trees by picking up fallen leaves, stems, and fruit. Leaf diseases, including apple scab and pear leaf spot, overwinter on fallen dead leaves. Fruit diseases such as brown rot overwinter on fruit on the ground or mummified ones still hanging in trees. Burying diseased leaves and fruit is a good way to dispose of them.

* Cook pumpkins and winter squash if they are exposed to frost. They won’t last long in storage. If you can’t gulp down all that pumpkin and squash at one sitting, freeze them. We prepare our surplus for freezing by cutting the unpeeled pumpkins and squash into quarters. These pieces are cooked in a pressure cooker for 10 minutes, after which the edible flesh is scooped out and placed in freezer bags.

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There are many questions in life that are not easy to answer, e.g. “Who put the bop in the bop-shoo-bop-shoo-bop?” Another tough one is “Do I need to mulch my roses for winter?” The first question has me stumped, but I’ll take a shot at the second. In general, most grafted roses benefit from winter mulch. This is certainly true for hybrid tea roses and most grandiflora types which are among the least hardy roses. On the other hand, own-root roses, i.e. those grown from rooted cuttings or divisions, tend to be more hardy than grafted roses and may not need to be mulched unless they are hybrid tea varieties. There are several reasons for this. Grafted roses tend to grow faster and are more succulent than own-root roses. Also, many grafted roses continue growing late into fall, making them prone to winter kill. Most, but not all, roses grown from cuttings are of the shrubby floribunda type, which tend to be quite hardy. I never mulch our shrub roses and they survive quite well. Whether grafted or own-root, it’s a good idea to know the general hardiness of rose varieties you’re growing. The least hardy ones always benefit from winter mulch. Now that I have muddled the answer to that question – I can muddle with the best muddlers – go ahead and mulch if you don’t know the hardiness of your roses, whether or not they are grafted or own-root. Mulching will do no harm, even to the hardiest roses. However, wait until we’ve had a couple of hard frosts (28F or lower) before mounding mulch around the crowns of your roses.

Ron Kujawski began gardening at an early age on his family's onion farm in upstate New York. Although now retired, he spent most of his career teaching at the UMass Extension Service. He serves on Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Horticulture Advisory Committee. His book, Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook, is available here.