Editor’s Note: Meet Mike on Oct. 4 and 5 in Leesburg. Mike will appear at the Leesburg Home Expo at the Douglass Community Center, 405 East Market Street, Leesburg, Virginia. He will be there 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday and 12 p.m. Sunday. Details: Leesburg Home Expo.
Don’t grow garlic in a potato box
Wendy in Rockville writes: “I tried a suggestion from one of your articles and planted potatoes in a layered, slatted compost bin, arranged so that the potato greens grew out the sides of the bin and the tubers formed inside. Do you think I could plant my garlic the same way, as long as I position the individual cloves with the tips facing the sides of the bin?”
No, Wendy. Potatoes can be tricked into growing sideways, but garlic cannot. Your cloves would try and grow straight up — but not for very long. The first sustained hard freeze would kill them in such an above-ground enclosure. Your potato success was in summer. In winter, plants need their roots in the ground, not high above it.
Use the bin to make compost and get your garlic in the ground.
Get your garlic in the ground
Thanks for the opening, Wendy — garlic is one of my personal favorite things to grow.
First, get some good planting garlic from a reputable seed supplier or buy locally grown bulbs at a farmer’s market. Don’t use store-bought garlic. It’s probably the wrong kind for our region and treated not to sprout. And a lot of California garlic is actually coming from China these days.
Carefully separate out the cloves and plant each individual clove (bottom down, pointy end up) 6 inches deep and 6 inches apart in your richest, loosest, best draining soil. Raised beds are ideal for garlic growing; poorly draining flat earth is not.
Wait until the leaves begin to fall and then cover the bed with 2 inches of well-shredded leaves. Don’t use whole leaves as they mat down like a tarp. And no nasty wood mulch.
Then just kick back and relax. The garlic may sprout this year, or it may wait until spring. Either way, you don’t have to do anything until the scapes form at the top of the plants in June.
Pansies: The superior fall flower
Enough with the mums already. It looks like there was an explosion in the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disneyland.
My much preferred cool-weather loving color for fall is provided by pansies. Buy a flat of these bright little beauties and plant them — yes, right in the ground — where you’ll see them every day. Pansies thrive in cool weather, and will bloom for you without any assistance or protection until at least the holidays.
Then, prune entire branches off of a discarded Christmas tree and keep those big boughs at hand to cover the pansies if heavy snow or ice is predicted. Cold weather won’t hurt them, but they can be flattened out by heavy ice — as can we.
Remove the protection after each weather event and enjoy the blooms though spring.
Eat your pansies and get great looking legs
In our last thrilling episode we explained that mums aren’t the only blooming plant that lives outside in the fall. Bedding plant pansies are even more cold hardy, a lot more graceful (the mum is not a subtle plant) and the colorful flowers are edible.
That’s right — a handful of pansy flowers can make 50 cents worth of lettuce look like a million bucks. And not only are they edible, pansy flowers are our only real source of rutin — a nutrient that strengthens our capillary walls.
Now, having stronger capillaries helps with minor-league stuff like blood pressure, heart health, blah, blah, blah — but rutin’s important benefit is that it lessens the visibility of spider and varicose veins. That’s right — eat pansy flowers all winter and look better in short-shorts next summer.
Five flowers a day (try them on top of salads — you’ll never go back) provides the recommended amount of the nutrient rutin to get your veins looking more opaque.
Note: To be safe, pull all of the existing flowers off of your plants when you get them home, as they may have been sprayed at the garden center. Don’t worry — the next run will appear quickly and you’ll have a steady supply for months to come.
Lawn care 101: Aerate first, then seedbed, then the seed
“Frequent Garden Plot Flyer” Connor in Fairfax has a question that’s common for this time of year. He writes: “I’m getting ready to aerate and over-seed my lawn — and I’m getting my truck loaded with compost tomorrow. Should I apply the compost before or after aerating?”
Core aeration — pulling little plugs out of the soil to relieve compaction and improve drainage — should be first on any fall lawn care list.
Then — because you’re seeding — rake off the cores and pile them up somewhere to compost down.
Then, spread your load of compost evenly across the lawn, sow matching seed directly into the compost and just rake it in; no straw or other nonsense.
Water gently every morning until the seed is up, wait until the grass is a good four and a half inches before you cut it back to three and it should look great.
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