SACANDAGA GARDEN CLUB - By Barbara Henry

Jeanine Loya introduced us to the wonderful world of cactus and succulents at our last meeting. We had a wonderful presentation in the beautiful meeting room at the Northville Public Library with delightful decorations and refreshments provided by our club members, Virginia Conover, Margaret Furco and Terry Moeller. Jeanine brought many plants for show and tell and she was very generous in giving away a lot of plants for us to pot up and grow. She is an acknowledged expert in her field and it was fun to listen and learn about her subject.

There are a few clean up chores still left to do in the garden. The summer veggies will have been frosted by now and should be pulled up and put in the compost pile. We did have some instances of late blight on tomatoes and potatoes late in the season and if you had any plants affected these plants should not go in the regular compost pile. Although late blight pores are killed off by our winter freezing temperatures, they can still live on in potatoes that are left in the ground. If you had late blight try to make sure you get every small piece of potato out of the ground and next year, plan to plant the crops in a different place.

As you finish raking up the leaves, pile them up in an out of the way place and leave them for a year to make leaf mold which is a wonderful addition to the soil in our gardens. If you don’t have a place to put them, you can leave them in bags. It isn’t a good idea to pile them on the garden as is, maple leaves in particular tend to mat down and prevent air and water getting through. Oak leaves take forever to decompose so they are better being composted rather than spread over the beds. If you can shred some of your leaves with a lawn mower it is a great idea to add a couple of inches of that to your veggie bed.

The more you can do to improve your soil, the better your veggies (and other plants) will grow. Consider getting a soil test so that if any remedial action is necessary you have time for additives to work. For example, if your soil needs lime, it can take six months for an application of lime to change the ph of the soil. A healthy plant needs very little in the way of additional fertilizer. Weakened plants send out signals that insects and bacteria recognize and they swarm in to take advantage, then we have to reach for the insecticides but if we provide a healthy soil the plants will be in good shape and we won’t have to use insecticides. It is particularly important for those of us who live near the lake because we don’t want fertilizer and pesticides to run off into our lake.

Cut back your non woody perennials but do leave seed heads from cone flowers for the birds. Ornamental grasses with their wonderful plumes look lovely through the snow and provide sheltering places for many ground creatures. As you do this, collect some of the seed heads to use in dried arrangements over the holidays.






Until the ground freezes you can still plants spring flowering bulbs. You can also pot up a few to enjoy during January and February. The smaller daffodils such as the Tete-a-Tete are a good choice to pot up. Sometimes in our warm homes it is hard to keep the taller narcissus bulbs from flopping over when we bring them inside. You can also plant crocus, aconite and chionodoxa in the pot of daffodils to have a succession of flowering bulbs. . Remember to chill daffies for about 14 weeks and when you bring them in, bring them into a cool spot perhaps by an east window until they green up. I buy hyacinth bulbs for indoor bloom every year. I leave them in a paper bag in my unheated garage and in December start bringing them in three at a time. I have vases that I pop them in and just grow them on in water. You need a vase with a neck so that the bulb stays above the water and it is just the roots than grow down. Oh how I love that fragrance in January.

Before the weather turns really cold take a moment to clean out any seed starting pots you used. A solution of bleach (nine parts water to one part bleach) is a good choice for cleaning up any pots or garden equipment. You need to clean up seed starting pots to make sure that any spores of the dreaded damping off disease are killed otherwise your little seedlings next year could just fall over and quit on you.






Our next meeting is on Thursday, November 10 when we have our annual luncheon and auction which this year is being held at Lanzi’s on the Lake in Mayfield.






As always, I love to hear from you and our address is POBox 675, Northville, NY 212134.