Master Gardener John Fischer here with KLCC's Good Gardening. I try to give you lead time when I pass on ideas to help your garden be more productive or attractive. But it 's easy to lose track of tasks for the future when the present is so demanding.
So today a reminder of something that is too late to follow through on, and something that you still have 5 days to do. Despite my nagging, many backyard vegetable patches are either removed too early, or planted in a way that ends production before the weather turns wintery. You should still be hearing the sound of July planted corn being husked and tomatoes being turned into salsa despite the freezing weather of the last week. But it won't happen unless you plan for an october corn harvest in your planting schedule, or pick all those green tomatoes to ripen indoors before the cold weather has started outdoors. Plan on it for next year.
On the " act now" front, you can move the lovely, crunchy, new england style leaves around with a feather duster right now. Typical Oregon leaf gathering requires a putty knife to pry the soggy leaves off the lawn. The piles you make this fall are fully jump-able, and easily transportable to your backyard stockpile area, or to the curb if you have no room for, or need of leaves.
Even better than dragging the leaves around is leaving them where they drop. If you have fruit trees or ornamentals that you don't have or need lawn under, let the fallen leaves lie. They'll keep weeds down, and as they deompose, the leaves will provide the ideal nutrients for the tree- because they are made of the tree they fell from. Walk through any forest if you doubt the value of leaving the leaves. I'm John Fischer with KLCC's Good Gardening.
Copyright KLCC, 2019