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September In the Garden · In the Garden with UC Master Gardeners

0:02
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to In the Garden with University of California Master Gardeners.
0:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm Tina Spindler and I'm here with fellow Master Gardener and friend Katrina Kirkabee.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: Hi Katrina.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: Good morning, Tina.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: We are here today.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: Hard to believe that summer is almost over.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: It's crazy.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: It went so fast.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: My five-year-old even told me, uh, grandson even said, Grandma, summer's almost over.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: And I so even he realized how quickly it went.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: It just seems to go faster and faster as time goes on.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: But we're here to talk about September.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: September.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we're going to have a busy September.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: It's a hot September.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of a crazy month in the garden.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Trying to stay cool and getting things done.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: It's a big transition month.
0:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, exciting.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: I find it exciting because I I always love, you know, when you have a new season coming, thinking about what I'm going to be doing in the new season.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: So I find it an exciting time.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: You know, and I also like kind of this sounds weird, but cleaning up.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like stuff is getting dried out and kind of looking yucky, and it's it's it's time to clean up.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: I I can't wait to get some squash vines.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: I have, you know, some zucchini and some cucumbers that are just, you know, full of powdery mildew, have a little bit of fruit left on them.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: So I've been, you know, letting them hang out, but I'm kind of anxious to yank them here in September and and start over and get ready for cool season stuff.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's we have to be careful in the garden because it's still hot.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: So I tend to work early in the morning or early in the evening.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: How about you?
1:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I do too.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm a morning person um in the summertime.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: I can't be out there in the heat of the day.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: And uh so I will continue that because September in Southern California is, I think, often one of our hottest months.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: It is, yeah.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the the good news is that the days are getting shorter, so it's it's still as hot, maybe the high temperature may be still as hot as August, but you don't have as many hours at the high temperature.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, as we're talking about that, we should talk about look at your watering.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: We segueing real quick to watering because we might have hot days, but we we might not need as much water.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: Right.
2:22
SPEAKER_01: Keep keep an eye on the moisture level in your soil.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: And the best way to do that is to take a trowel and just you know dig about six inches down and see uh if how moist it is.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: In you know, the heat of August, you know, probably the first couple of inches of your soil were you know bone dry, and that's when you should water again.
2:42
SPEAKER_01: But as the days get shorter, uh you might not need to have it on as long, maybe, maybe still do three days a week, but maybe you know, not um 15 minutes, maybe it's you know, 10 minutes or eight minutes.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't know about you, Tina, but I think we all do.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: We watch our water allotment.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: And if I tend, if any time, to push that water allotment is September because I forget to turn the water.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: It's still hot during the day, and I don't think about oh, it doesn't need as much water because it's super hot out.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: So if anybody's pushing their water levels, you really want to look at that in September because for me, that's one month I really have to pay attention because I I forget.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's hot, I forget to adjust it, and and then all of a sudden I'm pushing the next level of water usage and I don't want to be there.
3:33
SPEAKER_01: Right, because the the rates really jump when you go to the next level on your water bill.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: So that's a great idea.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: Also, I find a lot of people are done taking vacations um, you know, once you get past Labor Day weekend.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: And so it's kind of okay for me to turn the water down because I'm gonna be home more.
3:52
SPEAKER_01: And so even if I've turned the sprinkler frequency, you know, down a bit, as long as I'm home and there's there are some hot days where I need a little bit more, I can always manually turn the sprinkler on to give it a little more water or just hand water those areas that are needing a little more water.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, unfortunately, we're not out of the heat yet, so we still have to pay attention to our water.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: You always have to pay attention to our water in California for sure.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: You know, when it's it's rainy, I don't worry about it.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: When it's hot, I know it is, but this kind of the in the September is the one that kind of gets me because I forget, I go, oh, it's so hot, but the days are so many, so many, you know, the days are so much shorter, and we don't need as much.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: Right.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: So just heads up.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: Keep an eye on that.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: And and while you're you know back home from vacation, take a look at the garden, the vegetable garden, the flower garden, and those plants, the annual type plants that are you know fading.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: Just go ahead and yank them out.
4:51
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to, at least I've learned this over the years.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: I've given myself some grace.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: It used to be if I had a bare spot, I thought I had to plant something immediately, right?
5:01
SPEAKER_01: Um, and fill it in.
5:03
SPEAKER_01: But I've learned to live, you know, for short time periods with some bare spots, and I find that it's actually kind of um soothing, you know, to have uh removed, you know, the plants that are looking kind of bad because they're at the end of their life, and just have some nice clean soil to look at for a little while.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: I agree with you.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: It just is tidy.
5:25
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: You know, when it kind of gets dry and kind of dirty looking, and it's just kind of a mess, you know.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: It just it it just feels good to have a clean spot.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: It does, and and because it's still hot, even though I garden in the morning, it's really not uh too much energy to just pull out plants, right?
5:46
SPEAKER_01: That's that's pretty quick.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: You're not digging a hole yet, you're not turning the soil yet.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: So it's something I don't mind doing when it's still a little hot, and like I said, it's kind of satisfying.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: And then the other thing that's great about it is once you get those things out, now you can see better what you want to do for the cool season.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: And it's so much easier to see when you have a clean palette.
6:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: Um and we all do things differently too.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: I know some people just once a week they go out and garden.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: I tend to do a little bit in the mornings when I have time, like several times a week, just go out in the morning and just do a little bit here and a little bit there, and it makes a difference.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: It's easier to keep up with things if if you do that before the weeds actually get, you know, three feet tall.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: No.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully they don't ever get really good at drawing weeds.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, so after you've got a little bit of cleanup done, um, and hopefully you have a compost bin, because September is a great time to start a compost pile if you if you haven't done that before, or if you're out of the habit, because you're gonna have a lot of yard waste and the leaves are gonna start falling also from your deciduous trees in the fall, it's a great time to start a compost pile.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: And uh the best way to do that, I think, is to have a bin that's a minimum of three feet by three feet by three feet uh height, width, and um length.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: And uh the reason I like a bin is it keeps it tidier for one thing, and it's easier for me to keep track of what it's doing because you can get a compost thermometer if you want to you know really build a compost pile all at once and have it heat up.
7:32
SPEAKER_01: Uh that's kind of the perfect compost pile, is if you can get it to heat up.
7:36
SPEAKER_01: And if you have a compost thermometer and you have a bin, it's uh easier to have that compost contained and take its little temperature, and then you let it rise uh to 130, 140, and then when it starts, or even higher if you're if you're lucky, and then when the temperature starts declining again back to whatever the air temperature is, 80 degrees, then you know it's time to turn the compost.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, Tina, we haven't talked about compost in a while.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: So why don't you tell us a little bit about compost and what it is and why it's so good for us?
8:12
SPEAKER_01: Compost is just a natural process.
8:16
SPEAKER_01: Composting is a natural process where you take organic materials and in the garden that would be your leaves, grass clippings, any plants that you're pulling out, and you cut them into, um, I like to cut them into like three to four inch pieces.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: So, like if I pull out, say a Cosmo plant, you know, flower plant, I just kind of cut off the branches and the stems into, you know, four to six inch pieces, and I throw, you know, I collect it in a as I'm gardening and then I throw it in the compost bin.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: What you need to remember is that you need to have a 50-50 combination of what we call green materials and brown materials.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: So green materials would be things that are either the color green, like grass clippings, or coffee grounds are considered a green material, and those are great to put in your compost bin in moderation.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: You know, you don't want to dump bags and bags from Starbucks, you know, you want to do it in moderation.
9:17
SPEAKER_01: And I do not put any any um, you don't want to put any meats, you know, any dairy products in there at all, uh, because A, it will attract rats, and we don't really want any rats in our garden.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: So I and also there can be, you know, bad bacteria in there.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have a super hot compost pile, it won't kill the bacteria.
9:41
SPEAKER_01: So we want to keep it a safe pile, and I just put plant material in mine.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, I tend to get my compost from two different places.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: I get it from the yard, and I tend not to put weeds in it.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: Weeds I will put in the trash can.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: All everything else from the yard, I will put in our my compost, and also I will take scraps of food from the kitchen.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: Vegetables though, not meats.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: Yes, scraps of uh vegetables and you know, when you're cutting up a zucchini, the two ends of it, or potato peels, yeah, or eggshells, or whatever.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: And but we we don't have issues with varmints because we don't put anything else in there.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: Right.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: And we keep it really clean.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: And I have to say, we we have been doing composting for the last 20 years on an ongoing basis every single month, and it has been wonderful.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: It's gold if we put in that garden.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: And it's really easy to do.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: And Master Gardeners, you could look at Master Gardeners Orange County, California, because there's a lot of Orange County, Orange County Master Gardener groups, but we have a lot of information on composting.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: So you might, if you want to know more about composting, you know, check out our website, look into it, and we could start off with a little, you know, three by three by three.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: If you have a bigger yard, you could do a bigger one.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: We have a gully in our yard, so that's a place we just you know put our compost out there, and it just it's it's beautiful.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: So it's something you might think about.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: And when we first moved into our house, we had so much green waste that we actually had one of those big wheeled bins that every week they would fill up and we got rid of it.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: We started a compost, and so stuff doesn't leave our property, and we just go out and you know, from the kitchen, you know, you chop off part of the lettuce or part of this or part of whatever.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: Don't put anything and you've mixed it with oils or butters or anything after dinner, don't put that in there.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: But anything prior to that doesn't have anything added to it, it's great in there.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: So it's something else you can think about, and it's a fun thing for kids because they just get to throw stuff in there and see what happens.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: So it could be a family project too.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: So absolutely.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: That's one of the things that um when I first started and my daughter was 10 for her science project, she did her project on composting, and so it was you know a great thing for us to do as a family.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: And she learned about all the organisms that help break down the um material so that it turns into what we call black gold, right?
12:22
SPEAKER_01: For the garden.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: And it's if you you know, re watch a video on it, read about it.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: It's something very simple to do, and it doesn't take much time.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: Um, it saves landfill.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: Stuff doesn't go in the landfill, and then you get to then you get to use it back on your garden.
12:39
SPEAKER_01: It's it's I I love doing it, and I um there are two ways to do composting.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: One's called hot composting and one's called cold composting.
12:49
SPEAKER_01: And hot composting happens when you build your compost pile all at once so that you have a critical mass that starts to decompose and it generates the heat that I was talking about earlier.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: And when that heat gets generated, it it kills a lot of you know bad things that that could be detrimental to your garden.
13:11
SPEAKER_01: Um, and but then when the heat subsides, then you turn it.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: And so you generally turn it if you're doing a hot compost pile every four days to you know once a week, depending on how the temperature of it ranges.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: So that if you're doing hot composting, requires a bit of a commitment, but you get the finished product in as little as six weeks, six to eight weeks.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: But it it requires a commitment monitoring the temperature and then turning it when it's time to turn it.
13:40
SPEAKER_01: As I have you know gotten busier in other aspects of my life, I don't do hot composting anymore.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: I do what's called cold composting, which is where I just throw my my yard waste in my compost bin, and when it gets full, then I wet it down or I wet it as it goes, depending on how you know hot or dry the weather is, because you do need moisture in order for this process to happen.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: And then I just turn it, you know, when I get around to it.
14:09
SPEAKER_01: So it may take me six months or more to get a batch of compost, but that's okay.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: I'm still, you know, keeping the the waste, you know, the yard waste on my property and not sending too much to the landfill.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: But as Katrina said, you never want to put any diseased plants in or any plants, uh weeds that have gone to seed, because again, if you don't have a hot enough compost pile, those weed seeds won't be killed and the diseases that the plants have won't be killed.
14:43
SPEAKER_01: So be sure just to throw, like I never put tomatoes, for instance, in a compost bin because they always have fungal diseases by the time you pull them out, right?
14:52
SPEAKER_01: Always.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: So I always just throw those in the trash, just throw those in the green waste bin.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: But um, yeah, this is the time of year, especially I think September when you're doing a lot of cleanup, to give composting a try if if you want to.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: Try check it out.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: It's easy to do.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: The commitment is it's it's something really easy to do, and and there's a lot of rewards that you get to give back to yourself.
15:14
SPEAKER_01: And it's good exercise too when you turn your pile, right?
15:17
SPEAKER_01: You're rather than lifting weights, you know, you get a pitchfork and you you flip that compost over.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: So and we're always looking at things, you know, to do with kids.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: Right.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: And it's something kids tend to like to do.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: It's like, what are we doing?
15:29
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like it and you're introducing back to the earth too.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: Well, and that at the time that your compost is finished and ready, um, it generally will have earthworms or grubs in it.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: And so that's super fun for the kids when you, you know, take a shovel full of that out and they can see all these, you know, creatures crawling around in there.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: They usually get a huge kick out of it.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: I get a kick out of it.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, look at all these earthworms.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: It's wonderful.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: And if you have grubs, um you can and and chickens, oh my gosh, your chickens will love you forever if you give them those grubs.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, that's something to try while you're cleaning up is starting a compost bin.
16:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, the other thing, like I mentioned, is you want to plan your fall flower garden and your fall vegetable garden.
16:16
SPEAKER_01: And um, let's talk about flower gardens because fall is the time when we get to plant my personal favorite flowers, which are bulbs.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: Bulbs.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is perhaps the first part of September as we work on cleaning up.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Okay, because it's a bit too hot to plant a lot of things uh in the beginning of September, but now Tina is smiling.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: Tina has turned me on to the world of bulbs.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: This has been so wonderful for me.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: I have to say I absolutely love it.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: Tina, tell us about bulbs.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: Well, bulbs are foolproof.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: If you want people to think that you're a master gardener because you can grow these beautiful flowers, buulbs, because bulbs come with all of the food that they need in their little packaged self.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: Um, and an onion is a bulb.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, if you want to think about what a bulb might look like, it's it's a a bulbous structure that will produce a beautiful flower, a tulip, an iris.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: Now, there are other structures that we call bulbs that aren't really bulbs, they might be more appropriately called rhizomes.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: So uh when you see the the quote bulb section in the fall, in September, in your nursery, it will have things that don't have that onion shape.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: They'll have different shapes.
17:46
SPEAKER_01: Corms and rhizomes is another name for these other shapes.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: Um, but we call them bulbs, uh fall planted bulbs, because we plant them in the fall.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: So September is uh not when we plant most of the bulbs in Southern California.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: We do most of the planting of them in October, but the trouble is the nurseries receive their shipments in September.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: And so if you want to be sure you get the ones that you want, um September is the best time, I think.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: Mid-September is usually when they show up in the nurseries.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, let's back up a little bit because people might be a little confused.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: Is there two different times of years that you plant bulbs?
18:29
SPEAKER_01: There are.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: We plant fall bulbs for bloom in California in uh late winter and spring, and then we plant uh what we call spring or summer bulbs in say March usually that bloom in the summertime, like uh those would be dahlias and uh iris, uh not irises, um gladiolas, yeah.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: So it depends on what time of year it is, what type of bulbs you will see for sale.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: So this time of year, what type of bulbs would we see for sale?
19:04
SPEAKER_01: Yes, uh the reason I get super excited this time of year is that this is when we see the most types of bulbs for sale, and so this is the time to buy and have just a huge variety of things in your garden.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: So one class that everyone probably recognizes is narcissus or daffodils.
19:28
SPEAKER_01: So all of the daffodils slash narcissus are uh bulbs that you plant in the fall, and you can take a look at them when you see them in the nursery.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: There are some early blooming ones and some late blooming ones, and if you have the space, it's kind of nice to get some of the early, mid, and late blooming daffodils because then you have some, you know, that start blooming probably in February all the way through May.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, Tina, I have a favor to ask because this has helped me out a lot.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: There's two types of bulbs.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: There's there's more than two types of bulbs, but there's bulbs that you plant once, and because we live in this area, you have to plant them every year.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: And then there are bulbs that will come back every single year.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: Now, for me, I have a big yard and I have a limited amount of time, and I tend to like the ones that come back.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: I like them all, but just for I don't want to say laziness or busyness, but my my my lifestyle, uh, I tend to like the ones, I like them all, but I tend to plant the ones that will come back year after year.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: Could you break the two types of bulbs down?
20:39
SPEAKER_00: What will you plant?
20:40
SPEAKER_00: What can we plant now that you need to plant every single year?
20:44
SPEAKER_00: Or I should say at the end of September, October, or excuse me, at October that we're getting binum now.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: What can you what can you plant that will you have to plant every single year?
20:54
SPEAKER_00: And then what can we plant that will come back year after year?
20:58
SPEAKER_01: Great question.
21:00
SPEAKER_01: I too have been leaning more and more to only planting bulbs that it's called naturalize.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: So the bulbs that naturalize means they come back year after year.
21:11
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't mean that they'll come back year after year forever, but they'll come back year after year for a certain you know number of years.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: And some bulbs kind of do come back forever.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: Um, freezas are the ones that I love because they are pretty bulletproof and they do come back kind of forever.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: Um, but others that will come back, like the Dutch iris, which I love and adore, those are you know often blue, just that, you know, those beautiful colors of blue.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: You see them in florist bouquets all the time.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, those will come back, usually for two or three years, but they don't come back every single year like the friegias do, unless you dig them up and divide them, because they will grow in a clump, and as they get smaller and smaller, they just don't bloom anymore.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, there are some definitions.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Daffodils that come back every year and some that don't.
22:04
SPEAKER_01: And the reason is some of the daffodils need more winter chill than we get here.
22:10
SPEAKER_01: But here are a couple varieties that do come back every year.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: Ice follies is bulletproof for coming back year after year for a number of years.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: Mine have come back, I don't know, five years or so in a row before.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: And if I would dig them up and divide them and replant them, they'd probably keep going.
22:32
SPEAKER_01: February gold's another one that comes back.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: What was that one again?
22:36
SPEAKER_01: February gold and fortune.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: Those will often naturalize and form large clumps and still bloom.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: A lot of the daffodils will start to form large clumps, but they'll quit blooming because they're too crowded.
22:53
SPEAKER_01: Um, the other ones that bloom are the paper whites.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: You know the paper whites that we we can buy that are forced in containers and and we often see them in the stores at Christmas time or the holidays.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and they have this scent that you either love or you hate.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: Uh well, I force them every year, and then when they're done, I throw them out in the garden.
23:15
SPEAKER_01: I plant them somewhere in the garden.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: And those, I have some in my garden that are probably 20 years old.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: Now, they too, as they get crowded, you know, will bloom less and less.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: But it's kind of fun.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: If you're gonna force them anyway rather than throw them in the trash, it's kind of fun to just, you know, put them out in your garden and enjoy them in your garden for as long as they feel like blooming.
23:40
SPEAKER_01: Less work, less work, yeah.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: Now the ones that I still plant every year because I love them, even though they don't naturalize, is I love rununculus.
23:51
SPEAKER_01: That's my favorite flower.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: And I I also uh like anemones.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: And so I do plant those every year, even though they don't return.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, and they're not true bulbs.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: Uh, the anemones kind of look like I don't know, they're they're like deformed, um they're just really oddly shaped, you know, brown little chunks, like an irregular piece of bark or something is kind of how they look.
24:25
SPEAKER_01: And um, but but I love the colors.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: They they come in blues, really like electric blue.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: They're beautiful, and a hot pink, um, and a red, a deep red.
24:37
SPEAKER_01: So their colors are just so vibrant.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: I love them.
24:40
SPEAKER_01: And they come in either single, what we call single, which means one row of petals, or some of them come doubles, which is multiple rows of petals.
24:48
SPEAKER_01: I personally like the singles because I just find the colors to be super vibrant in the singles.
24:55
SPEAKER_01: And they're not, um by and large, these bulbs that we plant uh in the fall are not big plants.
25:03
SPEAKER_01: And so what I love about them is that you can plant them in between your perennials, or if you're digging up a whole bed, you can plant them with your annuals that you're gonna plant for the cool season.
25:16
SPEAKER_01: So if you're gonna plant, say snapdragons or Iceland poppies, which are you know some cool, some of our cool season plants, you can stick the bulbs in between there.
25:27
SPEAKER_01: And um, it's just it's so fun.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: It's it's one reason I like to do solid colors in my annuals is so that I can put uh a complementary or a contrasting color of bulbs.
25:39
SPEAKER_01: So for instance, say I planted pink snapdragons, I might plant purple anemones in between there, or I might plant yellow um renunculus in between, because then, you know, imagine with you're gonna have, you know, the pink and the purple or the pink and the yellow, and then maybe in the front I'll put white elysum or you know, some other low-growing um lobelia, you know, the purpley lobelia.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: And so you can just kind of create this bouquet in your garden by choosing your annuals, but then choosing your bulbs to plant in between.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: Um, because although I've seen, you know, in in botanical gardens, right, where you just see these swaths of daffodils, right, that just bloom for, you know, a hundred yards or something, you know, and it's like six feet deep, and you're like, oh my goodness, that's just so amazing.
26:40
SPEAKER_01: But you have to remember those daffodils are only going to be blooming for a couple weeks.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: And then then you got nothing.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: And so the way I prefer to plant bulbs is to intersperse it in between the annuals.
26:51
SPEAKER_01: So I get this beautiful yellow daffodil, and then when it's done, I still have, you know, the beautiful snapdragon or Iceland poppy or or some other cool season annual or a perennial.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, if you listen to our show, you know, I always talk about shasta daisies, one of my favorite perennials.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: And so I like to plant the bulbs, you know, in between my shasta daisy plants.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: You know, and they go so well with them no matter what you're planting.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because you've got this white shasta daisy, so you know, plant whatever you want.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: Now, with the bulbs, you do have to till the soil.
27:24
SPEAKER_01: You can't, you see these bulb dippers, you know, this tool that just has a point on the end of it, and or you see um an attachment for an electric drill, which you know you can drill down and dig a hole for a bulb.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: But I I do recommend uh when you're going to plant bulbs, do till the soil, you know, like you would if you were planting a flower bed, uh, because I find the bulbs do like it better.
27:50
SPEAKER_01: They like it aerated.
27:51
SPEAKER_01: They like it aerated.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you're trying to stuff a bulb into clay soil by drilling one hole for it, if you're having a hard time drilling that hole, how do you think that poor little plant's trying to get its roots out?
28:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's it's hard.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: Give it a chance.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: Some of them, like like the daffodils or narcissus, might be okay if you if you do that.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: But most of the other ones, the Dutch iris, the anemones, the freesas, the ranunculus, they they prefer to have a nicely tilled, you know, flower bed.
28:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, and they also um to have some good food.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: And so you'll see bags this time of year of what's called bulb booster.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: And uh you can buy that.
28:34
SPEAKER_01: It's it's a great product.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: And but so that you understand what kind of fertilizer it is, um, remember fertilizer has three main nutrients: nitrogen, uh phosphorus, and potassium.
28:48
SPEAKER_01: And nitrogen stimulates green growth.
28:51
SPEAKER_01: Well, the bulb fertilizers have more phosphorus and potassium because what do you want to stimulate?
28:58
SPEAKER_01: You want to stimulate blooms and good root growth.
29:03
SPEAKER_01: The foliage is kind of secondary with uh those, so that's why they have this product called bulb boosters because it's a low nitrogen fertilizer.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: Now, you know, I have to tell you, Tina, when you first got me into bulbs, I was traveling and I had planted bulbs in October.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: I picked them out in September, I planted them in October, and my life got away with me.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: We were gone over the holidays, and I come home and it was like presents in the yard.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: All these bulbs were coming up, and it's like, I did no work.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: And it was one of those investment now for a future gain.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: If you plant these little guys, all of a sudden you're gonna have a present that you might have forgotten about, and then the next year you've forgotten about it too, and they come up.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: And it's just for me, it was just so it's so exciting to go out and seeing these guys.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like I know I worked for them, but at that point in time I hadn't worked for them.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: And if you get sidetracked with other things, you still have these flowers coming up.
30:10
SPEAKER_01: Oh, and they make the best gardens and the best bouquets, you know, to cut and bring in the house.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you and I, it's funny, both of us, you love bringing your flowers into the house.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: And I spend so much time outside.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: I tend to leave the flowers more outside and do an occasional bouquet.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: Because I love seeing them.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: They live a little longer when they're on the plant than they do in the house.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: They do.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: So you have so you have a choice.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: You could you you come to Tina's house and year-round, you there's flowers from your yard in a house, and it makes it so happy.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm not have I don't have as much energy as you do.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: I once in a while, if I'm having company, there'll be flowers out.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: But Tina's house is a happy house because she always has something growing in here.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: This is beautiful.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: But I I just really enjoyed the uh bulbs brought a whole new level of enjoyment for my yard.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: And I think, like we said, the reason why we're talking about it now is you got to shop for them now.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the first time I decided to do it, I waited till October and they were gone.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I got the like the worst of the group, and even online, I went to look online and like all my favorites were gone.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: And so just get them now and um plant them next month.
31:30
SPEAKER_01: And my favorite way to buy bulbs, I do buy some through mail order, but but I prefer if I can find them, and and sadly um they're becoming less and less carried in the nurseries.
31:42
SPEAKER_01: But if you go to a good nursery, uh they often have boxes of bulbs by color, by type, and they're loose.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: And so you can actually reach in and choose the bulbs that you want, you know, to choose.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: And just like you're shopping for produce at the supermarket, right?
32:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, you don't choose the the tiny, you know, not very good looking tomato.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: You choose, you know, the really nice looking tomato or onion or whatever.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: And so when the bulbs are loose like that, you get to do the same thing.
32:15
SPEAKER_01: You get to choose the best looking ones.
32:17
SPEAKER_01: And so I like to do that as my first choice for buying bulbs.
32:22
SPEAKER_01: Um, and bulbs are not inexpensive, and I have been tempted in the past at a big box store to buy bulbs that are pre-bagged because they're, you know, a lot cheaper.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I have to say, I've, you know, sometimes I've had okay luck with that, but other times the the flowers and the success, you know, like say I buy 10 bulbs, maybe only half of them come up, and maybe the blooms are not, you know, as striking as the ones I paid more money for and bought, you know, loose at the nursery.
32:53
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, make your own call, but um, I've I've now decided if I can find them, I will buy them, you know, in person where I can pick them out myself.
33:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, and before we leave bulbs, I do want to mention some drought-resistant bulbs because as we have you know less and less water available to us here in our climate, there are a lot of bulbs that come from South Africa and other places that have climates similar to ours.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: So I'm just gonna mention those.
33:25
SPEAKER_01: Augsalis, and I know we think of auxalis usually as a weed, that that terrible weed that you know gets in your grass and your flower beds, but there's an auxalis bulb that produces these very beautiful little tiny flowers.
33:39
SPEAKER_01: I have hot pink, and this thing, I bought it many, many years ago, and it just keeps multiplying and multiplying, and I just dig up the clumps and I divide them, and I have them literally all throughout my yard.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: And they have they're an edging, they're just a small edging type um size, and the ones I have are hot pink.
33:59
SPEAKER_01: Others um that come from South Africa called Babiana or Baboon Flower, Chasmanth, Crocosmia, Frisia, Ixia, uh, Spiaraxis, um, and Tritonia and Watsonia.
34:17
SPEAKER_01: And I know that's a lot, but you can replay our show and listen to the list again.
34:24
SPEAKER_01: But those are great, and I have had lots of good success.
34:27
SPEAKER_01: Many of those will naturalize.
34:29
SPEAKER_01: Uh, the fruit, the freezas uh in particular, and uh the cricosmia.
34:35
SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, I have crocosmia all over my slope because it just I don't go up there in deadhead, so it actually ends up going to seed and then sows itself.
34:45
SPEAKER_01: And it's a tall, uh, it's a pretty tall plant.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: Even the leaves are like probably three feet tall, and then the spike of the red flower comes up, you know, a couple feet taller than that.
34:57
SPEAKER_01: So it is a great plant, I think, for the slope or the back of the bed because it's tall.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's another thing people need to think about is when you're planting something, and we always tell you guys this: look how big it gets, because a little friezia is a different size than what you were just talking about.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: So make sure you're planting what fits in the size area that you're looking to put it in.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
35:21
SPEAKER_01: And then and then there's some unusual bulbs.
35:23
SPEAKER_01: If you get bulb catalogs, um, that's super fun to get the catalogs and look at them.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: And you can, you know, there's one I like that's called, I can never say it, ornith ornithogallum.
35:34
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever planted that one?
35:35
SPEAKER_01: That's pretty fun.
35:36
SPEAKER_01: It has uh a long-lasting little white flowers, um, and I really like that one.
35:42
SPEAKER_01: Ifion is another one, something called chinchin churri, which you can sometimes find in pots, like uh at uh florists.
35:51
SPEAKER_01: Um, so anyway, experiment with bulbs.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: It's so much fun.
35:55
SPEAKER_01: Get a bulb catalog, ordering through reputable bulb catalogs, where you know that's all they do is sell bulbs.
36:01
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna get, you know, high-quality stuff from those places too.
36:04
SPEAKER_01: So give it a try.
36:05
SPEAKER_01: It's super fun.
36:07
SPEAKER_01: And then just a word of we'll talk about this in the spring, but um, just a word now.
36:12
SPEAKER_01: When the bulbs bloom and they're done blooming, you'll still see the foliage.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: Do not cut the foliage off if you want them to naturalize.
36:21
SPEAKER_01: You need that foliage to produce food for the underground bulb structure so that it can come back and bloom the next year.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: So let's let's uh let's see, how are we doing on time?
36:33
SPEAKER_01: I think we need to go to our next subject.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let's just finish um flower beds though, if we can, because I talked about mixing up, you know, the the annuals and perennials with with the bulb.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: So let's just talk about first of all, we should make sure everybody has cleaned up their beds by the time they do this.
36:53
SPEAKER_00: So it's nice clean your beds, weed, get rid of the old stuff, yeah, aerate.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: Just just make your beds all happy before you start.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, you have to clean house before you remodel it.
37:07
SPEAKER_01: Clean house, and then as I said, prepare the soil because the bulbs and the annuals and perennials will like it if they have nice fluffy soil.
37:16
SPEAKER_01: And just briefly for flower beds or vegetable beds or anything, you want to dig down about eight inches, turn the soil, add a bag of store-bought compost or your homemade compost, add your fertilizer according to the package directions, and then just till it in with a hand cultivator till the soil is nice and loose and crumbly, and then you're ready to plant your plants.
37:39
SPEAKER_01: Um, so if you want to also have some cool season annual flowers, like I mentioned, snapdragons to plant, you know, with your bulbs, um, there's you know lots of choices.
37:53
SPEAKER_01: I actually like the cold season flowers, maybe more than summer flowers, even.
37:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, but but um calendula is fabulous.
38:01
SPEAKER_01: I mentioned Iceland poppy and snapdragons, um, nemesia, pansy, primrose, uh sweet Elyssum.
38:11
SPEAKER_01: I mentioned that, uh, Viola, Cineraria is a great one for the dead of winter.
38:16
SPEAKER_01: It it blooms so brightly and amazing.
38:20
SPEAKER_01: And then sweet peas uh are one of my favorite things.
38:23
SPEAKER_01: If you plant sweet peas in September, you get one that's called an early sweet pea.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: You'll have sweet pea blossoms for bouquets in December.
38:33
SPEAKER_01: And they're beautiful, and I love and the smell.
38:36
SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness, the smell, bringing the smell inside the house.
38:39
SPEAKER_01: So I try to do that every September because I love having those little bouquets around the house for the holidays.
38:46
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, one warning is when you go in September to the nurseries, what you're gonna see in the six packs and the four inches are probably still gonna be a lot of the summer flowers, the marigolds, the petunias.
39:00
SPEAKER_01: Don't don't re-plant those.
39:03
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can if you want, if you're having a party and you want instant color, but just remember that when the cool weather comes, those things are gonna poop out.
39:10
SPEAKER_01: So um don't be tempted, even though they look better than maybe the little snapdragons that aren't blooming yet.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: Um, better to, you know, plant the stuff that isn't blooming quite so you know, it's romantic.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: You know, they they look prettier, but they're not gonna be there much longer.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: The weather's changing, the sun is changing, and you're really not gonna get much there.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: And it's better just to plant what's gonna be blooming for a long period of time, and you'll get so much enjoyment, and it's it's time to see new things in the garden.
39:44
SPEAKER_01: And as far as perennials go, we'll talk about these more in October.
39:48
SPEAKER_01: I think October is actually a better month to plant um perennials than um September.
39:54
SPEAKER_01: So we'll talk about those more next month.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, but for the perennials that are already in your garden, they probably need to be deadheaded or divided if they're the clumps are too big.
40:06
SPEAKER_01: So you can you can do that in September if you want to as a part of revamping your whole flower bed.
40:14
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so I think a lot of work to do.
40:16
SPEAKER_01: I know.
40:16
SPEAKER_01: So I think that's enough about flowers.
40:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, how about vegetables?
40:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, September same kind of thing with vegetables.
40:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a real transition time though, you know, because it might be too hot.
40:28
SPEAKER_01: Like, is it too hot for you to plant lettuce where you live?
40:31
SPEAKER_00: It'll definitely be too hot for me to plant lettuce.
40:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: But we could always get rid, you know, start cleaning up the vegetable garden.
40:37
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, there's things we'll be pulling out, and just because there'll be so much next month when we tend to do more planting, it then you don't have to do it.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a little bit out of time.
40:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's September is a little is a little tricky.
40:52
SPEAKER_01: Uh mostly what I do in September is I I pull out, like I said, the squashes that have gotten powdery mildew and aren't producing much anymore.
41:01
SPEAKER_01: Um, maybe the green beans, you know, depending on whether it's a because Katrina and I talked um last in July, I think, we talked about planting a second crop of your warm season vegetables.
41:13
SPEAKER_01: So if you planted second crops of beans and squash and tomatoes, they'll be going strong right now.
41:21
SPEAKER_01: But if you didn't plant a second crop, um they're probably looking terrible.
41:25
SPEAKER_00: And your first crop, you know, your first crop, you get rid of your first crop and you just clean up around that so you can prepare for we're always cleaning up around things and so we could prepare for the next thing we're planting, and we do a lot of that.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: So clean up your vegetable garden, but don't pull out the things that are still producing.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, especially tomatoes.
41:43
SPEAKER_01: You know, some of these indeterminate tomatoes will just go and go and go and go until it gets really cold.
41:49
SPEAKER_01: And so uh keep tying them up if they're continuing to grow.
41:53
SPEAKER_01: Keep we talked about trellising tomatoes earlier in the year.
41:58
SPEAKER_01: Keep them healthy, keep them healthy, cut off the yellowing leaves because that actually allows the plant to stay healthy and maybe last longer so that you keep getting tomatoes.
42:08
SPEAKER_01: And and they may not look that great because they're kind of rangy, but man, I hate to pull them out and because once you do, you don't have those garden fresh tomatoes anymore.
42:17
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and even if it doesn't produce as much, you know, if it produces one-tenth of what it was producing, you still get a treasured tomato in the middle of winter is lovely.
42:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it really is just to serve, you know, a nice bruchetta at you know, Thanksgiving is pretty special, you know, to have that yummy yummy tomato flavor.
42:39
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, try and try and baby those tomatoes if you can.
42:43
SPEAKER_01: Um, but you can begin planting the cool season vegetables, especially I like to do the root vegetables, so I'll start planting beets and carrots in September.
42:53
SPEAKER_01: Do you do you do them that early or uh end of September?
42:57
SPEAKER_01: End of September, yeah.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: And then um end of September, beginning of October, any of the um the coal crops, you know, the caliph cauliflower, the broccoli, the cabbages.
43:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, but be careful with the lettuces.
43:12
SPEAKER_01: As Katrina said, she doesn't dare plant them in September because it's too hot.
43:16
SPEAKER_01: Where she lives.
43:17
SPEAKER_00: We also get Santa Ana winds.
43:19
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, and Tina and I also, Tina lives closer to the coast, and I live farther inland.
43:25
SPEAKER_00: So every month when we do this show, we have different things producing because of the temperature, and you could plant things that I can, and vice versa.
43:34
SPEAKER_00: So it's is it's harder inland to plant a little bit earlier for those cool season vegetables.
43:41
SPEAKER_00: I did one year.
43:42
SPEAKER_00: And then if you know a Santa Ana wind is coming, put off planting because that they dry, they oh my goodness.
43:50
SPEAKER_00: Everything dries up.
43:51
SPEAKER_00: Everything dry, no matter how much water, it just it shreds the poor little things.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, kind of look at the weather report too.
43:59
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it it is.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: To see what's happening and how far out can you look to give it a little bit of um time to try to get its little roots going before it gets blown away in the dry winds?
44:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have a a sad story to tell about that because I have volunteered a lot over the years, as you know, with school gardens, right?
44:17
SPEAKER_01: And so the school gardens always start planting or want to start planting at the end of September and the beginning of October, you know, because the school year started and the parents are excited and the kids are excited.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: So um, and then they then they plant seeds, and then we get a Santa Ana, and then it's the weekend, and nobody's there to water.
44:41
SPEAKER_01: So these poor little kids spend all this time planting their lettuce seeds or their pea seeds or whatever.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: And as we know, if you plant seeds, you have to keep them moist all the time.
44:54
SPEAKER_01: You can't let them dry out for a day or two, or they just they they don't germinate if they dry out.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: And so these poor kids came back.
45:02
SPEAKER_01: They even had some of them that had germinated, but nobody was there to water them over the weekend with the hot winds, and everything just croaked and they had to start over again.
45:13
SPEAKER_01: So um be careful when you when you start planting, as Katrina said, to watch the weather report.
45:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, even if it's not Santa Ana winds, like you were saying, and it's hot, you know, make sure you're not planning a vacation or you're gonna be gone for a few days.
45:31
SPEAKER_00: And if you are, have somebody water those seeds and those little ones.
45:35
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
45:36
SPEAKER_01: Or um plant from six packs.
45:39
SPEAKER_01: Um, because I've done that before.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: I want, I want to plant my garden, you know, in October, but I know I'm gonna be gone, you know, on a trip for a week, but I have automatic sprinklers, so I I plant from six packs because you know they are already germinated, they're already a decent size, and so they don't have to be, you know, watered daily.
46:01
SPEAKER_01: They can they can be watered, you know, every couple of days and still survive.
46:04
SPEAKER_01: So hopefully.
46:05
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, if you're as hot as I am, sometimes if it's really where you live, maybe not.
46:10
SPEAKER_00: We we sometimes they have to be watered every day too.
46:12
SPEAKER_00: So just know your garden.
46:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and my garden gets a little more, doesn't have the long sun days.
46:19
SPEAKER_01: You know, my garden is like a six-hour sundae, whereas I think yours is probably a 12-hour sundae because you know, in different times of year it gets different amount of sun.
46:27
SPEAKER_00: So we could have some really hot cooking weather.
46:30
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
46:32
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, get get ready, I guess, is is the the moral of the story for September in the vegetable garden, is get ready to do some big planting in October.
46:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, but just try and clean up and prepare and keep what you have going in September.
46:50
SPEAKER_01: Then other miscellaneous stuff to do.
46:53
SPEAKER_01: How about lawns?
46:55
SPEAKER_01: Lawns, yeah.
46:56
SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a transition month for lawns too.
46:59
SPEAKER_01: Um, so we have two types of lawns, two types of turf, cool season and warm season.
47:05
SPEAKER_01: And the cool seasons are the fescues, which is what a lot of us have in in our yards.
47:11
SPEAKER_01: And we were not fertilizing those in the hot months because they go a little bit dormant, and so you don't want to stress them out because they like cool weather better.
47:21
SPEAKER_01: So you just kept them watered and mowed.
47:23
SPEAKER_01: And mow on high, on high so that they can sh uh shadow their own roots.
47:30
SPEAKER_01: And when we say high, just we up the the the height of the grass during these to be higher so it doesn't cut the grass too low.
47:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh so that's what we did over the summer.
47:44
SPEAKER_01: And September still counts as summer for cool season grasses, but the warm season grasses, it still counts as summer for them too.
47:53
SPEAKER_01: So you can give them, we do want to feed those over the summer, so you can give them one last feeding, and that would be like your Bermuda or Zoisia grasses.
48:01
SPEAKER_01: So you can give them one last feeding, and also September's a good month to de-thatch your Bermuda lawns.
48:09
SPEAKER_01: Uh, Bermuda lawns tend to um get a layer of what's called thatch.
48:15
SPEAKER_01: It's basically kind of um how would you describe it?
48:18
SPEAKER_01: Like clumpy uh a mat.
48:22
SPEAKER_01: Dense.
48:23
SPEAKER_01: Dense, a mat.
48:24
SPEAKER_01: And the green grass still comes out of that mat, but when the mat gets too dense, it's uh a good idea to what's called de-thatch it.
48:34
SPEAKER_01: And there's a machine that you can rent, or you can ask your gardener to do it, that just kind of goes through it and cuts through that dense mat, and it makes your lawn look a little ugly for about a week, it's not a horribly long time, but then it will vigorously grow back with some new growth.
48:52
SPEAKER_01: So September is a good time to do that.
48:55
SPEAKER_01: And if you're thinking about eliminating or paring down your lawn because you want to be more water efficient, start planning to do that in September.
49:06
SPEAKER_01: But you don't want to actually uh take your lawn out or plant uh your drought tolerant print plants until October, November.
49:16
SPEAKER_01: You want to do it when the weather gets cooler, but you can start planning for it now.
49:20
SPEAKER_00: It takes a lot of planning.
49:22
SPEAKER_00: So if you're thinking about doing it, it's one of those things where you don't just say, oh, let's do that tomorrow.
49:27
SPEAKER_00: You know, to have it successful, you probably want to sit there and think about it.
49:31
SPEAKER_00: What do you want?
49:32
SPEAKER_00: What do you want it to look like?
49:33
SPEAKER_00: How big is it gonna get?
49:35
SPEAKER_00: How are you gonna irrigate it?
49:37
SPEAKER_00: Um, how much sun does it get?
49:39
SPEAKER_00: So it there's a lot of thought into taking out a lawn and what you're gonna do with it.
49:45
SPEAKER_01: And go to your water district because a lot of the water districts will have entire sections on how to convert from a lawn to a more drought tolerant garden and they'll have lists of plants, or else they'll have links to other websites that will have lists of plants.
50:02
SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, you can always hire a professional, you know, landscape designer who specializes in that kind of landscape if you want to.
50:12
SPEAKER_01: Um, and also just remember that when you're going to do a drought tolerant garden, you need to make sure that the sprinkler station for that area has all drought tolerant plants in it.
50:27
SPEAKER_01: Because if you mix it, like say, oh, I only want to take out half my lawn, but you have only one station for your whole lawn, you're gonna have to have an irrigation new valve put in because you only want the water for the drought tolerant stuff to come on way less than what you need for your lawn.
50:48
SPEAKER_00: So you you either need to do it all under one station or you need to go into two stations and do your drought tolerant and your not drought tolerant.
50:57
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
50:58
SPEAKER_01: They have to have separate sprinkler needs.
51:01
SPEAKER_01: You know, your your drought tolerant stuff, once it's mature, uh even in the heat of summer, probab maybe only needs to be watered once a week or once every two weeks, depending on you know what you put in there.
51:12
SPEAKER_01: If you put cactus, you know, it doesn't need to be watered often at all.
51:15
SPEAKER_01: But if half of that is left in lawn, your lawn will die if you don't, if you don't water it, you know, appropriately.
51:24
SPEAKER_01: So, but yeah, good time to be doing the planning for it.
51:27
SPEAKER_00: If if you also see other miscellaneous, it's fire season coming up.
51:32
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, the heart of it.
51:34
SPEAKER_00: Part of it is check your yard, get away, get rid of debris, check your gutters.
51:40
SPEAKER_00: Leaves are starting to fall off of trees.
51:42
SPEAKER_00: You want to have really clean gutters, you want to get any extra debris away from the house.
51:47
SPEAKER_00: So it's a good time just to do a good cleanup of your yard and don't forget your roof, and don't forget wherever leaves may fall.
51:56
SPEAKER_00: Get rid of all that.
51:57
SPEAKER_01: And also, I wanted to mention ornamental grasses.
52:01
SPEAKER_01: One of the reasons we trim our ornamental grasses in September is to get rid of that fuel.
52:07
SPEAKER_01: And so your ornamental grasses um do uh will do better if they have a haircut anyway.
52:16
SPEAKER_01: But this time of year it's great to get them down low so that they provide less fuel in the event of a fire.
52:23
SPEAKER_00: And it's also a good time to think about what would I want to possibly take out?
52:27
SPEAKER_00: You know, is there things close to the house?
52:29
SPEAKER_00: Are there trees close to the house?
52:31
SPEAKER_00: Is this a good time to start thinking about how do we become more fire safe?
52:36
SPEAKER_00: I actually started that process um last year.
52:38
SPEAKER_01: Remember, Katrina, when you brought me all of the succulents from your garden?
52:43
SPEAKER_01: Uh so I live up against a creek or arroyo, um, which might be where some fire comes from, right?
52:50
SPEAKER_01: It's it's open space.
52:51
SPEAKER_01: And so I decided to take out um most of the plants that I had planted there, shrubbery and stuff, and replace it with um decomposed granite and succulents.
53:04
SPEAKER_01: And so Katrina was kind enough to bring me a huge assortment of succulents that I planted all along there to hopefully be um a bit of a fire break in the event of fire came from that area.
53:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we I did that also at my house, is the back part of our house faces the east where the fi where the winds come from.
53:24
SPEAKER_00: And now I have an entire two flower beds with succulents, three flower beds with succulents, and it's less work.
53:32
SPEAKER_00: And if I want to have something close to the house, I wanted to have something that wasn't so flammable.
53:37
SPEAKER_00: Right.
53:37
SPEAKER_00: And so I now plant it, and it's it's nice.
53:40
SPEAKER_00: It's as I get older, it's less work, and they're beautiful and they're now mature.
53:45
SPEAKER_00: And so it just think about, you know, that's just something to add into thinking about what do I want?
53:50
SPEAKER_00: If I want to make my house a little more safe, what can I do to make it a little more safe?
53:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, in California, we actually have different fire zones, um, zone zero, zone one, zone two.
54:03
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and there are recommendations as to how you maintain those uh areas to be more fire safe.
54:12
SPEAKER_01: And zone zero is uh, I believe five feet from the house.
54:16
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember?
54:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't recall.
54:18
SPEAKER_01: I think that might be it.
54:19
SPEAKER_01: I think it's five feet from the house.
54:21
SPEAKER_01: And in that area, they're recommending now that you have no trees or shrubs up against your house at all.
54:27
SPEAKER_01: And so um you have to be, you know, very careful now what what you plant there.
54:32
SPEAKER_01: So I this this year took out a bunch of stuff.
54:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we had like trees that were trimmed into pillar kind of shapes, you know, that were framing windows.
54:42
SPEAKER_01: Oh, they're beautiful.
54:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I took them out because they're right up against the house.
54:47
SPEAKER_01: And then my husband, funnily enough, wanted to plant some watermelons and pumpkins and corn with the grandkids, and I had no room in the vegetable garden.
54:56
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, I just took out all that stuff, you know, you can plant it out there.
55:01
SPEAKER_01: Um, hopefully the association won't get mad at us, but it's you know, just for a cup a few weeks and then it comes out.
55:08
SPEAKER_01: It's not noticeable either.
55:09
SPEAKER_01: It's really not so we have that out there right now, but as soon as the pumpkins are mature um and the corn is done, you know, we will take all of that out.
55:17
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm gonna put DG there and plant low-growing succulents um in that five foot range to keep that more fire safe.
55:25
SPEAKER_00: We even took trees farther out.
55:27
SPEAKER_00: We've taken a lot of trees out, and it's it's given us a view, but it's also there's so much fuel that's blowing towards our house and others that even though it was more than five feet, I mean, we we have plenty of trees in our yard, but we just we had too many trees.
55:43
SPEAKER_00: We had fire breaks or not, excuse me, wind breaks.
55:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, we live up in the hill and we had just like rows of huge eucalyptus trees.
55:51
SPEAKER_00: And over the years we just kept taking more and more out.
55:54
SPEAKER_00: And I now have like one eucalyptus tree, and it's big and beautiful, but it's pretty far from the house.
56:01
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, but it just it it makes you think.
56:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, we've seen fire come over the hill from our house and really makes you think, what can you do?
56:10
SPEAKER_00: So be aware.
56:11
SPEAKER_01: Be aware and use September, um, which is I mean, we have fires all year round now, but September is especially the start of fire season.
56:19
SPEAKER_01: So use early September to make your home fire safe.
56:22
unknown: Yeah.
56:22
SPEAKER_01: And on that note, we'll wish you happy September and happy gardening.
56:28
SPEAKER_01: And we'll looking forward to next month, you know.
56:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, October will be a busy month, so be sure you tune in then.