Garden Talk: Do purple apples really grow in Saskatchewan?

Jill and Rick Van Duyvendyk answer all your gardening questions in Garden Talk on 650 CKOM and 980 CJME every Sunday morning from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Here are a  selection of questions and answers from the Sept. 15 show.

Q: The Facebook post below says the purple apple originated in Saskatchewan. Is this true?

A: This was a big topic of conversation at the World Congress — how is Artificial Intelligence is affecting the horticulture industry? Users of AI can create images that look real. People bring in a picture and ask us to order the plant but it doesn’t actually exist. I don’t think purple apples exist.

The other thing that you want to watch for is when you’re gathering information from the internet is to make sure you ask very specific questions mentioning Saskatchewan or zone 2 to get the proper information. 650 CKOM and 980 CJME also both feature Garden Talk episode transcripts on the websites.

Q: What is the best fall feritilizer for my lawn?

A: GroundKeeper fertilizer,  the green bag at 16-10-3-17-3. Around mid-September is the best time to do it. Cut your grass first — you don’t want it to be so tall that it lays over, but you also don’t want it to be so short that you get winter kill. Set your lawnmower to level two or three. Don’t use the lowest setting.

Q: One of my Dakota Pinnacle Birch trees is starting to turn yellow but the others are still green. Should I keep watering?

A: If you don’t start decreasing your watering, the plant’s going to keep actively growing. Test the soil by probing with a piece of rebar. The soil should not be wet, but if it is really dry or if the leaves are starting to curl, then give it a little bit of extra water. Not a lot, just enough to keep it going.

Right before it freezes you can dump a couple of buckets of water on those trees to get a solid ice chunk around the roots for winter. Do this for evergreens.

Q: When exactly do you start slowing down watering in fall?

A: Right now except if it’s a newly planted perennial tree or shrub. Pretend the plant is still in its pot, not in the ground. With temperatures of 24 deg C during the day, a plant in its pot would dry out. Keep watering newly planted perennials until it freezes.

Slow watering now for trees, shrubs and perennials. If temperatures are war, check they’re not wilting. Slowing watering helps plants shut down for the winter, so you don’t have them actively growing when the weather’s getting cold.

Q: How can I save some of my late crops?

A: Frost blankets are great — they are a thin white sheet that you can put over top of your your garden beds. They allow light and water through and protect from frost. You can buy a roll of it. Put a few rocks or bricks around the edge so it doesn’t blow away and it will extend the season.

Q: What do I do to look after begonias in fall? I over-watered my plants this year and rotted them off, but the bulbs stayed firm so I left them in the pots with new plants and now they’re starting to grow.

A: Let them grow as much as possible. Bring them indoors and put them in a bright, sunny window to let them grow a little bit longer. Then, decrease your watering and it will start dying back. When they start wilting cut it back. You can then harvest the bulbs or keep them in the pots and put them into cold storage.

Fall chrysanthemums. (Dutch Growers/Submitted)

Q: How do I choose fall chrysanthemum (mums)?

A: When looking for a fall mum, your eyes are drawn to the ones that are big and in bloom. Look for ones that have a tighter flowerhead with only some flowers open to prolong the fall flowering. Mums are pretty resilient. If you let them dry out they’ll bounce back and look good, but doing that too many times affects the root system, meaning the plant is not going to last as long. Consistent watering is important.

When planting in the fall, especially with flowering plants and mums, the watering routine used on your plants in the summer is not gonna work. Stick your little finger into the soil up to the second knuckle and make sure it feels dry to the touch before watering.

See Dutch Growers’ guide to caring for fall mums here.

Q: Can I plant tulip bulbs in September?

A: Tulips need to be planted in the fall in order for them to bloom in the spring; they need that cold period. So now is the time to plant them.

Tulip bulbs need well-drained soil and should be planted seven to eight inches deep. If you have clay soil, add handful of gravel in the bottom of the hole. Add some bone meal or blood meal into the into the hole as well and then back-fill around the bulb.

Q: What is bulb layering?

A: Planting bulbs on top of each other at different depths. There are a lot of fun ideas online for layering bulbs in pots, like putting tulips at the bottom, then alliums, and then crocuses and snowdrops on the top.

Q: I planted two standard hydrangeas too close to each other, can I move a hydrangea in September?

A: Don’t move it if temperatures are 30-35 deg C, but otherwise mid-September is a great time t. Try to remember the size of pot it was in when you first planted and dig that size of root ball or even a bit larger when you’re moving to disturb the root system as little as possible. Mound some mulch — wood chips or dry leaves — around the base of the plant to keep it insulated for the winter.

Q: Should I plant hydrangeas that are still in pots? Is it be better to put them in the ground in the pot or directly in the ground? How much do I prune them?

A: There are many types of hydrangeas. Some are hardy for Saskatchewan, which can be bought in nursery pots at a garden centre. The ones you can get in spring around Easter are more indoor houseplants here. Saskatchewan is a zone 2 to 3. Some zone 4 plant material can survive in Saskatchewan, but mostly we’re a zone 3 if we wanted to be hardy.

Hydrangeas bought at the garden centre need to be taken out of the pots and put into the ground. Use either a bark mulch, peat moss or something similar. You can also take a cardboard box and build that up around the base and fill it with dry leaves. Let the leaves go crispy and then pack them in and build it up about a foot around base of your hydrangea to keep it a little bit more insulated for that winter.

Don’t prune it when you put it in the ground, just take the flower heads off after they’re finished. In spring there will some winter kill on your plant, usually about a third where the stalk is brown, and then you’ll see new buds coming out of the base. Prune down to that point.

Q: My Manchurian ash trees have very large cracks in the bark on their west side close to a fence.
The cracks have been getting larger and longer every year for the past three years. Will it kill the tree? What can we do to save them?

A: Those are frost cracks and are usually caused by sunscald. The Sun heats up the tree bark and when it gets moisture in there, it will crack. The freeze and thaw throughout the year in Saskatchewan expands and contracts that crack makes it bigger. A really bad frost crack will eventually kill the tree.

Prevent frost cracks with a tree guard. These are usually a white plastic guard you put around the tree. You can apply a tree guard to prevent it an existing crack from getting worse  but there’s not a whole lot that you can do if it has progressed deep into the tree.

If you have a large tree, it is worth saving. Calling an arborist in your area to analyze your tree. Every tree is different depending on size, age and the depth of the crack. An arborist will also check to see if there any disease or rotting deep in the tree?

You can also email pictures to info@dutchgrowers.com or text a picture or video to us on the show at 1-877-332-8255.

Q: How can I overwinter pots of purple fountain grass? I have a heated area to store the pots that’s kept about 10 deg C.

A: I did a trial with purple fountain grass and also some other pennisetums last winter. We found about 50 per cent of them survived. In some climates they are a perennial, so they require a cold phase, but they can’t get too cold.

Put them in a cold storage area, like a garage that stays a consistent temperature. Decrease your watering. We cut them right back to the to the base and added a little bit of moisture occasionally, just enough so that the soil doesn’t go away completely.

We tried storing them bare root but that didn’t work as well as keeping them in the soil. They aren’t hardy to our zone, but we let a light frost hit them. So maybe like that one degree, a little bit of maybe zero, so they’ve right, right, shut down. You can keep them as more of a house plant, but they look really ugly all winter long.

Q: My apple trees had an apple maggot infection, and we removed all the apples from the trees we could reach but I still have the infection and it has spread. What should I do about apple maggots? Can we eat the apples?

A: The apple maggot is just gonna add more protein if you eat the apples! They might not look very pretty but most likely there’s no bug in there. What you are seeing is the damage that the bug has caused to the apple.

In spring you can put an apple decoy in the tree to collect those maggots.  The decoy is a sticky trap that attracts the bugs. If you’re trying to pick the apples high on a tree, use an apple picking basket on a pole. If it’s a really big tree spread a tarp on the ground too and collect the apples that way, too.

It is really important that those apples do not touching the ground because then the maggot just goes back into the ground and the cycle continues. Sometimes it is only a matter of minutes before it crawls out of the apple and back into the ground.

Q: I have a crab apple tree that’s over 30 years old, and this year it is totally loaded with apples, so much so that a lot of branches are breaking off, even larger ones. What should I do about the broken crab apple limbs? Is it too late to prune? Do we prune back significantly or just the broken limbs?

A: You definitely can prune it back. Try to take some of thet fruit off using an apple picking basket or something like a rake, but make sure you’re not scratching the bark too much. When pruning take off crossing branches, and look at the way that the branch comes off the tree. If there’s an area where the branch is forming a Y, the heavy fruit might cause it to crack.

You can also prop up branches with heavy fruit, using something like a hockey stick or ladders for support. You can tie one branch to another across the other side of the tree to take some of the weight off of them, too.

Q: I saved some poppy pods which dried and exploded open and now I’ve got a million seeds. Is it best to sprinkle poppy seeds in the fall or wait until spring?

A: You can do it both ways. If you want to plant some of them in the fall then sprinkle them, but for spring planting put the poppy seeds in trays and start them about early March, and then you’ll get the blooms earlier that first year. Then they’ll start the cycle of naturally repopulating.

Q: How do I grow an indeterminate heirloom tomato inside my house?  It grows up to 10 feet and seems to produce mostly on its top half. Is there a way to make it produce on the lower half or trim it so it won’t be as tall but still produce fruit?

A: A lot of heirloom tomatoes are indeterminate varieties, which mean they’re vining varieties of fruit. You could just keep pinching and pruning the runners off and just keep getting fruit.

The key to success growing tomatoes indoors is pollinating them, and making sure it has enough light and nutrients, especially calcium. Use a grow light for at least 10 hours a day so that it can produce that fruit. Heirloom aren’t as disease resistant as hybrid varieties, too.

Q: Will coleus survive as indoor plants in Saskatchewan?

A: They will survive as indoor plants, but give them a heavy haircut first. You can take the bottom leaves off and grow it as a mother plant and then take cuttings off of that for next season. Trim it back about one third to one half and then let it produce lots of new growth. In the spring, in about February or March, take cuttings off of that new growth, put them in a vase of water and let them get roots, and then those can be your new plants for the season.

Q: We grew a couple of castor beans this year. One had nice big leaves, the other some spiny little balls on the stems. Are those seeds that I can plant for next year? How should I store them for winter?

A: Dry the seed pods and store them in a dry area. Start seedlings in March inside the house then transfer to a two-inch pot, then a four-inch pot and by June they can be planted outside.

Q: Do I have to re-seed my hollyhocks next spring if they didn’t flower or drop seeds this year?

A: Hollyhocks produce flowers sometimes every second year, so just let them let them do their thing. Let the frost hit them, causing the branches and leaves to fall then cut the plants off at the base and they will come back up from the rootstock.

Q: How do I get rid of field horsetail in my garden beds?

A: Best bet is to let it grow and spray with Roundup. Make sure to trim off any seeds.

Read more

• Garden Talk: Should weeds in new lawns be removed?
• Garden Talk: Blooming heck, my hydrangeas look like broccoli!
• Garden Talk: How to deal with a lily beetle invasion
• Garden Talk: To prune or not to prune?