What's Dormant Seeding?

Many of us understand that the best time to seed or over seed your lawn is in the Fall.  Typically the time frame is from Labor Day through the second weekend of October.  We also know that is usually a very busy time for most of us.  So what happens if we didn't have a chance to work on the lawn then like we had hoped?  Maybe you should consider dormant seeding.

Dormant seeding is performed like fall seeding, except it is done when the soils have cooled enough to prevent germination. Usually that time in Kansas is sometime after Thanksgiving. In a dormant seeding operation, the seed will lay in the yard, "dormant", until next spring when the soils warm back up.

There are benefits and pitfalls to dormant seeding. The main benefit of dormant seeding, compared to spring seeding, is avoiding the mud and getting seed up early in the season. Many times in the spring the snow is melting or it is raining, making it difficult to get out and work the ground for seeding.  The pitfalls of dormant seeding come in the form of wind and water erosion moving the seed around.  In some situations, if the seed is not incorporated into the soil well, or if the soils are sloped and not covered with erosion control material, the seed can be washed away or moved around on the soil.  If you suspect erosion will be a problem, use erosion control material like Curlex to prevent erosion, or wait until next spring to do your seeding. 

Remember that any turf grass that gets established in the spring rather than the in the fall is going to have a less extensive root system and will be less mature than its fall seeded counterpart. Therefore, monitor both spring-seeded and dormant-seeded areas a little closer. They will need watering sooner than other areas during dry spells.

We are always here to help with any questions that you may have, including whether or not dormant seeding is right for your situation!

Focus on Natives: Bittersweet

Focus on Natives...Bittersweet

A fall walk in the timber just wouldn't be the same without this bright colored favorite. It goes unrecognized most of the season, but when its fruits take on the bright orange their known for, Bittersweet really grabs your attention.

This native plant is a vine. It is commonly found growing in the underbrush of wooded areas, in fencerows and on the edges of the timber. Although it is frequently found growing in shady areas, it can also be grown in more sunny areas...all it needs to something to twist around as it grows...and lots of room! In the wild it can be found growing 20-30' tall...or more!

The fruits are really what everyone falls in love with. The fruit capsules ripen late in the season, around September, orange in color and popping open to reveal red-orange fruits. Once ripe, they are often harvested by humans for decoration. Birds love them too, helping to disperse their seeds as they feed on them.

Interestingly, bittersweet is primarily dioecious...that's the fancy, plant term for plants that have male and female flowers on separate plants, like hollies. That means only the female vines produce fruits which is why some vines you come across never do. In the landscape, it is always best to plant one of each to ensure fruit production or plant a self-fertile form like 'Autumn Revolution'.

One last note. A very similar looking cousin called Oriental Bittersweet should be avoided. This non-native looks almost identical to its North American counterpart, but it tends to be more aggressive and particularly back east, it has become invasive. Stick with our native.

Grow Your Own Asparagus...It’s Easy!

If you aren’t growing asparagus in your garden, it’s time start!

Few vegetable crops offer so much harvest with so little input. When planted correctly, a patch of asparagus can offer 15-20 years of production...all from one planting. That’s a lot of years of good eating!

This is possible because asparagus is perennial. That means you plant it once and it comes back each year. That’s pretty cool but it also means you should do a little planning before you plant. Here are a few things to consider.

Choosing a Location - Because your plants will be growing in the same place for up to 20 years, you should think about how your planting will impact your existing garden as well as your future landscape plans. It takes a couple of seasons to get your new plants up to full production, so you don’t want to have to remove them because of bad planning. Asparagus plants will grow up to about 4-6’ tall and almost as wide. Give them some room and site them correctly. You will be happy you did.

Think About Exposure - Asparagus wants lots of sun. Your spring harvest of spears is directly connected to how well your plants grew the previous season. Providing a sunny location allows your plants to grow their best, enabling vigorous spear growth in the spring That translates to an abundant harvest.

Decide How Many Crowns to Plant - With the more productive varieties we have available today, 5 crowns for each person is just about right. If you really love asparagus, aim for 10 per person. If you end up with too much, don’t worry. You’ll find that extra asparagus is a lot like extra tomatoes...it’s always easy to find a home for!

Improve the Soil - Pick areas with good soil but still take time to improve it before you plant. Keep in mind that you will be planting once and then hopefully harvesting for the next 20 years. Do what you can to improve the soil while you have the chance. Work generous amounts of compost into the ground. Use compost that you have made yourself or utilize some of the quality compost products we have available. Apply 2-4” over the planting site and then work deeply into the soil, incorporating down as deep as you can. You will be planting crowns 8-9” deep, so really get in there and dig!

Choose Your Varieties - We have four varieties of asparagus for you to choose from. All are very productive and disease resistant.

• Jersey Jewel - One of the earlier all-male ‘Jersey Hybrids’ from Rutgers University. Very productive with good flavor and great disease resistance.
• Jersey Knight - This is another all-male ‘Jersey Hybrid’. It is very productive with large green spears and good disease resistance.
• UC-157 - This is our most popular variety and has been for years. It has performed extremely well in Kansas gardens for decades. It is a heavy producer of high quality spears and can be harvested longer into higher temperatures, something that frequently impacts that latter end of the harvest season.
• Purple Passion - Spears of this variety are purple in color and noticeable sweeter, with a sugar content up to 20% higher than green varieties. It does produces fewer spears, but they will be much larger in diameter, making up for the difference. Because they produce fewer spears, this variety could be planted a little closer together, as close as 8-12”. This is our 2nd most popular variety.

Plant Your Crowns - You will be purchasing bare root asparagus crowns. They will look just like the one in the picture below. Plant your crowns about 8-9” deep, about 18-24” apart. If you’re planting your asparagus in a straight row, it may be easier to dig one long trench rather that lots of individual holes. Work in Fertilome Garden’s Special fertilizer following the label instructions found under “Root Crops” to the bottom of the hole.

Place the crown on a slight mound of soil, fanning the roots out, and then cover with soil. Fill the hole (or trench) up about half way, leaving the rest of the soil for use later. Water in your plants and then wait for new growth to emerge. Once the ferny tops have grown well beyond the hole, use the remaining soil to backfill the planting hole the rest of the way.

Mulch Your Plants - Once your crowns have been fully backfilled, top-dress the whole area with compost (about 1” deep) and then mulch to control weeds with Alfalfa Mulch or Pine Straw Mulch. Mulching will improve the yield in future years by eliminating a lot of annoying weed growth. It will also make your planting look nicer and as an added plus, it will provide a clean surface to walk on during the spring harvest when the soil can often be wet and muddy.

Let Your Plants Grow - Year one is all about getting your new asparagus plants established and growing strong. You won’t harvest any spears this first year. Just let your plants grow as much as they can, fertilizing and watering as needed to encourage good growth. You will be able to harvest lightly next spring and be in full production the following year.

Asparagus can offer years of eating enjoyment, but you have to plant if first. April is a prime month to set out new crowns, so come on out and get yours today!

  

Mulch Everything!

When Mother Nature dumps much needed rain on us at the very beginning of Spring, many of us celebrate the fact that warm weather and lots of green are sure to follow.

The random weather patterns have us feeling uncertain about what each new day will bring. Will it be hot, cold, wet, windy or a random combination of all of the above? We have many customers that have cleaned up the flower beds, finished their pruning, planned out their vegetable gardens, and are still wondering what they could/should be doing. I will ask you one of the questions I often ask them: have you mulched yet?

Mulching your garden, flower beds, raised beds and around every tree is crucial, if not necessary, for the long-term survival of your plants. We offer a variety of mulches here at Skinner’s with different textures, colors and sizes. We have four selections available in bulk, and even more bagged ready to load up. Regardless of type or color, they all serve the same main purposes:

• Mulch helps conserve the amount of water you use and reduces evaporation.
• Mulch helps control weed growth.
• Mulch helps regulate soil temperature.
• Mulch will enhance the curb appeal of any flower bed or planting.

What should you mulch? Everything. When should you mulch? Every time you plant. We know that anytime you spend time, energy and money to improve your yard and garden you are making an investment. Protect your investment and give it the best chance of success by mulching regularly. If you have questions about our mulch options, please come visit us in the garden center!

-Mike Ray

Planting Onions...Plants vs. Sets One of the easiest to grow spring vegetable crops is onions. Plant them now while the weather is cool and before long you'll be enjoying your first harvest of green onions and the big onions will only be a few months away. First, some terminology. Onions are a biennial plant. That means they start from seed during year one, grow through that season, go dormant, live through the following winter and then reemerge in the second season to continue growth, eventually flowering and producing seed before they die. Their life cycle takes two years to complete. Onion plants are just starting their first year of life. Onion sets are on year two. So, is that important? The simple answer is yes. Knowing that onions biennial plants, and that onion plants are in year one and life and onion sets are in year two explains some of what we see in crops that we grow. Onion plants are just what they sound like, young onion plants. They are planted from seed and then allowed to grow for about 6-8 weeks before being harvested as young transplants. Once replanted, they resume growth, eventually maturing out into large bulbs. Plants can be pulled earlier if small green onions are desired. Sweet varieties of onions are planted this way. Popular varieties include Candy, Texas 1015's and Yellow Granex. (Yellow Granex is the variety that is planted to produce the popular Vidalia onion. Although this variety makes Vidalia, GA famous for their onions, give Candy a try. It is a better producing sweet onion for our area.) Use onion plants for producing the big onion bulbs. Onion sets are dormant onion bulbs that are in in their second year of growth when your purchase them. They tend to be hotter varieties which allows them to store better. They are usually just packaged up as red, yellow or white without any variety names. They provide a quick start in the spring and are frequently grown for early crops of green onions but they can also be allowed to mature out and form big bulbs. Because sets planting in the garden are growing in their second year, it is very common for some of them to begin flowering, or bolt, preventing good bulb formation. The larger sets are especially prone to that, so sort your sets out before planting, saving the largest ones for pulling as green onions and the smaller ones for growing on into large bulbs. So, if onions are biennial plants and onion sets are already one year old when you plant them, why don't all onion sets produce flowers? Most varieties that are grown have been selected for the tendency not to flower. That allows for good bulb formation. Also, some onion sets are heat treated before they are sold to prevent flowering. Storing the sets at warmer temperatures for a long enough period of time prevents most of the onions from flowering. If you do get onions that produce a flower stalk, go ahead and harvest it for use. It won't grow any bigger at that point and it won't store well. One last thing about sets. Since they are hotter varieties, they store better than the sweet varieties. One last growing tip. Onions need to be planted early and then fertilized regularly to produce large bulbs. Plant them in rich soils and fertilize at planting and then every few weeks with high nitrogen fertilizer until they start to bulb. This is the key to producing large bulbs. We have lots of both on hand, and it's time to plant if your hoping to be eating fresh onions from the garden this spring.

Crabgrass Preventer Reminder   It's continuing to remain unseasonable warm and there are more and more signs of spring there every day. Although there's still a very good chance that things could cool down a bit, there's just as good of a change that is won't. Don't let springtime get away from you! Most lawns benefit from an application of crabgrass preventer to help prevent summer weeds from being a problem. You still have plenty of time to get your application down, but the sooner you get yours applied, they better. The crabgrass preventer products we use are both season-long products and they can be safely applied now with the confidence that they will remain effective on through the summer months (if applied properly). These newer generation products make keeping the lawn looking nice so much easier! Keep in mind though, that your application isn't finished until it has been watered in. This is extremely important. It isn't until the water is applied that the protection is actually in place. If possible, we like to rely on rainfall to water an application in. This is the easiest, but sprinklers may also be used. The key is getting several rounds of water down before it's time for crabgrass to germinate. If it stays warm, that may be a little earlier this season. Remember, your application isn't applied until it has been watered in properly. Just a reminder that we have two products to choose from, Fertilome For All Seasons II Crabgrass and Weed Preventer and Hi-Yield Turf and Ornamental Weed & Grass Stopper with Dimension. Both work great, and can provide weed protection through the spring and summer months with only one application, depending on the application rate.

Seeds: What Do All These Terms Mean?

What Do All These Terms Mean?

When it comes to vegetable seeds and plants, there are a few terms that get used a lot: open-pollinated, heirloom, hybrid, organic and genetically modified. They all sound important, but what do they really mean? Here’s a quick explanation.

Open-pollinated – First, an explanation of pollination. Pollination is the process that plants use to reproduce. Pollen from the flower of one plant gets transferred to the flower of another plant and seeds are formed. This transfer of pollen typically occurs by insects, animals or wind. In this process, the genetic information of one parent (the producer of the pollen) gets blended with the genetic information of the other parent (the recipient of the pollen) and a similar, but genetically different offspring is the result in seed that is formed. This mixing of genetic information is a natural process and allows for the diversity that we naturally find within a plant species.

When it comes to the vegetables grow, open-pollinated varieties refer to unique breeding lines within a species. These breeding lines develop over time. Crops are planted and weak plants or those that don’t display characteristics that resemble the others are eliminated. The remaining plants are allowed to pollinate openly with each other, seed is collected and then saved. The next year the same thing happens and again and again, year after year. Eventually through this repetitive process, the natural variation within this variety begins to disappear and the blood-line becomes more stable, but since it is still open-pollinated, it still containing some genetic diversity which is good. In a true open-pollinated variety, seed saved from one crop can be used to plant a new one and the new one will have the same genetic characteristics as the parent crop. Open-pollinated varieties only remain genetically true only if they are not allowed to cross with other varieties. 

Heirloom – These are open-pollinated varieties that have been around for a long time, 50 to 100 years or even more. These breeding lines have been typically been passed down within a family or community. All heirloom varieties are open-pollinated, but not all open-pollinated varieties are heirlooms…only the real old ones.

Hybrid – All plant varieties are technically hybrids, or the result of the blending of the genetic information (pollen) of two different parents. But when talking about vegetable varieties, the term hybrid usually refers to the offspring of two different species or two distinctly different blood-lines. For example, if two different heirloom varieties are planted side by side and allowed to open-pollinate with each other, the seeds that they produce would be a hybrid, or a blending to the two breeding lines.

Although hybridization can occur naturally, commercially hybridized seed is bred through a controlled process to create the desired results. Parent plants are carefully selected based on plant characteristics like fruit size or disease resistance and other pollen sources are eliminated, allowing for controlled pollination. If the plant breeder has found the right combination of parents to produce a desirable variety, this new hybrid gets goes into commercial production and hybrid seed is produced. It this hybrid occurs by crossing two true breeding lines, the result is called an F1 hybrid.

It is important to note that although hybrid varieties produce plants with known characteristics, the seeds that they produce will not. Because of the genetic mixing that takes place in your garden when natural pollination is allowed to occur, seeds produced from a commercial hybrid that you have planted will not come true to type. Therefore, replanting of this variety from year to year requires the purchase of new seed from the supplier who does the hybridizing.

Genetically Modified – For this plant discussion, genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, are plant varieties that have been created in the laboratory by introducing very specific genes into the genetic material of the new variety. These genes would not typically cross into the plant naturally and may come from vastly different organisms.

GMOs have been around since the 1980’s and are now widely found in commercially grown crops like corn, soybeans and cotton. It is expensive technology and the GMO varieties and the genetics they contain are tightly controlled by the companies that own them. While there is a lot of controversy surrounding them, it is important to note that they are only available to commercial farmers under very specific contractual controls. GMO seeds are not available to homeowners in retail stores.

Organic – Seed that is labeled organic has been produced through organic gardening practices. When growing vegetables, organic usually means producing crops without the use of commercial pesticides and fertilizers.

Many gardeners choose to grow their crops organically or as organically as they can. Some of those folks feel that to truly grow organically, the seeds that are planted must also be produced organically. Others disagree, feeling that as long as the crop is grown organically, it doesn’t matter how the seed was grown. Unless you are planning on growing commercially and achieving an Organic Certification for your garden, the choice is yours.      

Hopefully that helps. If you find still find yourself confused by all the terminology, come on out and ask us your questions. We’ll try to help clear things up.