Is there still time to work on my lawn?

Ron Wilson has great lawn and garden tips for fall including how easy it is to grow your own Buckeye Tree!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's go over to the Legacy Retirement Group dot com
phone line and check in with our guy, Ron Wilson,
host of In the Garden with Ron Wilson Tomorrow morning
at ten and Ron, good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
You heard camping I talking about, you know, with the Buckeyes.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
On at three thirty, plenty of time for the family
to get up and go apple picking tomorrow morning.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Now you're working, you're on the air tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
But you said you're gonna give Sundays your day, go
to church and then take the family apple picking.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Yeah, use that thing. And by the way, you need
to take the smelling salts away from camping. Yes, yeah,
I look at that. Well, you know Saturday morning, you
got get up in the morning. If you've got to
do a family thing, give them some donuts, serve some breakfast,
and you get all morning. You get out, work in
the yard and garden, have a good time, pace yourself,
come in, take a shower, maybe even take the family

(00:46):
to launch on Saturday. So see how you got two
family things going on there and you're still getting stuff done.
Then you get the box at three o'clock, sit down,
nessel in, get ready to go watch the game and
then well, who knows what happens the rest of evening
and on Sunday, go pick some apples if you need
to pick apples after church?

Speaker 1 (01:04):
And do you do you go apple picking? Or I
mean you're probably growing your own apples.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
I do not go. I do not go apple picking.
But believe it or not, when I was fourteen fifteen,
we lived next to an orchard and I picked apples
for I think it was twenty five cents of basket. Wow, yeah,
fifty cents of basket something like that. Plus I had
to go up down the hills and barefoot in the.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Snow and all that kinds of yeah, broken glass both ways.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Right, oh yeah, oh yeah, totally yeah. I think it
was like fifty cents of basket. Tray picked apples a
couple of years, and then I would say, I said,
I'll never pick an apple of myers.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
You've achieved your apple limit very early on in lot.
All right, Ron, So here we are towards the end
of September, what we call turf month.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
We've had a decent amount of rain this week.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
The lawns, it's amazing how quickly they green up after
kind of going dormant. So I've got my air raiding
guy coming Monday, so I'm excited about that. So should
I let that happen and then I should oversee it
if I need to, And then I should you know,
if I'm gonna.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Feed the lawn, wait till I airrate first. Is that
the right order?

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yeah? I just go get the aeration done first and
come back and you know, if you can do some
compost races them in there to get in those put
back in those holes, would be great. But if you don't,
that's okay. At least you're doing the core aerating. Then
you can come back to your slice seating. Feed on
top of that. Geep, keep with it. With the water.
Water is going to be the key. Hopefully we get
natural rainfall. If we don't, you got to set up
the sprinkler. But hey, the days are getting shorter, it's

(02:29):
getting staying cooler, it doesn't dry out as fast, so
you won't have to water quite as often. But it
is still a key as we go through the fall.
So I'm staying build on this, build on the rainfall
we've gotten. We're still in a slight drought situation through
most of Ohio, but we've got good moisture in the
ground right now, and that is key and isn't amazing
how quickly grass responds to one or two good showers

(02:51):
it does.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
It does, It's amazing.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Of course, I've been kind of keeping up with my watering,
so my lawn is pretty decent shape to begin before,
So I mean, what would you expect, But so the
rain certainly helped it.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Now.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
So I'm going to air eate Monday. I'll feed at
some point early next week. And you suggest two feedings
this fall, one now and then one in like what
six eight weeks?

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yeah, one now, and then we'll do it about early
to mid November, depending on the weather. But I try
to have it in by mid November if we can,
about six weeks apart. Eight weeks apart. You know, it's
usually a good separation time. And you'll use the exact
same fertilizer both times, that's my question. Yeah, slow slow
release high nitrogen fertilizer that has a little bit of

(03:34):
quick release as well, but you know, like you know
your usual lawn foods, you use the same one though
both times.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
That's a great tip. I was going to ask that question,
and you know, with it being so dry, ron. The
leaves were starting to kind of fall a little earlier.
I mean it looked like mid October. Last week we
had some wind and some rain come through, and it
was like, this feels like October fifteenth, not September fifteenth.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
So if the.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Leaves are following, we're mowing those right back into the lawn.
Don't don't yeh, don't bag those just multi right back in.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
Don't bag those things up, just on right back. And
and you know what, even if you're not mowing, if
the lawns the longest's not under stress from drought, but
you know, you can go back and just mow those
back into the turf. And we get toward the end
of the season where the lawn's not growing, but she
still has some leaves falling. Just keep mowing them back
into the turf. One thing I do want to bring up,
when I'm glad you brought this thing up about the leaves,
there's more and more of a push called leave the

(04:25):
leaves alone. Let the leaves lie where they fall on
wherever they fall before mother nature in the whole nine yards. Well,
I agree with that one hundred percent. In the landscape
beds and the vegetable garden and the perennial gardens, but
not on your turf. Don't leave late leaves laying on
the turf. It will smother your turf out. So they don't.

(04:45):
They seem to not mention that and all these new
things that they're pushing now and again, I agree with it.
Leave the leaves if you can, but not on your turf.
Right about put them down into the turf. That's the way.
That's the way to handle those in the lawn, but
otherwise in your landscape beds and lay on the beds
and go for it.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Yeah, I'm just wired. I don't know. I can't leave.
I can't leave the leaves. I've got it. I've gotta
take it. I've got to tidy it up. It just
looks better. I mean, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
I know you, I know you, and I got to
be clean.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
And that's okay. I get it. I totally get it.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
My neighbor was a little hacked off because she planted
moms a couple of weeks ago and the flowers are
all starting to kind of lose their color and die off.
And you had said, hey, wait on the mums. If
you're gonna if you're gonna do mums buy the ones
that I haven't you know, bloomed yet or blossomed yet.
If she, if she deadheads those old flowers, can she

(05:38):
get new flowers coming up here in the next cycle.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
Oh no, another great question. No you can't. I mean
that's unfortunately the moms is it's a one time deal. Okay,
no flower, you know they still have some shit, have
some tight buzz in there. They get a little bit
more colored, but you cannot force you. Deadheading doesn't bring
on new color for the rest of the fall. Now,
deadheading gets rid of those old spit flowers and make
them look nice and may help them get through the winter.

(06:02):
I've even seen some folks let them all brown out,
come back with some yellow paint and actually spray paint
the top of them to keep them nice and yellow
for another three or four weeks. So you can do
that if you want to. But unfortunately, dead heading on
moms does not bring you more flowers.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Later on, got a question from my buddy JP, who
wants to grow his own buckeye trees, and he thinks
he can just drop a buckeye nut in the ground,
and can you do that or do you need to
go to the nursery and have one sort of started
for you.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
No, as a matter of fact, it is that easy.
When it comes to buckeyes. The problem is the squirrels
in the wildlife usually eat them before they have an
opportunity to do that. But here's the the keys to
the successful buckeye planting. You need those buckeyes to be
as fresh as possible, so you're trying to collect those
things as soon as they drop off of the tree
or within the next two or three weeks. So you
better get on it. If you're going to do that,

(06:52):
collect those up and get them planned and put them
in up container. I mean, that's the best way. I
usually take like an eighteen inch white container with potting
soil on it, plan about ten or twelve of them
in there. Watermen well, put a screen across the top
so the squirrels can't take them. And sometimes they start
to germinate this fall, but otherwise they'll germinate the spring.
It's amazing the germination rate you get out of those.
They're very good at that. And then once they start

(07:14):
to send out some roots, pull them out of there,
pot them up in their own pot and then take
it from there. But fresh buckeye nuts are the key
the good success when you're growing it from nuts, and
it is basically as easy as sticking them in the
ground and letting them grow