How to Vine Ripen Tomatoes

Find yourself with more green tomatoes than ripe ones right now? Getting tomatoes to ripen on the vine this late in the season comes down to three things: pruning, picking and protecting. Begin by removing any dead, diseased or damaged stems and leaves. Plant pruning will help redirect energy towards ripening existing fruit. 

Root pruning will also encourage ripening. To root prune, simple stick a shovel or trowel six to eight inches deep into the ground, all the way around your tomato plant. This will chop off the ends of the roots and force the plant to stop new growth. With those root ends clipped off the tomato plant goes into fruit production mode. It should be noted that root pruning will dramatically decrease the life of your plant. 

Pick off flowers, small fruit and any tomatoes that are soft to the touch or showing signs of disease.  If your vines are loaded, pick a few and bring them inside to ripen. Removing excess fruit will encourage the remaining tomatoes to ripen. 

Protect your plants at night by covering them with an insulating material. Tomatoes need more than sixty degrees of temperature to ripen properly. With nighttime temperatures dropping into the fifties, keeping your plants warm will keep fruit ripening.  Prune, pick, protect; three things you can do to speed up the vine-ripening process. If it gets too late in the season, you can always pick the just-ripening fruit and bring your harvest indoors to finish the ripening process.  

Time to move houseplants back inside

Many of us take our houseplants outside for the summer. Your plants benefit from being outside in the fresh air and natural light. Now we’re into September. The nighttime temperatures are dropping into the fifties, a sign it’s time to bring our houseplants back indoors.  There are two steps to help make the move back inside more successful. Step One: check for insects and disease. Being outside puts your plants at a higher risk for insect and disease problems, so the first thing to do is to look your plants over carefully. Many problems will be obvious right away; others won’t.  Sticky leaves and stems could mean mealy bug or scale. White powder on leaves could be powdery mildew. Discolored leaves could be from too much direct sunlight or watering issues. Spidery webbing could be spider mites. It’s easier to deal with these problems now before you bring your plants inside. If you’re not sure what the problem is, bring us a sample leaf. We determine the problem and recommend a solution.  Start by simply washing your plants off with a gentle spray of water from the hose. This will get rid of a lot the insects and will help clean up the plant leaves.

 Let the plant dry and then spray with Safer 3-in-1. Safer 3-in-1 is organic and contains an insecticidal soap to control insects and mites, as well as sulfur, to get rid of any disease issues.  Once your plants are clean, you’re ready for Step Two; the process of preparing your plants to transition back indoors. It’s important to take your time moving the plants inside. Try to avoid bringing your plants in at the last minute, just before a frost warning.  Over the course of the next four or five days, move your plants to increasingly shadier locations. This will help them adjust to the lower light levels indoors. Ater the fifth day in the shade, move them indoors. Your plants may still drop some leaves when they get inside, but the transplant shock will be less if you take time to acclimate them to lower light levels. Wait to feed your plants until they’ve been inside for a couple of weeks. Then, use a houseplant fertilizer such as Shultz 10-15-10. 

Another trick is to supplement your regular fertilizer program with Super Thrive every two weeks. Super Thrive will help your plant by providing additional vitamins to your plant. Doing these things now will prepare your houseplants make the move from outside to inside with less stress and ready for the season ahead. 

Now's the Time to Seed Your Lawn

Turf grass wears out for any number of reasons; wear and tear, age, soil compaction, insect activity, fungus. Whatever the reason, now is the best time to fix these problems. Sowing grass seed now has the advantage of cooler temperatures so it’s easier to keep the area you’re reseeding moist and there are generally fewer weeds. Plus, your new grass has all of the fall into early winter to establish. Start by cleaning up the areas you want to seed. A leaf rake will do a good job of cleaning out the dead grass and thatch. Step 2: work in some Earth Essentials Sheep, Peat and Compost to bring the area to grade and enrich the soil. This will help the new grass establish deeper roots. Step 3: apply ferti-lome New Lawn Starter, to promote root growth, once the new seed has germinated. 

With the soil prepared, you’re ready to select the right grass seed for your lawn. Most lawns in our area are “cool-season” grasses. They do best when the temperatures are cooler. That’s why spring and fall are the right times to seed or over-seed your lawn.  We recommend you choose seed that will work in our area. We get our grass seed from the Greely, Fort Collins area. Our seed selection includes “Colorado Perfect”, “Flowerbin Blue Blend” and “Emerald III”. Colorado Perfect features a blend of quick germinating Perennial Rye, Fescue and Blue Grass. This by far is our most popular grass seed. It will germinate quickly, does well in sun and light shade and over time, will blend in with most turf grasses grown in the area. 

If you’re not sure which seed to select or how much seed you’ll need, stop in. We sell grass seed in bulk, so you can select the right seed type and the amount you need for your fall lawn project. Five pounds of Colorado Perfect grass seed will cover approximately one thousand square feet. Once you've made your seed selection, apply the seed by hand or with a spreader. Cover the new seed lightly with one-quarter inch of Sheep, Peat and Compost and water thoroughly. You should plan to water enough every day to keep the seed bed moist, because letting the seed dry out will reduce the germination rate. Once the seed has germinated, you can begin to water deeper and less frequently.  Grass seed planted now will continue to establish into winter and be ready to green up next spring.  

How to Care for Bearded Iris

With their showy spring flowers, bearded irises are one of those “must have” plants for your garden. Bearded Iris are generally low maintenance plants season after season, but over time they can become crowded and they stop producing as many blooms. That’s an indication they need to be divided and the time to dig and divide iris is now.  

The best tool to use to dig iris roots, which are called rhizomes, is a spading fork. Spading forks make it easy to get under and lift the rhizome without causing damage to the roots. Once you’ve got the clump of iris out of the ground, you’ll be able to see the rhizomes clearly. You can divide the clump with a knife or by simply breaking off each root with your hand. 

Trim the leaves in a fan shape down to between 4" and 6". Mark the leaves with the variety of the iris, so you’ll remember which one it is. 

When you’re planting your iris in their new location, remember that iris grow in the direction of the heel so place your rhizomes with the leaves planted in the direction you want the plant to grow. Iris will do okay in clay soils, but they thrive in soils that have been amended, so add a couple of inches of Sheep, Peat and Compost and dig it in 4-5 inches.  Add some Bone Meal or Dutch Bulb Food and place the rhizome so that the roots are fanned out to the side, then add enough soil to cover the roots, leaving the very top of the rhizome exposed. Water in thoroughly. Your iris will establish through the fall and be ready to bloom next spring. 

This is also a good time to add new varieties and colors to your garden. We’ve just received our shipments of bearded iris rhizomes, so it’s a great time to add to your collection, while stock is fresh and there’s a good selection of colors.  As you're shopping for bearded iris, you may notice some boxes are labeled "Blooms Spring and Fall". These are "reblooming" iris, that is iris that have been developed to produce blooms in the spring and again in the fall. Same planting guidelines apply. Pick a good solid rhizome, amend the soil well, add some Bone Meal or Dutch Bulb Food and make sure you mark the iris so you’ll remember the name next spring.  With proper care, your bearded iris will bloom reliably for many springs to come.