It has been an unusual fall in St. Albert for gardeners due to unseasonable warm weather.
It’s mid-October and flowers — although leggy and tired from lack of sunlight — are still blooming, and carrots — waiting for that first sweetening frost — are captive underground.
The toasty fall temperatures have meant that fall gardens have been thriving and cleanup has been delayed, so what’s a gardener to do?
“Usually, garden cleanup is in full swing by now, but this year we have barely started,” said Aida Mustapic, an urban backyard organic gardener and founder of St. Albert Backyard Gardening group in an email to The Gazette.
As of the Thanksgiving long weekend, Mustapic, who plants with the season in mind, said her fall garden is going strong and that will continue for as long as the weather remains mild. Her garden cleanup likely won’t start until November.
The fall garden, which Mustapic plants at the end of August includes spinach, kale, and radishes and those veggies are “loving the sunny day and cooler nights.”
Mustapic said they have also been able to keep their tomatoes outside without worry of freezing. She will, however, cover them if overnight temperatures reach near-zero.
Sweet peas, zucchinis, cucumbers, and patty pan squash are usually harvested by mid-September.
“(But the) kids still manage to find handfuls of (them),” she said.
Carrots are still in the ground in Mustapic’s garden.
“They usually develop a sweeter taste after the first frost, but this year, we cannot say we even had a serious frost up to this point,” she said. “Carrots can definitely stay in the ground a little longer.”
Mustapic said she has two experiments this year including brussel sprouts and tatsoi mustard greens both of which are considered to be cold hardy.
“Tatsoi mustard greens are apparently cold hardy down to -12 degrees. It will be interesting to see how both of these perform once the temperatures start dropping closer to zero,” she said.
Potatoes have already been pulled, and turnips, beets, and garlic have all been harvested to make room to sow seeds and plant bulbs for the spring 2023 garden, said Mustapic, who at this point in a typical year would sow spinach, chard, kale, leek, and new garlic in preparation for spring.
“Sowing is probably not going to happen until the end of October now. We usually put seeds and garlic bulbs in the ground by mid-October, but this year that timeline has moved to prevent premature germination as the soil is still relatively warm,” she said.
Mustapic said flower bulbs like gladioli and blazing star are still in the ground. In a typical year these bulbs would be pulled out by mid-October
“Like everything else this fall, we still have not done that yet,” she said.
Flowers in Mustapic’s garden like roses, sweet peas, sunflowers, petunias, and marigolds are still in bloom and growing new buds. She will collect the seeds once they have reached full maturity — generally when the seed head is dry.
June Hancock said the weather might be warm for this time of year, but the flowers look tired due to lack of sunlight.
Hancock said she isn’t much of a gardener, but she is a part of the St. Albert and District Garden Club and has been for about 25 years.
She has kept the same geraniums in her garden for 30 years — geraniums that she got off a couple in their 80s — so she doesn’t know how old the plant actually is.
How does one keep a geranium for 30 years?
“I take them out of the ground, shake the dirt off, turn them upside down and put them in those paper leaf bags. I tie a string around them and hang them from the rafters underneath my basement stairs where it's cold,” she said.
In the spring Hancock takes the geraniums out of the paper bags, shakes them off, removes the crunchy leaves and replants them.
“When I first started doing it, my husband said, ‘Are you an idiot? Do you think those things are going to grow?’ And I said, ‘yeah, I’m pretty sure they will.” And they did,” Hancock said.
The geraniums were still out before the long weekend, but most of Hancock’s vegetable garden had already been harvested.
When it comes to cleaning up the garden, Mustapic said it’s great to start a backyard compost with all the leaves and greens as compost takes nearly a year to fully decompose.
“The new compost started now can be used next fall. This is an excellent way to produce high quality compost for free. We usually need and use a lot of compost to replenish nutrients depleted after the growing season,” she said.
Mustapic said part of her fall prep is diligently watering trees, shrubs, and berry bushes. Fall this year has been dry and the trees and bushes need adequate moisture to prepare for the long winter.
She also stops using fertilizers to allow plants to slow down their growth and prepare for dormancy.
“This is definitely an unusual fall, and it will be interesting to see how long we get to enjoy our gardens,” she said.
