There are many gardening tasks that must be done or are better done in the fall of the year. Things like cleaning up old plant material; fertilizing trees, shrubs and lawns; and protecting tender plants like hybrid tea roses and French hydrangeas. These chores are all a part of garden maintenance and taking care of them now will improve the quality of your garden later. Here’s a checklist to remind you of what needs to be done to get the garden ready for winter:
Time is almost up for large-animal veterinarians, vet technicians and technologists to apply for the 2012 Kentucky Large/Food Animal Veterinary Incentive Program.
To help alleviate shortages in the state’s large-animal medical workforce, this program offers financial assistance to qualified veterinary graduates who have school loans to be repaid. Applications are being solicited for just two more weeks. All paperwork must be postmarked by Dec. 1.
It’s time to clean up the bramble patch: in order to maintain healthy and productive blackberries and raspberries we need to prune out the old to make room for the new.
Most brambles are biennial which means they fruit on second-year growth. Blackberries are easy to deal with, just remove the arching canes that fruited this year and trim up and trellis the new growth from this summer which will bear next summer’s fruit. Repeat the same thing next year.
The Mount Washington Farm Service Agency would like to announce that ballots for the 2011 FSA county committee elections will be mailed to eligible voters Nov. 4. The FSA county commnittee allows producers to make important decisions concerning the local administration of federal farm programs. FSA would like to urge all elligible farmers, especially minorities and women, to get inolved in their communities by voting in this year’s election.
As we move closer to cold weather, it is a good time to think about strategies for winter feeding of livestock, since it is a necessary part of nearly all operations. Choosing the right place for winter feeding can improve production and reduce threats to nearby water resources. A poorly chosen site for winter feeding can have negative impacts on soil and water quality.
Leaf raking is an autumn chore that only children enjoy because they get to undo it in one fowl swoop. We rake and pile and they jump. I propose a new approach that just may make us all happy: adults can still rake a little, children can still play and trees will benefit from some mulch and fertilizer.
At the farm raking leaves is passé; we let them stay where they fall (with reason, of course) which is usually beneath their canopy.