Tree things to undo, saving vegetable seeds, and ripening green tomatoes: This Weekend in the Garden

Remove the tree ties

Stakes, ties, and any other constrictive materials should come off of trees before they grow into the bark.

Undoing in the garden

Fall (which officially started yesterday, Sept. 22) is a busy time to do lots of jobs in the landscape, but it’s also a time to think about “undoing” a few things.

Three situations to consider:

1.) Staking. Most trees don’t need to be staked at all, even at planting. Research shows that roots establish better and trunks expand faster when the trees are allowed to naturally sway in the wind.

Exceptions are very windy locations and cases in which a tree is top heavy from a too-big canopy for a too-small root ball. (It’s much better to pick a tree in the first place whose top growth is more in line with its root-ball size.)

Even when a new tree has to be staked, arborists recommend removing the staking after no more than a year.

If you’ve had staking in place longer than that, now’s a good time to remove it – especially if the staking materials are cutting into or growing into the bark, or if the staking is holding the tree rigidly in place.

2.) Tree wraps. If you’ve installed a plastic, paper, or mesh wrapping around a young tree’s trunk, such as to protect the young bark from animals or sun-scald injury, these also can come off as the bark toughens.

Pay special attention to any wraps starting to grow into the bark. Once that happens, you won’t be able to remove them without damaging the bark. And these wraps could girdle or squeeze the trunk enough to interfere with the movement of moisture and nutrients up and down the tree.

If you use protective wraps (such as to protect young trunks from fall buck rubs this time of year), install them loosely so they don’t constrict the trunk. And remove them next spring.

3.) Mulch. Some mulch around plants is good for keeping moisture in the soil and weeds out. But too much can impede oxygen from reaching the roots and encourage girdling roots. Plus, mulch against the trunk can rot bark and give safe haven to voles that love to chew on the base of young trees and shrubs.

Three inches is enough mulch around trees and shrubs, while an inch or two is plenty around flowers.

If you routinely add new mulch every year, it’s possible your mulch layer is building up faster than it’s breaking down, leading to excess totals. This is a good time to check.

If you find you have excess mulch, move some to thin areas. Or pile it for future use when your optimal layer breaks down.

Saving your own seeds

These seeds from ripe peppers are some of the easiest to save -- assuming the variety isn't a hybrid.

Saving your own vegetable seeds

A big chunk of your next year’s vegetable-seed supply could be in your garden already.

At least some vegetables are easy when it comes to saving their seed for the following year. The effort saves money as well as preserves genetics, lets you control how the seed is treated, and for a lot of gardeners, adds to the fun and interest of growing.

The next few weeks are some of the year’s best for collecting vegetable seeds to save.

On the other hand, seed-saving takes some skill and knowledge to be successful, plus some crops are too finicky to save for all but the most determined gardener.

The Seed Savers Exchange, an Iowa-based nonprofit dedicated to preserving heirloom seeds, is a wealth of free information on how to do the deed.

Ten bits of basic information SSE offers:

1.) It’s best to start with the easiest-to-save edibles, which includes tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, pumpkins, melon, squash, peas, beans, lettuce, eggplant, okra, dill, and coriander.

2.) Stick with heirloom or “open-pollinated” varieties, which are ones that will produce the same (or very similar) traits from year to year.

Many vegetable varieties these days are hybrids, which growers produce by interbreeding two different parents. Seed saved from those might produce a new crop more like one of the parents, something new and inferior, or nothing at all since some saved seed from hybrids is sterile.

Seed packets usually tell you if the variety is a hybrid or not.

3.) Wait until seed heads have fully matured and the fruits or pods are fully ripe before collecting seed. Green, immature seeds won’t sprout.

4.) Some seeds work best when saved by the “dry method.” This is when the seeds are left to fully mature and dry on the plant, then removed from their pods or chaff by hand or by shaking them in a paper bag.

Examples: beans, peas, corn, carrots, peppers, lettuce, okra, and spinach.

5.) Other seeds are best saved by the “wet method.” This involves rinsing or soaking the seeds to free them of surrounding pulp.

The steps include soaking seeds for two or three days (stirring occasionally), pouring off the pulp and any non-viable seed that floats to the top, saving the good seed that sinks to the bottom, then drying the seeds for at least several days on paper in a dry, well ventilated area.

Examples of wet-method seeds: tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, squash, and eggplant.

6.) The best time to collect seeds is on a sunny, dry day. Whether you’re using the dry or wet method, make sure seeds are completely dry before you store them.

7.) Don’t try to dry seeds by heating them in an oven or microwave. These are living things, and temperatures beyond 95 degrees can harm them or shorten their keeping time.

8.) For best genetic strength, collect seed from more than one plant. But always select ones with the traits you value the most.

For example, if you want big tomatoes, save seed from your biggest fruits of the season. If you want lettuce that keeps as long as possible in the garden, select seed from plants that were the latest to send up seed stalks.

9.) Label your saved seeds, and store them in small envelopes inside a sealed jar in a cool, dry, dark spot. An ideal spot is inside an empty mayonnaise jar in the refrigerator. A bedroom closet also is fine.

Add a small packet of powdered milk, silica gel, or similar drying agent to the jar to help absorb excess moisture.

10.) Most saved vegetable seeds will remain viable for at least three years.

Some of the shortest-lived seeds are onions, corn, spinach, okra, and parsley, which are best used within a year or two.

Some of the best-keeping varieties include cucumbers, lettuce, melons, Swiss chard, collards, and radishes.

A good test to see if your seed is still viable: roll up a few inside a wet paper towel, seal in a plastic bag and then check every few days to see how many sprout. If none or just a few sprout after three weeks, you need a fresh supply.

Seed Savers Exchange details crop-by-crop seed-saving tips on its website.

How to speed ripening

Snipping off tomato foliage beyond a cluster of fruit is a trick to ripen green tomatoes.

Those green tomatoes

So your tomato plants are still flowering and loaded with green tomatoes?

First, pat yourself on the back that you’ve managed to avoid blight, leaf spot, and assorted other tomato troubles that abort so many tomato plants by this time of year.

Second, you might want to consider taking some action now that ensures that as many of those green tomatoes as possible ripen before fall’s first frost kills the plants.

Petra Page-Mann, co-owner of the New York-based Fruition Seeds seed company, says a helpful strategy is pruning tomato plants back to each cluster of green fruits six weeks in advance of that first fall frost. In the Harrisburg area, that means now in a typical year (since we usually get frost by the end of October).

Page-Mann says the pruning forces tomatoes to direct energy toward ripening fruits instead of producing more growth or more flowers.

She also advises stopping fertilizer and reducing or stopping watering as tomato plants wind down for the season in September.

If tomatoes are still green by the time frost threatens, snip off fruiting clusters and hang them in a warm place out of direct sunlight, Page-Mann says. A garage or basement is fine.

“It’s counter-intuitive, but tomatoes ripen from the inside out, even off the vine,” says Page-Mann. “If your tomatoes are exposed to direct sunlight, they will turn red quicker, but their core and overall flavor won’t have the same richness.”

Tomatoes that have just begun to turn color can be helped along by placing them in a paper bag along with an apple. Apples give off a natural hormone (ethylene) that helps fruits ripen.

Page-Mann says that trick will “help green tomatoes turn soft and red, but it does not develop sugars,” meaning the flavor won’t be as good as fully vine-ripened tomatoes (albeit still better than most store-bought tomatoes).

If your green fruits are so immature that they can’t advance to the red-ripe stage, they’re still edible.

A favorite southern dish is fried green tomatoes in which slices are breaded, seasoned, and fried in an oiled pan. Other recipes use green tomatoes in relishes, salsa, soup, chow-chow, and chutneys.

The trick of pruning tomatoes to encourage ripening doesn’t work with most other fruiting crops, by the way, such as peppers, cucumbers, eggplants, and squash.

For those, just snip off any newly formed, late-season flowers and let the foliage alone.

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