Garden Docs: Practice patience with spent perennials

Katy G. of Santa Rosa asks: How soon can I get out in the perennial beds and start cleaning up and pruning out the old foliage from the plants and get that area ready for winter?

It’s starting to look like the plants are winding down and that area looks messy.

You might want to start to clean up some of the mess in the perennial beds, but you need to have self control for right now.

Besides, there are probably a host of plants that are still blooming, or will be giving you some fall/winter interest yet.

The garden is far from done for the season, so don’t be too hasty.

If you have spent annuals or vegetables, they can go now. But the perennials must be completely dormant before you start removing the foliage. This is usually between November and January, depending on the weather.

The reason you need to leave the foliage on, and not prune so hastily is that the leaves will continue to feed the root system until the cold weather comes along and shuts the plant down for the season.

You could prune out the spent flowering stems and dead or unsightly leaves, but you might as well wait until everything goes dormant or dead, and do all your pruning at one time.

Remember the birds! They like to nibble on seed-heads, so wait until as late as possible in the year to prune them out.

Jacquie B. of Sebastopol asks: I would like to save my gourds and decorate them. What’s the best way to store them and keep them for as long as possible after I’ve decorated them?

Before you go picking those gourds off the vines, you need to make sure they are completely, 100% mature.

Harvest the gourds when they are hard to the touch, or at the first sign of frost.

An easy way to know when the gourd is ready for picking, is when the vine and the stem attached to the gourd, wither.

Cut the gourds off the vine with sharp pruners and leave a few inches of the stem attached.

Wipe them down with a dry cloth to remove any moisture on them and store them in a cool, dry place, out of direct sunlight.

You can turn them every now and then to make sure there is no mold or rot developing on the undersides. The drying process takes anywhere from a few months to a year, so be patient! When they are really hard and feel light when you pick them up, they are ready for you to shellac or varnish, etc.

They will only last so long until they eventually start to rot, so grow a few every year to keep your supply going!

Doris J. of Sonoma asks: As the colder weather is approaching, I’m afraid there are quite a few of my eggplants that won’t have enough time and warm weather to fully mature.

Can I pick them all when they’re still small and will they be edible?

If frost threatens, and the cold weather is here to stay, sure, you can pick all the eggplants that are on the smallish side. They’ll be pretty tasty if they’ve reached about a third of their mature size. Anything smaller than that will most likely not be very tasty.

If you can build a small cold frame around them to keep them protected from the cold, then you can stretch the harvest out for about another month.

Dana Lozano and Gwen Kilchherr are garden consultants. Send your gardening questions to The Garden Doctors, at pdgardendoctor@gmail.com. The Garden Doctors can answer questions only through their column, which appears twice a month in the newspaper and online at pressdemocrat.com.

Katy G. of Santa Rosa asks: How soon can I get out in the perennial beds and start cleaning up and pruning out the old foliage from the plants and get that area ready for winter?

It’s starting to look like the plants are winding down and that area looks messy.

You might want to start to clean up some of the mess in the perennial beds, but you need to have self control for right now.

Besides, there are probably a host of plants that are still blooming, or will be giving you some fall/winter interest yet.

The garden is far from done for the season, so don’t be too hasty.

If you have spent annuals or vegetables, they can go now. But the perennials must be completely dormant before you start removing the foliage. This is usually between November and January, depending on the weather.

The reason you need to leave the foliage on, and not prune so hastily is that the leaves will continue to feed the root system until the cold weather comes along and shuts the plant down for the season.

You could prune out the spent flowering stems and dead or unsightly leaves, but you might as well wait until everything goes dormant or dead, and do all your pruning at one time.

Remember the birds! They like to nibble on seed-heads, so wait until as late as possible in the year to prune them out.

Jacquie B. of Sebastopol asks: I would like to save my gourds and decorate them. What’s the best way to store them and keep them for as long as possible after I’ve decorated them?

Before you go picking those gourds off the vines, you need to make sure they are completely, 100% mature.

Harvest the gourds when they are hard to the touch, or at the first sign of frost.

An easy way to know when the gourd is ready for picking, is when the vine and the stem attached to the gourd, wither.

Cut the gourds off the vine with sharp pruners and leave a few inches of the stem attached.

Wipe them down with a dry cloth to remove any moisture on them and store them in a cool, dry place, out of direct sunlight.

You can turn them every now and then to make sure there is no mold or rot developing on the undersides. The drying process takes anywhere from a few months to a year, so be patient! When they are really hard and feel light when you pick them up, they are ready for you to shellac or varnish, etc.

They will only last so long until they eventually start to rot, so grow a few every year to keep your supply going!

Doris J. of Sonoma asks: As the colder weather is approaching, I’m afraid there are quite a few of my eggplants that won’t have enough time and warm weather to fully mature.

Can I pick them all when they’re still small and will they be edible?

If frost threatens, and the cold weather is here to stay, sure, you can pick all the eggplants that are on the smallish side. They’ll be pretty tasty if they’ve reached about a third of their mature size. Anything smaller than that will most likely not be very tasty.

If you can build a small cold frame around them to keep them protected from the cold, then you can stretch the harvest out for about another month.

Dana Lozano and Gwen Kilchherr are garden consultants. Send your gardening questions to The Garden Doctors, at pdgardendoctor@gmail.com. The Garden Doctors can answer questions only through their column, which appears twice a month in the newspaper and online at pressdemocrat.com.