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Fall is in the air, and plants could feel its effects soon.
As summer slowly starts to wrap up, the warm temperatures the province saw at the end of August are quickly being swapped out with colder nights and frost warnings.
Read more:
- Garden Talk: How do I store Honeycrisp apples?
- Canadian farmers weigh plans as Chinese tariff hits canola price
- Above-average temperatures, dry conditions welcome as harvest approaches
Rick Van Duyvendyk, owner of Saskatoon’s Dutch Growers and a co-host of Garden Talk, said that one of the first steps to contending with a change in the seasons is keeping an eye on the temperature.
“Anything above five degrees, you’re okay, yet anything below five degrees, you definitely want to cover up,” he said.
“What you need to do is as soon as it goes down below five degrees, you just need to put a light blanket or a frost blanket or crop cover over top in the evenings, just to keep that heat.”
Luckily, though, not all crops need a heightened amount of attention. Van Duyvendyk said that ground crops are pretty resilient to frost.
“Your onions, carrots, potatoes, and those kinds of things you don’t have to really worry about too much,” he said.
“(But) if you’re finishing up cucumbers or tomatoes, or a lot of people have hot peppers out there that aren’t finished yet, you want to make sure you cover those up so they get finished off.
“Watermelons actually put on most of their sizing basically at the end of August and beginning of September, so those are the kinds of things where, if you put crop covers over top, you can actually gain a lot of weight.”
If that seems like too much work, some people are choosing an alternative route.
Van Duyvendyk pointed to people choosing to take their plants indoors rather than leaving them outside or choosing to grow microgreens.
“A lot of herbs and those kinds of things people can grow indoors, even without lights,” he said.
“It’s a healthy way to know exactly how they’ve been growing and even know what’s been put on them for sprays and everything else—there’s just a satisfaction in growing your own food in the house. It’s quite amazing.”
Read more:
- Garden Talk: How do I store Honeycrisp apples?
- Canadian farmers weigh plans as Chinese tariff hits canola price
- Above-average temperatures, dry conditions welcome as harvest approaches
Rick and Jill Van Duyvendyk host Garden Talk every Sunday morning from 9 to 11 a.m. on 980 CJME and 650 CKOM.
