Sacramento Digs Gardening: Turn garden horror into Halloween fun

The Fremont Community Garden in midtown sports Halloween decorations during a contest last year. Use summer garden remains for your creepy decor. (Photo: Debbie Arrington)

Old vines, dried leaves, dead flowers become creative decorations

Gnarly vines, crackling dry leaves, decay everywhere; the remains of a summer garden look pretty scary right now.

If decorating for Halloween, those old tomato vines and dried cornstalks make for fast, cheap trimmings. (Just keep them outdoors in case they hide any creepy-crawly bugs. The spiders will be part of the ambiance.)

Add a few Halloween props (such as cardboard headstones) and a holiday display can become an effective little slice of garden variety horror.

Many vines work for this outdoor stagecraft. Besides tomato or squash vines, pruned grapevines (with or without withered leaves) and the appropriately named Virginia creeper look good and scary draped over railings or wrapped around posts (or a witch’s legs).

Put bunches of dead or dried flowers on those temporary gravesites. That’s an extra creepy touch.

Dried cornstalks and fresh pumpkins make a harvest-themed holiday display that can be friendly and festive (and last through Thanksgiving) or a little more foreboding for Halloween night. (But keep any jack-o-lantern candles away from the corn.)

My favorite Halloween touch: A vase of prickly rose stems a la Morticia Addams. No blooms? No problem. Cut off the foliage and any bloom remains, leaving a very thorny bouquet. (I’ve got several blood-thirsty candidates in my yard.)

Besides recycling garden remainders, choose decorations with your garden in mind. Straw bales, for example, do double duty. First, they serve as part of Halloween scenery. After that performance, straw makes excellent mulch for the winter garden.

If using as mulch, make sure it’s straw and not hay – or you will have another kind of horror story in your garden. Hay sprouts.

GENERAL GARDENING

An article about gardening.

Keywords:

gardening pumpkins Sacramento summer garden roses mulch fall gardening recycling Halloween

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Garden Checklist for week of April 21

This week there’s plenty to keep gardeners busy. With no rain in the immediate forecast, remember to irrigate any new transplants.

* Weed, weed, weed! Get them before they flower and go to seed.

* April is the last chance to plant citrus trees such as dwarf orange, lemon and kumquat. These trees also look good in landscaping and provide fresh fruit in winter.

* Smell orange blossoms? Feed citrus trees with a low dose of balanced fertilizer (such as 10-10-10) during bloom to help set fruit. Keep an eye out for ants.

* Apply slow-release fertilizer to the lawn.

* Thoroughly clean debris from the bottom of outdoor ponds or fountains.

* Spring brings a flush of rapid growth, and that means your garden is really hungry. Feed shrubs and trees with a slow-release fertilizer. Or mulch with a 1-inch layer of compost.

* Azaleas and camellias looking a little yellow? If leaves are turning yellow between the veins, give them a boost with chelated iron.

* Trim dead flowers but not leaves from spring-flowering bulbs such as daffodils and tulips. Those leaves gather energy to create next year's flowers. Also, give the bulbs a fertilizer boost after bloom.

* Pinch chrysanthemums back to 12 inches for fall flowers. Cut old stems to the ground.

* Mulch around plants to conserve moisture and control weeds.

* From seed, plant beans, beets, cantaloupes, carrots, corn, cucumbers, melons, radishes and squash.

* Plant onion sets.

* In the flower garden, plant seeds for asters, cosmos, celosia, marigolds, salvia, sunflowers and zinnias.

* Transplant petunias, zinnias, geraniums and other summer bloomers.

* Plant perennials and dahlia tubers for summer bloom.

* Mid to late April is about the last chance to plant summer bulbs, such as gladiolus and tuberous begonias.

* Transplant lettuce seedlings. Choose varieties that mature quickly such as loose leaf.

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