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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.

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Garden Checklist for week of June 8

Get out early to enjoy those nice mornings. There’s plenty to keep gardeners busy:

* Warm weather brings rapid growth in the vegetable garden, with tomatoes and squash enjoying the heat. Deep-water, then feed with a balanced fertilizer. Bone meal or rock phosphate can spur the bloom cycle and help set fruit.

* Generally, tomatoes need deep watering two to three times a week, but don’t let them dry out completely. Inconsistent soil moisture can encourage blossom-end rot.

* It’s not too late to transplant tomatoes, peppers or eggplant.

* From seed, plant corn, melons, pumpkins, radishes, squash and sunflowers.

* Plant basil to go with your tomatoes.

* Transplant summer annuals such as petunias, marigolds and zinnias.

* It’s also a good time to transplant perennial flowers including astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia, salvia and verbena.

* Feed camellias, azaleas and other acid-loving plants. Mulch to conserve moisture and reduce heat stress.

* Cut back Shasta daisies after flowering to encourage a second bloom in the fall.

* Trim off dead flowers from rose bushes to keep them blooming through the summer. Roses also benefit from deep watering and feeding now. A top dressing of aged compost will keep them happy. It feeds as well as keeps roots moist.

* Pinch back chrysanthemums for bushier plants with many more flowers in September.

* Tie up vines and stake tall plants such as gladiolus and lilies. That gives their heavy flowers some support.

* Dig and divide crowded bulbs after the tops have died down.

* Feed summer flowers with a slow-release fertilizer.

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