Long Winter’s Nap

With the end of the summer gardening season and the beginning of the fall/winter season most of us are putting our gardens to rest for a few months. Below is some helpful information as we cleanup the summer

garden:

Cleaning the garden

• Remove damaged/diseased plants. Burn or throw away any diseased plants. Do not compost these. You can compost healthy plants.

• Clean and store your garden tools.

• Put up all water hose, be sure to remove them from the faucets

• Clean and store your pots for winter.

Do not leave terra-cotta or ceramic pots outside. They can freeze and crack or break.

• Leave the stems and seeds from flowers for the birds. Let the spring growth come up around them, then trim out the old.

• Leaves can also be left on the ground. They create a natural mulch that suppress weeds while enriching the soil as they break down. Leaf litter also serves as a habitat for wildlife and insects that overwinter in the fallen leaves. These creatures help reduce pests and will encourage pollination in the garden.

• Consider planting a cover crop in your garden/raised bed to enhance soil structure, improve pest management and increase the organic matter.

Protect your water quality

Our local utility companies make every effort to ensure that customers have a continuous supply of safe drinking water. We as consumers, need to do our part in making sure we protect our water supply. Some things we can do are:

• Prevent cross connection. Cross connection is a link with a public water supply that can cause the water system to become contaminated, for example, you can cause this when filling a personal swimming pool with a water hose submerged in the pool. To prevent this, do not let the water hose to be submerged, create an air gap (of at least 6 inches) between the hose and pool.

• Use a vacuum breaker on your faucet to prevent backflow with your garden hose and the water system. These are easy to use devices available at hard-ware and home improvement stores. They connect onto your outside faucet and prevent contamination from being siphoned back into your plumbing and the public water system.

• Do not flush unused or expired drugs, they are dangerous for our drinking water. Each county in Tennessee has a "take back location" for unused/expired drugs. To find your location, visit https://www.tn.gov/tddtf/ptblocations.

• Protect your storm water. Stormwater runoff is a form of water pollution that flows across parking lots, construction sites, and streets and then flows untreated into streams and rivers.

The City of Cleveland has a program to manage the quality of stormwater runoff from stormwater drainage system to protect its citizens from this form of water pollution. The Bradley County Stormwater Department's goal is to protect the surface waters of Bradley County.

Bradley County does not have a sewer treatment facility to process stormwater, and everything that goes into the storm drains eventually makes it way to a near-by steam, river, pond or lake. Simply put, if it is not stormwater, it should notgo into the storm drains.

We as citizens need to do our part in protecting the stormwater of Cleveland and Bradley County. The motto to remember is "only rain down the drain."

You can visit the Bradley County Storm Water Facebook page at https://www.Facebook.com/BradleyStormwater to get more information.

• You can also contact Sarah Jensen at Bradley County Storm Water office at 423-728-7106 or Chris Broom at the City of Cleveland Storm Water office at 423-479-1913. They are always willing to help and provide information.

Danger of herbicide carryover

With gardeners and farmers using livestock manure, compost and grass clipping to the soil, there has been reported damage to vegetables and flower crops, which include poor seed germination, death of young plants, misshaped fruits and reduced crop yields.

The herbicides of concern are aminopyralid, clopyralid and picloram - they are in a class of herbicides known as pyridine carboxylic acids.

Some of these symptoms can be caused by insects, diseases and herbicide drift. Another possibility for these problems is the presence of certain herbicides in the manure, compost, hay or grass clipping that is applied to the soil. The problem can happen when the herbicides pass through the animal through their urine and manure. The herbicide can remain active in the manure even after it is composted and can leach into the soil and cause the damage to the crops.

What can the consumer do to prevent this damage?

• If you buy hay for your animals, ask the seller about herbicides that may have been used in producing the hay.

• If you raise hay, make sure you know if any herbicide you use has the potential to remain active in the urine or manure after consumption.

• Before using manure - fresh, aged or composted - ask what the animals were fed, the origin of the hay and if any herbicides were used on the hay or pasture.

• Do not use the manure or compost to grow sensitive crops without knowing its herbicide history or testing to see if it is safe.

• If you use hay or grass clipping as mulch in your compost, find out what herbicides were used on the area. Compost and animal manures are excellent sources of nutrients and organic matter for growing food crops. Soils mulched or amended with manure and compost become dark, fertile and active with earthworms and beneficial micro-organism. Farmers and gardeners are encouraged to use these products but must exercise proper caution to prevent damage.

For more information on this, you can contact you local Extension Office and ask about "Herbicide Carryover Concern."

Tennessee Tree Day

It is almost time to order your trees from the Tennessee Environmental

Council. Tree Day 2025 will be March 21-22.

You can visit their website at https://www.TECTN.org/TennesseeTreeDay to see when the online ordering

process will be opened.

This information will also be posted on the Facebook page at www.Facebook.com/BradleyCoMasterGardeners

You can also check our sites for updated information and activities.