Tip of the Week — 11/10/08

Posted in Gardening Tips on November 10 2008, by Sonia Uyterhoeven

Garden Cleanup
Sonia Uyterhoeven is Gardener for Public Education at The New York Botanical Garden.

The season is slowly starting to wind down. Many of your annuals and tropical plants that have lived happily through the summer and into the fall are starting to dwindle. Add spent annuals to the compost pile and clean up and store tropical plants that can be either over-wintered on a sunny windowsill or stored in a dormant state in a cool garage.

You will find that you are left with used terra-cotta pots. Rather than being lazy and placing them aside with the unfulfilled promise that you will clean them in the spring, take the time to clean your pots now, while the gardening season is winding down.

By cleaning your pots, your ensure that no disease problems are carried over to the next year. Often, it is as simple as filling the laundry room sink with hot, soapy water (dish soap is fine) and letting them soak. Buy a good, stiff scrub brush for the specific purpose of cleaning your pots, and you will be all set to go.

If you have encountered some serious disease problems over the season, you can sterilize your pots with a 10 percent bleach solution (one part bleach to nine parts warm water). Let them soak for 30 minutes. Gardeners have their own favorite recipes. The important things is that you clean the pots in the fall so that pest and disease problems don’t sit and fester until the spring.

Once you have finished, dry and stack you pots upside down in your garage.