- From the Univest studios of Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, P.A., it is time for another autumnal episode of chemical-free horticultural high-jinks, You Bet Your Garden.

Yes, the days are getting shorter.

The nights are getting longer.

And Old Man River just keeps rolling along.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

And on today's show, I'll reveal 13 things you should do in the upcoming days and weeks to have a great garden next spring.

Plus, your telecommunication questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions, and concisely coherent condemnations.

So keep your eyes and/or ears right here, cats and kittens, because it's all coming up faster than you potting up your peppers right after this.

- Support for You Bet Your Garden is provided by the Espoma Company.

Offering a complete selection of natural organic plant foods and potting soils.

More information about Espoma and the exposure natural gardening community can be found at... - Welcome to another thrilling episode of You Bet Your Garden.

From the Univest Studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA.

I am, I honestly am your host, Mike McGrath.

You can tell that if you're watching on TV.

Eh, if you know what I look like, then you could tell.

Well, anyway, I'm not a puppet.

I'm not a marionette, and I'm not a ventriloquist dummy.

I am my own dummy.

We got a great show for you today.

We're going to give you 13 things that you really should do this fall, which is like now, to get your garden ready for next year.

We're also going to have an intriguing phone call from a friend of mine.

He was going to elaborate on one of the most important things you can do this fall if you have a lawn.

But we've got to take those fabulous phone calls at... Bill, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hi.

Nice to talk to you.

- Nice to talk to you, Bill.

How are you doing?

- Oh, just great.

Yeah, it's beautiful day here in Chesterfield, New Jersey.

- All right, what can we do you for?

Well, I've been very concerned about the commercial weed killers, and I've been using it to spray the weeds that's around the fences for my flowers and vegetables.

And I also have pavers that need spraying to get rid of the weeds.

And my neighbor happened to mention to me that he heard that you can mix water and Clorox to kill the weeds.

And I wasn't quite sure about it.

And I thought, I'll get your opinion if that's a good solution, or something else that might be more effective that's natural... - No, yeah, yeah.

- ...commercial cleaning.

- I don't understand this obsession with bleach.

Many garden writers who should know better still insist that everybody wash their seed-starting containers with bleach at the beginning of the season.

Or you get these horrifying home recipes online.

In the home, for instance, white vinegar is great for cleaning surfaces and disinfecting them, and not attacking your lungs.

So, as a matter of fact, that brings me to my first suggestion.

Regular-strength vinegar that you get in the supermarket is 5% acidity.

Now, that's not how it came out of the vat.

It came out of the vat at, like, 15-20% acidity, and then they added water to it.

It says that right on the label.

So you could try vinegar, you know, straight vinegar, don't dilute it, and pour it on the weeds.

You can also buy horticultural vinegar, which will be anywhere from 8-20% acidity.

And that gets rid of the weeds.

If you're going to spray it, make sure you wear protective glasses because you don't want any of this stuff to get in your eyes.

Now, driveway pavers, things like that, you could also use an herbicide, an organic herbicide whose active ingredient is iron.

And these are very popular, and they're very good at getting rid of weeds, and they don't harm anything.

And in certain amounts, iron is good for your soil.

All right, Bill?

- Yeah, I appreciate your help.

It's good talking to you.

- Good talking to you, pal.

Take care.

Sharon, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Thank you.

- Thank you, Sharon, how are you doing?

- I'm doing very well.

How are you?

- I'm just Ducky!

And I think I recognize your voice.

You are the spouse of cheerful Charlie Serra, who handles the audio for... - That is correct!

- Yeah, what do I win?

A broken bowling bowl?

- A question from me!

A question from me.

- And Share, you moved, right?

You're retired and you moved closer to the station.

- Yes, yes, I retired in May after a 23-year long career, and now, we moved into the area of Easton.

- All right.

What do you want from me now, Sharon?

- Well, seeing I have a lot more time on my hands, and we're in a new area... - Poor Charlie.

- We've been concentrating on the outside in my yard.

Yeah, right.

And I'm delving into something that I've never even thought of planting before.

I'd like to talk blueberries with you, Mike.

- Oh, excellent!

Good topic.

- I heard so many, like, stories about blueberries in the past.

It just seemed like they would be more time-consuming, and the end result disastrous.

And, you know, but this time, I decided I had some time on my hands.

I'd like to tackle it and try to make it successful.

Inasmuch as I'm not going to go out there and pick blueberries for breakfast, but I mean, at least have a tree that's thriving for the wildlife.

But I heard you have to temper the soil, something with acid and the pH... And that's where I kind of lose it.

- Well, if you take acid and try to grow blueberries, it may turn out to be a disaster, or it may be even more fun.

"Look at all the colors they are!"

- Yeah.

- Blueberries are easy to grow.

They need very little maintenance.

The work involved, and it's not really work, is at the planting time, and when they start to ripen up.

Now, blueberries are unique in our gardens, in that they need the most acidic soil of any plant we grow.

Blueberries originated, so to speak, in peat bogs, or near peat bogs.

Soil so acidic, if you had a cut on your finger, it would hurt if you got your finger in the soil.

I would recommend actually half milled peat moss and half compost, and that should keep them happy.

If you notice yellowing of the leaves during their lifespan, that means the soil is no longer as acidic as it should be.

And you might have to dust a little sulfur around the plant.

- Make sure...

Wait a minute, you planted this thing already?

- Yeah, I did.

And ironically, I didn't use a lot of the original soil.

And I did use, it's like a cow manure compost, put it together, and then, some of the original soil, and then, the other was just a regular other type of soil.

So I kind of just mixed it, because the ground I'm digging in is very rocky anyways.

You know, it's compacted dirt and rock.

So I dug the hole, like, three times the size of what you're supposed to do, just so that I would get give it a chance, you know, I didn't want it to be sitting in water, I wanted to make sure it was going to drain properly, and all that stuff.

So, yeah, it's in the ground, and I'm just checking off the box, except I didn't use the peat moss.

I did use a compost, so... - No, you didn't!

- You didn't use compost.

You use cow manure.

- Well, it's like a mixture of cow manure and compost, like, they said it was like a mixture of stuff.

- Yeah, you could have ball bearings in there.

- Oh, my God!

- You don't use any type of manure near a fruiting plant.

- Okay.

- Manure encourages plant growth, but inhibits flowering and fruiting.

Pull it out of the ground, apologize to it.

Make sure the hole is wide, but not deep.

You want the plant to be as high as possible.

You know, you don't want any soil or mulch, or God knows what else you might have in mind touching the bark of this shrub.

- Okay.

- You really want it to be high, not low.

But a wide hole is good.

- Gotcha.

Gotcha.

- All right?

- Well, it sounds like I've got a lot of work to do.

- Lose my number.

- I gotta get cracking.

- Lose my number, okay?

- All right, Mike.

I promise.

- Take care.

- Thank you.

Bye-bye.

- Bye-bye.

- And now, a very special call for fall.

Jake Chalfin, from Laurel Valley Soils, has been on the show before.

His company makes large amounts of compost and other professional soil mixes.

And he sent out an email a couple of days ago that reminded me that this is the perfect time of year to "top dress your lawn" with compost, not fertilizers!

So I got to thank you, Jake, because there's so much to do in fall.

There's so much to talk about.

I kind of let top-dressing your lawn slip by me, so thanks for your email.

- Mike, thanks for having me back on the show.

And, as you know, I love talking about this.

Fall has traditionally been, as I know you've preached, but has traditionally been the time of year that nursery men love to promote the planting of trees and shrubs, and also cool-season turf grasses.

It's a great time of year because if you plant your grass seed or your trees or shrubs, now they've got a couple of months of really good growing season, and then, they get to go dormant.

And then, when they wake up in the spring, they're pushing out roots naturally and immediately, and they have a much better chance of surviving the harsh, dry, hot summer season.

So you get a lot better survivability, trees, shrubs or turf, when you do the work in the fall.

- You had a nifty video, you were trying to explain this system to me on the phone.

But you had a fairly compact, a compost tosser, for lack of a better word.

It was not that huge.

It was the size of, what, two wheelbarrows?

- Yeah, so, you know, over the years, you know, compost, the benefits of top dressing with compost have been well understood and it's a popular thing to do.

You know, the challenge has been, how do you apply it?

And in small residential lawns, it's really not too much of an effort to get a few yards, and then, a rake and a wheelbarrow, and a shovel, and just spread it out by hand and rake it.

Not too big a deal.

But then, if you have folks with slightly larger, more suburban lawns, you know, then it becomes a bit more of a larger project.

And that's when you might want to try to find a piece of equipment that can help do the work for you.

So, these small-scale homeowners-size equipment has recently really become more available.

And it's really easy for a homeowner to rent this from a local, you know, general rental equipment company, and they can go and do a half-acre yard by lunchtime.

- One of the things that people, a lot of people still don't get is that if you have a cool season lawn, that's fescue, rye, blue grass, this is the time to do almost everything that your lawn might need.

- 100%, Mike.

And this is why I get really excited about compost, because when people are talking about lawn treatments, whether it's managing weeds, managing fertilization, managing poor compacted soils, a lot of times, the conversations about individual things that you could do during different times of the year.

With compost, you're pretty much able to do a lot of benefit in one application, and we really like to think about it as we're feeding the soil, and then, the soil's feeding the grass.

And what does the soil need?

The soil is a living being, just like a human body or an animal body, and it requires oxygen and water, and nutrition.

And when soils get compacted, there's less, you know, micro pore-space in that soil for the air space, for it to be able to hold enough moisture for the dry season, for it to allow excess moisture to percolate through in the wet season.

So, compost has a high percentage of organic matter in it.

And that organic matter helps build the soil structure and creating a healthy soil profile that can support biological life, and the biology and a healthy soil helps fight turf disease and helps the grass and the roots absorb and digest naturally-occurring nutrients.

- If you were to top dress your lawn just once this fall with compost, when you see the difference next spring, you'll never buy an artificial fertilizer again.

It's just remarkable.

And, instead of threatening our waterways and the planet, you're making your lawn a great source of oxygen, using up our CO2, taking... - Carbon sink.

Yeah, yeah!

You turn your lawn into carbon retention.

- To get the full benefit of the compost, we want to get that compost as deep into the soil profile as possible.

And now that we've had some good rain at the start of the fall season, the ground is more penetrable.

So, it's a great time to aerate.

A lot of professional landscapers will do a package where they will aerate your lawn, top dress it with compost, and overseed it all in the same day.

And it's like that trifecta, it will really get you good performance.

And, you know, these more aerated, lighter, better soils with better porosity, they will absorb these severe rain events we've been having.

They'll absorb that better in place, which will help reduce the surface flooding that we've seen so often.

- Jake, I got to get rid of you now.

People want to hear more.

It's Laurel Valley Soils.

- There is lots of information on the benefits of compost, the different products we offer that can either be purchased by a professional landscaper, that you might want to hire to do your work for you.

Or we have a list of garden centers that, hopefully we have a garden center near you that sells our premium compost, and you can go and get a few yards yourself, or have a few yards delivered and do the elbow work yourself.

So yeah, check us out at LaurelValleySoils.com.

We'd love to help you out.

- All right, get out of here, you knucklehead.

I'll have you back on again soon.

- Thanks, Mike.

Always fun to chat with you, take care.

- Bye-bye.

- Yes, as Thanos says, "It is inevitable."

The Question of the Week.

And this week, it's not so much a question, but marching orders.

Here's... All right, let's go!

If you haven't got your garlic cloves in the ground, do so now.

The earlier and fall you plant, the bigger the bulbs you'll harvest next season.

Obtain planting garlic from a reliable online source, or even better, a local farmers market.

Don't use supermarket garlic.

It's probably from China, treated with sprouting inhibitors and God knows what else, and is almost certainly the wrong type for your region.

Listen to the previous two weeks' shows for insufferable garlic-planting details.

Ah, but wait to plant spring bulbs!

In most of the mid-Atlantic region, spring-blooming bulbs should be planted between Halloween and Thanksgiving.

Note - deer, rabbits, voles, and evil squirrels will gleefully dine on tulips, as the plants and their bulbs are delicious and nutritious.

If you are so varmint-infested, think about planting daffodils instead.

No creature bothers daffodils, plants or bulbs, and they also naturalize, meaning they spread and prosper over the years.

If you live in a region with a markedly different climate than mine, which is not my fault, plant your spring bulbs earlier the further north you are.

At least six weeks before your soil freezes hard.

And plant a little later between Pennsylvania and the Carolinas.

If you and your fellow warm-winter climate cowards put on parkas as soon as it's less than 60 degrees outside, be sure to purchase pre-chilled bulbs from your local nursery or garden center, or a catalog that specifies this odd adaption.

If you plan to outdoor decorate for fall, see if you can find some corn stalks instead of the usual dreary pumpkins and hay bales.

Harvested cornstalks are very attractive, provide something nifty and seasonal to look at up high, and can serve as the shredded brown material in your compost bin or pile.

After you shred them, of course.

But don't neglect your fall leaves!

Although many people still foolishly pay to have theirs hauled away in SPBs, shredded fall leaves are the ultimate brown material in a compost pile teeming, teeming with billions of nutrients and biological life forms.

Plus, they are one of the few materials that you can compost on their own and end up with beautiful black gold.

Although adding spent coffee grounds, coffee grounds to the mix makes the compost faster and better without attracting any vermin.

Speaking of vermin, do not add vegetable waste to an open compost pile.

It offers little in the way of nutrition and attracts mice, rats, voles, raccoons, groundhogs, and other creatures you do not want to attract.

Get a worm bin for your kitchen garbage instead.

The red wigglers which live inside your bin will turn that otherwise useless garbage into fabulous plant-feeding worm castings.

Remember, the holidays are coming.

Worm bins make a great gift.

Yes, the leaves that make up the vast bulk of your raw ingredients must be shredded.

Or they'll just mat down and take years to produce decent compost.

You can shred them excellently with a bagging lawnmower, unless you have foolishly treated your lawn with herbicides and/or Weed & Feed.

If you do such a foolish thing, the resulting compost will kill many, if not all of the plants in your summer garden.

But if your lawn is untreated, be sure to do the opposite and collect the leaves on your lawn with the mower set at its highest setting.

The resulting mix of dry brown shredded leaves and a little bit of nitrogen-rich grass clippings makes perfect compost and makes it fast.

Yes, that also means you should not compost grass clippings from a treated lawn.

Instead, mulch those compromised clippings back into the lawn to feed the grass naturally and not kill anything.

Whatever you do with them, do not burn your leaves.

Burning eliminates their fertilizing and composting potential, pollutes the air, and makes the polar ice caps melt even faster.

Give your unwanted leaves to a gardening friend, shred them into your lawn with a mulching mower, or put them out for collection and subsequent composting.

Visit your local government's website for collection details and timing.

Speaking once again of vermin, this is the time of year when miserable meases who previously lived outdoors feeding ticks all summer long look lovingly to the nice, warm premises of your pantries.

Old-fashioned snap traps baited with peanut butter are very effective at sending Mickey and his pals to their eternal reward... or elsewhere.

Wear gloves when handling the traps and disposing of the enemy.

And remember, kids.

The real world is Darwin, not Disney.

If you grew peppers this year, and if not, why not?

Consider bringing your best plants inside for the winter.

Peppers, both hot and sweet, are perennials that can live many years if protected from temperatures below 50 degrees.

Yes, I said 50 degrees.

Forget about actual frost.

These tropical plants have no sense of humor about trying to survive the 40s.

If the plants are not in pots, pot them up now.

Don't wait until the last minute.

Rinse each plant well with sharp streams of water to eradicate the aphids that are there but you can't see, and leave the plants outside for a few days in their pots.

Then rinse them again with even sharper streams of water, and wipe the pots down with a wet washcloth and check the bottom for hitchhiking slugs or snails.

Peppers over-wintered indoors.

It's all about the light, cats and kittens.

Positioned directly under a four-tube shop light, fitted with four-foot-long bulbs is ideal.

Keep the tops of the plants as close to the tubes as possible, and they'll reward you by flowering and fruiting all winter long.

Eh, maybe.

Well, that sure was some helpful information that should keep you out of trouble for the next month or two, now, wasn't it?

Luckily for yous, the Question of the Week appears in print at the Gardens Alive website.

To read it over at your leisure or your leisure, just click the link for the Question of the Week at our website, which is still and will forever be... Gardens Alive supports the You Bet Your Garden Question of the Week, and you will always find the latest Question of the Week at the Gardens Alive website.

You Bet Your Garden is a half hour public television show, an hour-long public radio show and podcast, all produced and delivered to you weekly from the Univest Studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, P.A.

Our radio show is distributed by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

You Bet Your Garden was created by Mike McGrath.

Mike McGrath was created when he saw his first episodes of The Lone Ranger and The Adventures of Superman on the same Saturday morning.

Yikes!

My producer is threatening to poach my peppers if I don't get out of this studio.

We must be out of time.

But you can call us any time at... Or send us your email, your tired, your poor, your wretched refuse steaming towards our garden shore at...

Please always include your location.

And no, if you emailed me three years ago, I probably don't remember where you live.

I'm your hot mess, Mike McGrath.

And I'll be begging my tomato plants to die so I can get out of the kitchen and see you again next week.