Paris Alston: You're listening to GBH's Morning Edition, and it is time for our weekly Ask Dave segment, where we ask your questions about weather, plants and gardening.
Jeremy Siegel: The man with all of the answers, meteorologist Dave Epstein, is on the line with us now. Good morning, Dave.
Dave Epstein: As a matter of fact, one of the answers I don't have, and it's frustrating me, is how much rain we're going to see here on Saturday. I'm still uncomfortably uncomfortable with that forecast.
Alston: Dave, we haven't even gotten to the sunshine up today yet. We're already talking about rain.
Epstein: Yeah, I know. And there's a lot of fog out there. I was just looking, Worcester's airport visibility is down to, like, you know, 100th of a mile or something tiny like that. So there's some thick fog west of the city. As folks are driving in, just be aware of that. We will clear out. We will get some sunshine. Tomorrow's cloudy and then we're going to have to watch an area of rain and it's going to be close, who gets the heavy rain here on Saturday? But Sunday looks good. Saturday, still a bit of a question.
Siegel: Well, let's get to some things that hopefully you have a little more certainty about, Dave. We have some questions about gardening heading into fall, or we're in fall now. A question that came in from a friend of the show saying: Since it is officially autumn and getting cooler outside, when is the last time you should mow your lawn?
Epstein: That's a good question. I would say that after you've had several kind of harder frosts and you notice it sort of slowing down. You don't want to leave your lawn super short going into winter and you also don't want to leave it super long. You also don't want to be fertilizing with anything. There's some late fall fertilizers you can put out, but any of the other fertilizers, you also want to stop that because it promotes what's called snow mold, and that gets on the grass and it literally looks like a little mold that you see in the spring up with the snow melts and it can damage your lawn. So I leave the lawn at about two and a half to three inches long. And that's kind of my, where I look. Sometimes, you know, if you have a warm fall, you can you can end up having to mow it, you know, into early December. It just depends on, you know, how cold it is, as we move through the next couple months.
Alston: Is no mow November a thing? Or am I making that up?
Epstein: No mow May.
Alston: No mow May, okay.
Siegel: It's no shave November, I think it is.
Alston: I started to say that.
Epstein: But one's your face and one's the lawn.
Alston: Okay. Good to know. Well, we do have another listener with a lawn question. This one says, Do we need to do any type of special lawn grass care before the winter season?
Epstein: Yeah, as I just mentioned, there are some — and I like to look at the organic, slow-release ones — there are some organic slow-release fertilizers that you could put down this time of the year. Also, lime this time of the year can be a good idea because here in this part of the country, our soils tend to be fairly acidic. So putting down some lime is a good thing. I like the pelletized stuff better than the powdered stuff because the powdered stuff gets into the air and you end up breathing it, blah, blah, blah. And it takes several months to really work in. So, you know, good time to do that.
Siegel: We've got another question over text. Someone said, with all of this rain, we have clusters of mushrooms popping up in our yard. Should we be concerned? We are pulling them up and definitely not eating them. But is there anything else we should do to prevent our yard from turning into a mushroom farm?
Epstein: Yeah, I mean, just leave them.
Siegel: Just let it turn into a mushroom farm?
Epstein: Yeah, They're not that pretty. There's probably something dying underneath there that the mushrooms are feeding on. Mushrooms are, you know, a really cool organism. And yeah, unless you're sure what you're harvesting, you don't want to eat them. There's a few really great ones that are out there that are edible: chicken of the woods, hen of the woods, there's some chanterelles that I've seen popping up this time of year. But you got to know what you're doing. And yeah, just leave them. They're not a problem.
Alston: I love it. Prevent our yard from turning into a mushroom farm. It could be kind of fun. Sounds like it could be. One listener in Framingham says: My peonies are very sick. They have brown spotted leaves. What should I do?
Epstein: Yeah, I noticed the same thing. I actually had some of my peonies just die completely back. Some of the tree peonies do not look good. I suspect it's all the water we've had. There's some fungus and bacterias that attack those. Hopefully the rootstock is okay. So I would say just cut it back. Get rid of those leaves with the disease. Make sure that you clean up around the peony. Maybe put some, once the ground freezes hard, maybe put a little bit of brand new fresh mulch around them for the winter. And removing the leaves will stop the spores from kind of spreading again next year.
Siegel: He may not know if the rain is going to be severe on Saturday, but he certainly knows how to take care of a garden. Meteorologist and plant expert Dave Epstein, thanks so much for joining us.
Epstein: You're welcome. Glad to be here.
Alston: You're listening to GBH News.
Meteorologist Dave Epstein is our go-to person for pressing weather questions on everything from winter blizzards to summer droughts. He’s also a horticulturist, meaning he’s an expert in anything that grows leaves and flowers. GBH's Morning Edition asked our audience for weather and gardening questions, and Epstein graciously answered them on the air. This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Have a gardening or weather question for meteorologist Dave Epstein? Tweet him @GrowingWisdom, email us at thewakeup@wgbh.org, or text 617-300-2008.
Since it is officially autumn and getting cooler outside, when is the last time you should mow your lawn?
Autumnal lawn mowing is a delicate balance, Epstein said.
“You don't want to leave your lawn super short going into winter and you also don't want to leave it super long,” he said.
He tends to aim for a length of 2 ½ to 3 inches, he said.
“Sometimes, if you have a warm fall, you can end up having to mow it into early December. It just depends on how cold it is, as we move through the next couple months,” he said. “I would say that after you've had several kind of harder frosts and you notice it sort of slowing down.”
Do we need to do any type of special lawn grass care before the winter season?
First: Put away regular lawn fertilizers.
“There are some late fall fertilizers you can put out, but any of the other fertilizers, you also want to stop that because it promotes what's called snow mold, and that gets on the grass and it literally looks like a little mold that you see in the spring up with the snow melts and it can damage your lawn,” Epstein said.
Epstein said he looks for organic, slow-release fertilizers for his own lawn in the fall.
It’s also a good time to deal with soil pH levels.
“Here in this part of the country, our soils tend to be fairly acidic. So putting down some lime is a good thing,” he said. “I like the pelletized stuff better than the powdered stuff because the powdered stuff gets into the air and you end up breathing it.”
The limestone may take several months to work its way into the soil, he said.
With all of this rain, we have clusters of mushrooms popping up in our yard. Should we be concerned? We are pulling them up and definitely not eating them. But is there anything else we should do to prevent our yard from turning into a mushroom farm?
No need for concern, Epstein said. Leave them be.
“There's probably something dying underneath there that the mushrooms are feeding on,” he said. “Just leave them. They're not a problem.”
Mushrooms, he said, are “a really cool organism.” And while some are edible, it’s indeed a bad idea to eat them unless you are absolutely certain that you can identify them correctly.
“There's a few really great ones that are out there that are edible: chicken of the woods, hen of the woods, there's some chanterelles that I've seen popping up this time of year. But you’ve got to know what you're doing,” he said.
My peonies are very sick. They have brown spotted leaves. What should I do?
“I noticed the same thing,” Epstein said. “I suspect it's all the water we've had. There's some fungus and bacteria that attack those. Hopefully the rootstock is okay.”
Epstein’s advice: Cut back any of those spotted leaves and get rid of them.
“Removing the leaves will stop the spores from kind of spreading again next year,” he said.
In a few months, once the ground freezes hard, add some fresh mulch around them for the winter, he said. With any luck, they’ll bounce back next year.
