Politicians are proliferating this month.  W.C. Fields perhaps put it best when he said, “I never vote for anybody.  I always vote against.”  Fortunately, relief is only steps away, in the garden.  Some chores remain to take the mind off the problem and the pests therein are more easily controlled.

For example, just haven’t found the energy to tackle that leaf-covered lawn?  There is good news for you from Michigan State University.  According to turfgrass specialist Pam Charbonneau of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA).  Using a mulching mower, researchers mulched fallen leaves lying ankle-deep on the lawn and left them lying there.  No damage was caused to the grass.  Now the bad news:  you mist spread fertilizer over the mulched leaves in order to counterattack the dentrification they cause.

The relatively warm weather and late arrival of the first frosts in Toronto encouraged many retail outlets to attempt unloading their remaining stocks of lawn herbicide and sod pest control blends of fertilizers.  One seemingly dubious of such is, again, Ms. Charbonneau.  While agreeing that late October and early November are time for applying fertilizer, she notes that the only two serious lawn pests are scarab grubs (white grubs) and crane fly larvae.  While both cause dead patches on fall lawns, pesticides are only effective when the grubs are active; and by this time they are just not so, says Charbonneau.  Besides the larvae of the European crane fly, known all too appropriately as a leatherjacket, is a problem in limited areas.  True, this September, heavy flights were observed in such places as parts of western Scarborough as well as Ancaster, Burlington and a few other districts,  Starlings, however, are one of the few birds which relish this tough-skinned pest and so the clean-up is probably better left to them.  For more information, see the Canadian lawn and ground cover book Green Side Up.  Modesty prevents me from naming the author.

Pam Charbonneau’s colleague at OMAFRA advising on nursery crops is Jennifer Hobson.  Fall, she says, is a good time to control many pestiferous pathogens.  Banding trees with sticky tape specially sold for that purpose following the first really hard frosts will destroy the moth that causes fall cankerworm.  Light clipping of evergreen cedar removes the tips and with them the leaf-miner larvae they contain.  The past few springs have recorded many complaints of viburnums being defoliated.  The culprit is the viburnum leaf beetle, whose females have by now laid their eggs in slits made in the green twigs.  Prune these out to eliminate the pest.  Check twigs of magnolia and evergreen shoots of yews and euonymus for scale insects and, if present, similarly prune out.  One pest you need not worry so much about though, advises Hobson, is the imported gypsy moth.  Egg masses may be destroyed at any time over winter but few will be found.  A larval disease did in many this past summer, causing populations to crash.

There remain the usual other November tasks.  Reduce the cutting height for the last mowing of the season.  This will reduce the risk of late winter and very early spring damage.  Instead of “earthing-up” HT, floribunda and grandiflora roses, try using instead composted cattle or sheep manure at a rate of about 10-litres per bush.  Horse manure would be even better, for the roses, of course, not the aforesaid politicians.  A free source, advises Margaret Bennet-Adler in her The Toronto Gardener’s Journal & Source Book 2001, is Sunnybrook Stables in the park of that name, Leslie Street North of Eglington (416-444-4044).  Bring your own containers, shovel and pitchfork, she says.  Her remarkable annual self-published book is full of such useful advice and is worth every last penny of  the $27.95 she asks for it.  Phone (415) 488-9523 and have your visa card ready.  The ring-bound book, incidentally, covers not just Toronto, but the entire Golden Horseshoe, and makes a great gift item also for all the gardeners on your list.

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