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.
What should I do with all the leaves falling on my lawn and in my garden?
Sometimes, Epstein said, it’s best to leave those leaves alone.
“You don't really have to clean up your leaves,” he said. “If you think about just nature, leaves fall. Nobody bags them up. They just stay in the woods and they get broken down.”
Sometimes those leaves can be beneficial, he said. They can protect plants from the harsh winter cold and snow, and provide a more welcoming home for critters.
But some leaves can damage the lawns they fall on, Epstein said.
“It depends on what kind of leaves are falling on the lawn,” he said. “If you have just oak leaves, they'll kind of rattle around. They have a lot of airiness to them. They're more crispy so they don't mat down the grass. But if you have like maple leaves especially, they can get matted down on the lawn and they can actually damage the grass.”
Epstein said he takes a balanced approach. He’ll rake the leaves off his lawn and in garden beds close to his house, and let the leaves further into the garden be.
“I actually chipped my leaves up and they just get thrown back in the garden anyway,” he said. “Bagging them and giving them to somebody else to compost doesn't seem like something I want to do, because they're really valuable.”
I am in Belmont where the temps are forecast to go down to 38, or maybe even lower. What should I pick and bring in, and what might I leave on the vine? — Susanne
While the days are getting shorter and colder, some fruits and vegetables still ripening on the vine are unlikely to get fully ripe, Epstein said.
“If you take tomatoes specifically, what tends to happen is they start to get a little bit spotty with some disease just because it's colder,” he said. “They're not really ripening too quickly because the daylight is so low at this point.”
For things like tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, Epstein recommended picking them this weekend and finding uses for less-than-ripe nightshades.
“You can make a green tomato relish. You can certainly do fried green tomatoes, you can just sauté them green with a little bit of balsamic and some olive oil, that makes a nice sort of side dish with some rice or something like that,” he said.
For people growing greens like spinach and lettuce: Leave them in the ground for a bit longer.
“They can handle a little bit of a frost. So I'd leave those in the garden till we really have below 28, 27 or something like that,” he said.
