Planning to bring some of your outdoor plants inside? Now’s the time to start prepping them

I know my friend Eliot Coleman has all manner of ways for extending short growing seasons, but simply taking things indoors to continue their growth is the easiest and most often overlooked. Now is a good time to prepare some things to take inside when frost hits if you are so inclined.

Let's start with lettuces. For the better part of my adult life I would only eat iceberg lettuce. This was because my father loved all other kinds of lettuces and grew them 365 days a year for the family's consumption. Red, yellow and, of course, green: If it had leaves and you could eat them, he tried growing it and serving it to us as a salad. I am pretty sure my dad is responsible for arugula's popularity and maybe even for tricking Americans into thinking that many of the Asian greens are lettuces.

I have matured and know now that this is a good time to start leaf lettuce seeds for fall and even winter salads. These should be started in containers so you can move them indoors if any produce is left by the time we have frost. Large flats are ideal. If you use the right-sized containers, you should be able to place these under lights (Repeat after me, "I will have lights this year!") for continued growth and production.

The trick is to copy my dad: Use leaf lettuces. If you or your local nursery don't have any lettuce seeds left, order online from territorialseeds.com or nicholsgardennursery.com. And this time of year it is important to place the containers so that you avoid slugs. Use slug traps if necessary. You can probably remove any slugs by hand if you are vigilant.

Next, all manner of plants are growing outdoors that can either come indoors in pots or from which cuttings can be rooted for use during the winter. Now is the time to get these going so they are ready to come in when it gets too cold. It is not hard, and if you fail, what have you lost?

Certain plants we grow outdoors in the summer are actually more popular as houseplants than as outdoor plants (e.g. non-tuber begonias, coleus, impatiens, pelargoniums). Just dig them out of the soil, ensuring a good root ball, and repot them in individual containers; continue to grow outdoors. If you do it now, the plants will establish themselves in their new homes before you have to take them indoors. Use good compost with some sand or perlite added for drainage. All containers must have drainage as well.

If you want, you can take whole containers inside as they are. You will want to prevent pests from hitchhiking indoors, so do your best to isolate the plants you want and keep on eye on them. Slugs and aphids are the two biggest worries. This is a great way to extend the tomato harvest if you don't heat your outdoor greenhouse.

Or you can take and root cuttings from your summer plants. Plants with a square stem or with leaves coming out of the exact opposite sides of the branch will generally root easily if you remove the two bottom leaves so roots can develop once you place the stem in a damp sand-compost mix. Do it now and in the three weeks we have left, they will root.

We like to bring in some mint for the fall and winter. Since mint is invasive, we grow it in containers anyhow. We tip ours over, pull out the root ball, cut it in half and end up with two pots. One comes indoors and goes under lights.

And, for those so inclined, don't forget cannabis plants. Unless yours are auto-flowering, chances are they will not have mature flowers before killing frosts. Now is the time to prepare. Do you have room for large plants indoors? Do you have lights and, if necessary, ventilation? And just as with any other plant, if you are going to bring cannabis indoors, you will need to isolate and inspect it to prevent bringing pests inside.

Jeff’s Alaska garden calendar

Harvest Day at the Alaska Botanical Garden: Sunday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Admission is free for members and $5 for non-members with canned good donation. Sample produce, herbs and fruit from the garden. Fresh produce harvested that day and canned goods will be donated to the Food Bank and Downtown Soup Kitchen.

Harvest Day in your garden: What are you waiting for? Potatoes and Brussels sprouts can wait until after frosts, but everything else should be fair game. Harvest! Why else did you grow it?

Raspberries: OMG, they are ripe and need to be harvested NOW.

Lawn repair: Now is a good time to aerate lawns and to place seed down where it is needed. It takes 21 days for complete germination, so don't delay.