Okay. Summer is Over

Oct31

Yes, I’m often really slow to pick up on things, especially when I’m really determined to hold on to my optimism or ignorance, but eventually the wrecking balls roll in and the troops hit the streets and you realize there’s a change in the weather and the freedom of summer is dying. I’ll miss it. Most people saw it coming and warned me to be prepared, but a few sunny days can fool you into thinking no big deal, there’s time, it can’t turn on you so fast… until suddenly it does and it’s your turn to face a killing frost.

An autumn crop of lettuce likely won’t amount to anything significant, but it does make things look better than they really are. Someone will get a nice salad. Probably not me, but…

Monday morning we woke up to a frosty morning. It’s just a touch of ice and many of the natives are just fine, but tender stuff like dahlias and cannas from Mexico and points south got burnt, and will now need lifting and winter protection in order to make it through the approaching cold.

Aromatic aster, either ‘Raydon’s Favorite’ or ‘Bluebird’, I forget… is still in full bloom and will go on into November. It’s great doer.

Fortunately we’ve had plenty of rain to cover up all the stresses the garden faced this summer, and the asters and mums are as nice as ever and the fall color here in the lower elevations at least had enough time to color up rather than just give up. As far as autumns go it wasn’t too bad I guess, but summer is still my preferred season and these last few weeks were more of a long hanging-on than any real admission that fall is here.

A chrysanthemum seedling which a friend gave me a few years back. Hardy and reliable and an excellent flower which more than makes up for her floppy form.

So I guess I’m admitting that fall is here. The leaves have changed, the tender plants are under protective custody indoors and it’s moved on to all the little tasks which need doing before the cold and ice lock us all down for a winter.

Sunday foliage and flowers. By Monday the orange thunbergia was a wilted memory.

For a few weeks more it’s still nice though. The colors and light are superb, the lawn has recovered some of its spring lushness, and a shovel sinks into the soil rather than being rejected. Time for replanting, mulching, protecting, maybe some pruning… all those last minute things which are fine as long as the weather holds, but just not fun when a cold front rolls through.

This ‘Arnold’s Promise’ witch hazel always runs through rings of color as the leaves turn. Witch hazels are awesome.

Hmmm. Maybe I better end on a more cheerful note because the rain and Mellissa’s march through the Caribbean seem to have me in a gloomy mood. Here are some promises for a wonderful winter starting with the hardy cyclamen which are popping up here and there throughout the beds. Cyclamen hederifolium is probably the most varied and easiest and I’ll show just one picture with a few last flowers since there will be time all winter to show off the foliage on the rest of them.

A few last flowers wrapping up a month and a half of bloom on cyclamen hederifolium. I’m always tempted to pot a few dozen up so I can admire them one by one… but under my care that’s a likely death sentence so in the garden they stay.

Oh and do you know what else is on the way? Yeah, snowdrops. The earliest fall bloomers are opening and they look great this year.

The first fall bloomer in my garden is ‘Tilebarn Jamie’ and even at a later date this would be a beautiful and reliable snowdrop worth giving a try.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve mentioned snowdrops… maybe at least two weeks… but they’re on my mind again after what might have been overload this past spring. Perhaps preparing a sales table for the Gala made it work, and maybe that work made it less fun, but I think this year I can organize a little better and get back to the fun I usually have. Maybe I’m also itching to add a few new ones rather than faking “responsibility” and trying to say ‘no’ more than I’d like to. Maybe this spring I’ll be saying ‘why not?’ Maybe I’ll start this fall. More fall bloomers would be good and I know a guy and why not?

Have a great weekend 🙂

Somewhat Autumnal

Sep22

Second post. Must get done….

Actually it’s only been about a week and a half since this post was started, so I guess that’s an improvement. As usual I have no excuse, I’m just easily distracted -and a bit on the lazy side- so any structured use of time almost always falls to the wayside. Fortunately it’s not April and I can get away with letting things go a bit, and trust me I have.

This was the new tulip bed along the boxwood hedge, and once they came out it became home for all the excess coleus cuttings and unplanted canna tubers. I think it looks great for September.

The steady rains all August have kept the lawn from dying and made the tropicals very happy. Even though they were all planted kind of late, the gardener was fairly responsible about feeding them here and there and keeping the weeds at bay. One of the biggest successes was the banana which was still small enough to sit next to the light all last winter, and didn’t shrivel up to nearly nothing once the weather got warmer. Instead it came outside at a reasonable time, sank its roots down, and put out leaf after leaf, each bigger than the last. Laugh if you want (since I’ve seen much larger in other Pennsylvania gardens), but until I can overwinter a hardier sort in the ground for more than a winter or two, this is a plant that has made me proud and one which I greet personally on each and every garden walk.

The stem on this beast is at least six feet tall and the leaves rise another four or five. I shall try to dig and store it, but won’t get my hopes up just yet.

The kids keep asking when the bananas will be ripe, but I don’t have the heart to tell them maybe never. I think it’s actually an edible type but yeah, the chances it survives with any decent amount of vigor for the next growing season are pretty slim given my lack of a 15 foot high, heated greenhouse that isn’t already filled. Perhaps some advice from a friend can help. He gifted me a good sized offset this spring which had been overwintered in excellent shape, but under my care from March to April it grew smaller and smaller before it was finally planted outside again and began to recover. On a good note though, it now sports a healthy double stalk and being in a decent sized pot, it should be somewhat easy to drag inside and overwinter.

Another tropical, the bulbs of tuberose are blooming now and fill the evening garden with scent. It’s a real treat, I love it.

It’s too early to mention taking things in for the winter so I’ll only do it once, but if we drift into a cooler spell of weather again I guess it will be time to get more serious. Coleus cuttings will be first as well as any lantana and geranium cuttings. They both seem to root better if taken from plants which haven’t yet experienced too many nippy nights.

The dichondra baskets have been neglected this summer and nearly dried out more times than I’ll admit, but they suffer through it quite well, and they will likely return next year. These will stay out for another month at least, they don’t mind some frost.

Besides the tropical parade, the rest of the late season annuals and lingering perennials are still trying to look fresh in spite of a turn to dry.

The potager is weedy and seedy but at least the rain has kept it green, if not full of flowers and fruit. The geranium pots have been great though, there’s a reason your grandparents grew them.

As any good gardener will be, I’m not happy enough to take the warm and sunny autumn on its own merits but instead I’m already beginning to wonder how the approaching winter will be. Our mildest winter ever was a strong El Nino winter, and going forward that’s over and we will see what a ‘normal’ winter is like these days. August was still the hottest August ever, but September? October? February? Time will tell.

A stray Begonia sutherlandii tubercle found a home here next to the porch foundation and has overwintered twice without any help from me. Returning a third year in a row might have me claiming it’s hardy-ish here.

Tropicals and semi-hardy perennials are a thing of course, but absolutely hardy things are a much less-work kind of thing. Colchicums are hardy things and it’s their season. Here’s the start of it and I think there will be more to come in the next post…. whenever that might be….

Sun? Shade? Dirt? Colchicum don’t care. The corms will begin to grow regardless of if they’re planted yet or not. I almost forgot I had this batch dug and stored in the garage, but fortunately discovered them just in time!

So hopefully this blog will feature a full batch of colchicums in the next post. They are at their absolute peak and in spite of this dry spell which keeps getting longer and longer, and this heat which seems uncomfortably out of season, the colchicum are a bright and fresh smear of color in a garden which is looking slightly tired.

One of the first to ring in the colchicum season, ‘Disraeli’ offers a rich color, large flowers, curious checkering, and a long season of bloom. It is an absolute favorite.

Last summer many of the colchicums were divided and moved to the beds alongside the house and it was a little concerning to see how many my ‘here a bulb there a bulb’ process has resulted in. Someone who likes to throw labels around wouldn’t be all that wrong if they referred to the bed as a collection but I’m going to hold off on that. I bravely stated this fall that I might give away a variety or two which aren’t my favorites, and that’s not the talk of a collector.

The pinkish flush on the freshly opened blooms of x byzantinum ‘Innocence’ fades quickly to pure white. This good doer is another beauty and also a long bloomer as fresh flowers continue to come up as the earliest fade.

Even though it’s not a collection, maybe I did relabel every clump in the last few days. I kept mixing up ‘Ordu’ and ‘Orla’ so with a bright new label that’s no longer a problem, and now there’s one less embarrassing moment as I lead tours through the plantings.

Hope your plantings are also doing well and have a great week.

A Test

Oct29

I ran a little test here over the last few weeks, but before getting into that let’s just enjoy the 28 minutes of sun which coincided with the weekend and matched the glow of the final color on the dogwoods (Cornus florida).

hydrangea paniculata limelight fall color

The neighborhood dogwood trees are down to their final autumnal glow after first russeting up in September.

Actually (and as usual) these photos are from earlier in the week when nicer weather prevailed and we were able to enjoy some sunny and perhaps too-warm weather for the few minutes when I wasn’t stuck at work. It’s only now that I’m getting around to celebrating the glowing colors of this past week as I sit inside again, not due to work but due to the typical weekend rainy weather which is feeding the swap again with even more moisture. Whatever though, the plants carry on and I don’t remember the Hydrangea paniculatas ever showing so much pink before… and I’m contemplating maybe adding one more, something which is nice and late and intentionally turns pink each year. The ‘Vanilla Strawberry’ I gave to my mother in law could be a match, but it’s a little earlier than I’d like and because of that might go brown before the season wraps up.

Hydrangea by the street, also brighter than ever.

Speaking of the season wrapping up I just looked at the ten day, and it looks like frost might finally be on the way. We’ve had a mild October again, but it looks like November will come in with a light frost at least, and clear the way for tulip planting and final cleanups.

Aster laevis ‘Raydon’s Favorite?’ (Smooth Aster) is my best aster. It tolerates drought, blooms late, blooms long, and requires no work other than a chopping in half in June. It’s a star of the late autumn border.

Frost won’t be the worst thing. The garden starts to look uncomfortable once the leaves start falling and everything goes to sleep, but the marigolds are still going strong. A good frost moves everything along and puts the lingering things out of their misery while reminding the gardener that there’s a due date approaching for his project, and things need to wrap up before a solid freeze locks everything down.

I still haven’t found the perfect spot for this salvia, possibly a form of Salvia splendens van houttei, but it seems to enjoy a bit of shade to grow best around here. Cuttings have been taken again regardless and it always makes a nice show under the lights… even if it looks a bit cramped in there.

I guess this gardener is ok with an early November first frost. Tender things are mostly indoors and now just a few heavy pots remain to be considered. Having a few extra weeks to bring in pots two or three at a time is so much less stressful than running around the night before an early frost and making the hard decisions all at once.

The delphinum is a lingerer. From a decrepit, summer-weary husk a few perfect flowers are up and open. Had the gardener trimmed it down a few weeks ago, the husk might have been cheerier, but I’ll take this.

The downside to a lingering autumn is that the number of plants saved goes up with each frost-free week. Oh well. Have faith in me that I’m quite capable of killing things off with neglect during the winter 😉

The lingering autumn and on and off gloomy skies have the evening primrose (Oenothera biennis) open all day. It’s a lovely weed which fits in well with the verbena.

Besides the annual ‘to save or not to save’ questions there’s also the ever-too-long ongoing dirt moving projects. I’ve reached the point where backyard fill has reached the meadow, and I’m into the phase where fill is being graded down to the level of the meadow, and basically that means I’ve filled in as much as I wanted to and there’s an end in sight for this back part of the yard.

There’s almost enough level ground so that I can run a grass path from the house all the way back to the berm. That was an important thing back in the day, but as I look at it now I’m not sure why… maybe it was more work than it was worth…

If the back part of the yard is leveled and almost done, does that mean the hill of construction fill in the middle of the yard is gone? Haha, of course not! There’s still a nice bit sitting in the middle of the yard, just waiting for a poor soul to dig it all up and wheelbarrow it to other far reaches of the garden. The last few tons of dirt and rock are destined for the side of the yard, to level out along the fence and around the coldframe area, and hopefully provide a nice spot for the homeless camellia seedlings.

There’s only a little bit of the mountain left. We are almost at the two year mark for when the digging first began, and I am hoping for less strenuous days ahead.

So besides impending frost and ongoing earthmoving there’s still the small matter of a test. I really did have a point in that title and it refers to new lighting ambitions for the always expanding winter garden. We are going LED and moving on from the fluorescent shop lights which have served their time.

The product. Four foot LED shoplights from Harbor Freight. On sale for $43 but I see they’re up to $54 again, and that’s not in the budget for additional sets….

It seems like everyone has an opinion on using LED lights for raising plants, and I blame the basement growers of ‘medicinal’ crops for all this info and interest. There’s the science of specific wavelengths for the efficiency of photosynthesis but then there’s an avalanche of weakly proven theories on what’s best for what kind of growth and how ideal certain setups are and and and…. I tried to follow along but after numerous attempts came to the conclusion that LED lights specifically for plants were far outside my budget, plus many were a pinkish sort of light, and even with the current mania for Barbie and pink, I was not down with that. I finally stumbled across someone with some growing experience who stated that general LEDs, although they don’t emit light at the wavelengths specifically matching the preferred wavelengths for chlorophyll peak efficiency, emit light which is good enough for the range, and with that in mind just get something bright enough. So that’s what I did. The price and brightness were there but my confidence wasn’t, so I decided that a simple test might be a good idea before full commitment.

Corn, arugula, and calendula seedlings grown under LED (left) and fluorescent (right). If anything the LED seedlings look better, if not at least they’re on par with results from the old system.

The test was a few pots with corn, arugula, and calendula seedlings sown and grown completely under the two light sources. It was an experimental setup which would make a real scientist cringe, but conditions were mostly similar for both lights and they were just a few feet apart in my garage workshop but not close enough to overlap. Without making too much of the results it looks like the LED worked just fine in growing the seedlings. The corn was indifferent but the arugula and calendula actually seemed to grow faster and more strongly than the Fluorescent plants. I’d show the calendula but of course a slug found the pot and trimmed them back to the size of the other pot before said slug was dispatched. I guess I shall consider that when analyzing my experimental error.

Snowdrops? Yes! It’s that time of year again and Galanthus bursanus is leading the way. Please ignore the slug damage, I first blamed rabbits but when all the rest of the blooms disappeared with near surgical precision I think the bunnies are innocent for once and slugs are the true culprits.

That’s the first of what will surely become too many photos of snowdrops, but I’m sure you knew that. There should be more, but in addition to slugs hitchhiking their way into the winter garden they’ve been extremely active in the garden and have mowed down more than their share of the earliest of the autumn flowering snowdrops. Snowdrops in the fall is a new thing for me, I never thought is could be an option this far North, but with every winter less enthusiastic than the last it’s becoming a possibility. I just have to figure out how to grow them. They survive, but there’s still something (other than slug attacks) which doesn’t let them grow as well as the others already here. Don’t you worry though, rather than discouraged I’m even more enthusiastic about them and just keep trying them in new spots until they find something to their liking!

Hopefully we all find something to our liking. Have a great week!

Into Autumn

Nov6

Last week I broke down and started to wear a coat to work. This weekend I’m reconsidering long pants and wondering why I’m sweating as I dig. After a cooling off last month (and some really spectacular weather) it’s warm again, and I’m not sure how much I like that. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a mild autumn, but after going through all the trouble of dragging things inside, the big procrastinating part of me wonders if I couldn’t have put it off for another week or two 😉

The rock wall sits empty, the aspen are starting to color up.

Sadly the sweaty digging had little to do with the garden, rather it was me digging out the new access to the basement. I’m a little tired of all the hard labor, but the stones for a wall, and fill for some low spots, and some more soil for yard leveling will hopefully all lead to more planting spots so in the long run… the really long run… the run that never seems to have an end in sight….

Galanthus bursanus doing well in a protected spot of the open garden. I’m quite pleased.

What the warmth has been good for are the autumn flowering snowdrops. No harsh freezes flattening them, no fierce winds and driving rain to beat them up, just day after day of mild temperatures and soil warming sunshine. The snowdrops seem happy, and the gardener has been enjoying this.

A Galanthus reginae-olgae also doing ok in the open garden. Maybe someday the clumps will be thick enough to stand up to the falling leaves, but not quite yet.

Enough about snowdrops though. I don’t want to overdo it before the late fall bloomers and the winter bloomers and then the spring hurrah! It will be a long four months in that case, because even me holding back might be a little more than many people will want to endure.

Another fall bloomer, Cyclamen cilicium. This one is perfectly hardy for me yet still in a pot. Maybe one of my newly built-up areas will be the perfect location for a starter colony of this cool little species.

Oh wait. Autumn foliage is also a thing for some people (maybe the snowdropless amongst us), so yeah the maples were amazing, the oaks are turning to russet, and the warm breezes have leaves dropping and running across the neighborhood every which way. I wish I had more for mulching but I’ll collect as many as I can and hope it’s enough.

The hardy orange, Citrus trifoliata ‘Flying Dragon’ always surprises me with its weird pink-yellow-orange-green fall color combos. Today I think the green spines are fascinating but I’m sure someday I will curse them.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll also get some tulips planted. I thought about it today, but as usual way too much time is being wasted on moving furniture and house projects rather than doing more important things. Please ignore that the “more important” things were actually silly things like picking leaves off the witch hazel and cleaning off moss patches and power-washing birch trees, but to be honest there’s a reason I never post a things to do in the garden list. How would I ever explain planting tulips in a December snow squall after preaching that the first week in November was when it should have been done? All in good time, right?

Hope you have an excellent week 🙂

In With the Old

Oct26

I’ve been ignoring the colder temperatures long enough. A sudden freeze would have made the great autumn migration much, much easier but I’d surely miss a few things next year. The weather Saturday was beautiful and it’s the first weekend in a month where I didn’t spend most of my time emptying closets or running to the Salvation Army or painting or moving furniture… So spending an afternoon moving a few plants was (almost) a treat 😉

Putting everything on the driveway as a staging area seemed like a good idea… until even the driveway was filled.

Earlier in the month I’d already taken cuttings of coleus and other favorite annuals, hauled in the caladium pots and lugged the amaryllis in, and really thought I was on a good path… but then the plants started to accumulate. Hmmmm. Shame on those plants for growing so much.

By the end of the day things looked downright tame. A few things to shove into some dark corner of the garage when it really gets cold, and my precious tree fern which will stay out as long as possible.

So right now there’s no room in the winter garden for a January coffee, but I have a few months to straighten that out. I’m sure it will all work out just like I’m sure over the next few days I absolutely won’t find a thing or two more to bring in or a handful of ‘just in case’ cuttings.

Decent temperatures and beautiful autumn light made spending all day outside a treat. It’s amazing how things have recovered since the rains returned.

I wasn’t lugging all day. It was just nice to be outside and I’m quite talented at just wandering around ‘thinking’ or sitting around and ‘contemplating’. I guess we all have our superpowers even if we don’t all get to wear the fancy tights.

The late asters are nice enough but of course I’m still far too impressed with the purple stems of the ‘Sunnyside Up’ pokeweed.

One low point to this autumn is that nearly every last chrysanthemum in the potager’s chrysanthemum bed died out this past winter. In the spring I was almost happy about all the open space, but now I miss them, especially the big football forms with their huge, shaggy blooms. Who knows. The winter wasn’t all that bad and many of them had been with me for years, but these things happen. Fortunately I have backup plants, sadly not the same forms, but seeds are easy and if I want I can just collect a few seedheads this fall and within months I’ll have more than I lost… (as if I hadn’t already filled all that open space)

A mix of seedling chrysanthemums in the neglected former rock garden. Even after a summer of no-care and searing heat and drought they’ve come through with a nice show!

Who knows why chrysanthemums just die. Many of those big bushelbaskets of color sold in the fall aren’t actually hardy, and many more dry out too much to establish after the show is over, and some are just planted too late, but other times? I know all the autumn rains last year had mine extra soggy going into winter but I was still surprised every last one died. Wait, that’s not true. One plant which was decimated by some foliage disease and went into bloom nearly leafless last fall had two tiny sprigs survive. So the weakest plant survived… go figure.

The lone survivor in the the potager. The color on this chrysanthemum reminds me of the dahlia ‘Cafe au Lait’ and I’m beginning to like it, plus strong stems make it great for cutting.

Drifting aimlessly around the yard reminded me that for as productive as I was hauling other things in for the winter, the succulents that accumulated on the new stone wall this summer are still all out there. They’re all in heavy clay pots on top of that. Ugh.

Time to pay the piper. Free pots and extra cuttings sounded so harmless when I put together another 20 containers. Now they all need winter homes.

Wisdom has not followed age. I bought three more (big) terracotta pots last month when I just happened to ‘stumble upon’ a 30% off clearance sale, and I have every intention of filling them next spring. Sunday all of these came into the winter garden, even the ones I was going to leave out because I really don’t need them. Someone gave me another succulent which he knew I was eyeing. I know my mom has one which I’d like a bit of and my nephew as well. I give it two more years before this whole fiasco collapses. It’s going to be a great two years 🙂

The first snowdrops. A new season begins before the old has passed.

And then there are snowdrops. I was lukewarm for a week or two in August but now I’m just obsessing again. Snowdrops and cyclamen because they’re sprouting as well, and for a winter garden they’re also essential. And witch hazels. I see buds on those, wow it’s going to be an exciting winter. I hope it doesn’t fly by too quickly 😉

Hope you have a great week!

October

Oct7

September flew by and now it’s October. Autumn, and for maybe the first time in forever I’m glad to be done with summer. Maybe.

Colchicum ‘Lilac Beauty’ coming into full bloom against the blue of leadwort(Ceratostigma plumbaginoides). I think I show this scene every year, I like it.

It’s been chilly and gray and rainy and within 5 days I had my fill of autumn and started thinking about snowdrops and even colder weather. Cold I don’t really mind, it’s these depressing dark days which wear me down and I can’t imagine “living” somewhere with endlessly gloomy weather.

A colchicum speciosum which came as ‘bornmuellerii’ but might not be. The yellow next to it is a Sternbergia lutea, a fall blooming crocus look-alike which I need more of.

The gloom and rain also makes the lawn explode into growth and I’ve mowed it more times in the last month than all summer, and between that and the endless construction, and cleaning out the house next door, and making room for another person’s everything, and work, and lawyer talk, and explaining geometry and biology every night to a 14 year old, well I guess I know why September flew by. Good thing for colchicums and all those other autumn goodies, they sure make up for a less than complete daylily farm!

Colchicums by the driveway and a few 40% off goodies which I of course don’t need, but at least won’t need cramming into an already overfilled basement.

So it’s busy here and a new normal is setting in and a change of seasons might not be the worst thing to keep everyone moving along. The colchicums kicked off autumn and now hardy cyclamen and autumn flowering crocus and chrysanthemums are making it into a party.

Most of this would be fine in the open garden, but I do like having the most special of things all in one single protected space. Maybe next year I’ll evict the camellia seedlings and give them a try in the open garden.

Besides the miracle of copious rain, and its explosive effect on the lawn, the rain also performed a little miracle in the potager. It’s nothing to impress a Southerner, but having any kind of red spider lily in bloom this far north is something I did not expect to ever actually have happen but it did. Maybe there’s hope for it establishing. I wouldn’t complain if it settled in here, but knowing that the second bulb was also doing well up until it rotted last summer is giving me a few serious doubts.

Lycoris radiata, the red spider lily. Winter foliage will grow in another few weeks and then look miserable all winter as it wishes it were still south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Elsewhere in the garden the colors are all autumn and the vibe is all seedy.

Along the street the ‘Sunnyside Up’ pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) is as lovely and promiscuous as ever. Unlike everything else here it didn’t even seem to mind the heat and drought this summer.

Even after a summer of neglect and weeks of triage watering there were still plenty of things which bounced back. The front border looks full and the potager is an overgrown mess. It might not be as tusnami-of-chlorophyl as previous years but I can deal with it.

I didn’t expect Geranium ‘Rozanne’ to endure the drought like it has, but it looks great and seems to have been reborn this October.

Maybe the thousands of dollars spent watering were worth it here in the potager… things limped through the heat and then made for one last hurrah now that it’s cool and wet.

For the last two or three weeks you can’t even tell the cannas and dahlias spent all June and July in misery. Stunted plants aren’t the worst thing for a gardener who never got around to staking.

Progress on the daylily farm hasn’t been as swift as I had hoped for. My sole employee gets a list each weekend, but then when Sunday afternoon rolls around it’s like he didn’t even have a list, since it’s been mostly ignored for two days and nothing was done. Last weekend he made a good point about taking a few cuttings and carrying in a few pots instead but he really could have done a little more in the digging department on top of that. Perhaps this weekend I’ll take him out back and give him a serious talking to. Hopefully he’ll see the light, and hopefully back there no one will see me mumbling to myself again.

Ok, I distinctly remember my mother in law saying ‘I don’t care, as long as it looks nice you can plant whatever you want’ a couple months ago when I asked about planting some coleus in her planter. Maybe I took that out of context, but so far there have been zero comments about a daylily farm going in on the side of her house.

So maybe the daylily farm will be ready by next spring, and maybe it will not. Whatever happens I’m sure it will mostly complement the tropical bed which has also somewhat revived from the rain… and is also just across the property line, in my mother in law’s yard…

Not a whole lot of tropicals in the tropical bed this year, but even the tropics have their run-down, abandoned-farm kind of areas. Thankfully there’s more yellow pokeweed here weeding around and complementing the red roses and purple verbena.

While the stunted cannas here bring me down a bit, it’s my Queen of the Prairie statue which brings on the only commentary about this bed. The statue has been called creepy, and it’s been questioned as to why it faces her kitchen window but that’s just coincidence and I think she looks pensively thoughtful and pleasant.

Although no one insisted the Queen remain in our living room I don’t think anyone expected her to be evicted to the back lawn once we bought the house. Personally I think she’s enjoying her trip back to the earth.

Something else who’s days are numbered are the tropical pots. Time to start thinking about who is freezing, who is becoming a pot of cuttings, and who is getting hauled back in for the winter garden. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that things have multiplied and been added to.

Obviously this begonia needs to come inside. What soul-less heathen would let frost touch it while it’s flowering its head off?

The new angel’s trumpet in a (heavy)20 inch pot looked much less alarming as a little free cutting last fall, and a couple elephant ear divisions were never expected to fill one entire half of the garage but then it happened. Better safe than sorry is what I always like to think, so of course they’re all going to get safe winter homes.

In May I almost let spider mites kill this. “pinch off all the leaves, soap it down, and fertilize and water the sh!t out of it and it will be fine” was the excellent advice I received. It would look even better if i didn’t forget to fertilize the last few weeks and missed a few waterings…

Other things are also finding their way in for the winter. If it’s an early freeze things might be easier, but if it’s a late freeze I’ll have way too much time to soften up and say what’s the harm in one more?

I hope this red mandevilla can survive the winter with me. Previous attempts have failed but how can I not try?

There’s always room for one more and it’s good to have all these things going on to carry us through the next month. Each month has it’s own surprises, and even if I didn’t need the surprise water heater replacement yesterday, having hot water again is almost as nice as a house packed full of somewhat appreciative houseplants and a garage full of sleeping bulbs and tubers.

Hmmm. I didn’t even think about digging things yet. That might be a November, as the snow flies, kind of project and I’ll wait until then to worry about it. One month at a time, right?

A Taste of Autumn

Oct17

Yesterday was forecast to be a gloomy day of rain, with strong winds and a good chance of thundershowers, but the morning surprised me with scattered sun and a breeze almost strong enough to blow away the swarms of blackflies and keep the mosquitos grounded. It was nice. It was warm. I took some pictures and actually did a few things rather than sit inside, and then when the rain and wind did finally come through it happily matched afternoon break time, so win-win!

Thinking the weekend would be lost to rain and cold, the lawn was mowed and even edged Friday afternoon. What a guilt-free way to greet Saturday morning.

Now I’m not going to promise I did anything important or essential, but I did do a few things which have been haunting me like moving Lycoris bulbs and repotting some plants for winter. Now if that gets you thinking this is a good time for moving Lycoris bulbs, think twice. It’s probably not, and summer dormancy is probably better, but they’re moved now and that’s something which didn’t happen in August.

I still love the pumpkins and finally found a use for the peppers which have been sitting on the side of the house all summer. The coleus also look perfect, but that will change quickly as nighttime temperatures begin to drop.

Beyond that I just spent the morning enjoying the autumn garden.

Some lingering annuals and autumn colors on the hydrangea.

The breeze from the approaching cold front must have been carrying a few Monarch stragglers, since every now and then I would disturb a bunch hidden amongst the flowers. They were all hungry and focused on feeding, not like the lazy floating through the air which the earlier crew was doing a few weeks ago.

I’m glad I deadheaded the buddleia a few weeks ago since it’s brought on one last flush of flowers for these late Monarchs.

I think there were enough flowers for a little rest-stop but with the clock ticking all the Monarchs were gone by early afternoon, riding the winds in front of the approaching rain. Safe travels!

It’s chrysanthemum time, and I love all of them except maybe this buff “peach?” colored one. Is it the brown grass behind or the hot pink in front, I don’t know, but something is off with these colors.

On another note, a few years ago a box or two of Minnesota-hardy mums came to this garden and did exceptionally well in spite of neglect and poor planting locations. During dry summers their seedlings would spread freely and this gardener was quite pleased with some of the results. Only about four of the original plants survive but only about two of the lost ones are missed, so in spite of the money spent this gardener feels like he made out better than he usually does.

Maybe not the nicest color, but I do like the more unusual flower forms of many of the seedlings.

I guess this is where I say mums make nice porch pots and I’ve bought my share of tight pots of perfectly budded plants, and then enjoyed them completely until they dried out one time too many. If they’re hardy enough they will also do well in the garden, making a nice lump of color for a few weeks anywhere between August and October depending on the cultivar.

This orange and gold seedling is nice enough to keep for another year… maybe the pink as well, but I already have a few others which are similar.

My confession is I find them kind of boring. They’re very neat and uniform, but I like flowers that sway in the wind. I like to see the bees working through them and plants which keep putting up more buds with larger flowers and unusual petal types. Once again the dream of a perfect garden with ribbons and pools of fall color falls to the wayside in favor of ‘interesting’. Oh well 🙂

‘Cheerleader’ is the last of the hardy football mums. I might have to try one more time to get some more which will tolerate my on again off again plant care program because this one is friggin awesome!

Let me just add that ‘interesting’ isn’t always as beautiful as the perfect pots from the nursery.

One of my favorite colors are the white with a pale yellow centered ones. Awesome color, but don’t look too closely at the foliage.

I transplanted all of these in June and chopped them back to sticks and worried a little that they would recover. They did, but then the endless rains of August brought on overly lush growth which ended up nurturing disease and killing off much of the foliage and blooms. A note for the better gardener is that chrysanthemums appreciate good air circulation and full sun, and dislike a crowded bed with overhanging sunflowers and milkweed.

By now some of the plants are completely leafless. Some are fine. A real ‘breeder’ would probably yank all the defective ones…

Of course there’s little chance I’ll address the disease problems. I’m more of a thoughts and prayers kind of gardener, not one who acts on these things, so maybe next year will be better. On the other hand I will rip out a few of the ones which don’t thrill me, since new seedlings are much more fun than seeing all the same ones returning next year 😉

In another bed this ‘cafe au lait’ color is something I like. Hopefully this one proves hardy.

Here’s just one more which I like.

Pink with interesting petals, but possibly weak stems? I’ll see today how it fared through yesterday’s rain and wind.

Hopefully no one is overly impressed with my seed-growing adventures. To put it in perspective there are often seedlings which just show up on their own, and are often much nicer than anything I nurture.

Just like that a seedling appears. Of course I’ll keep it, but maybe move it to a spot which isn’t soaking wet all winter…

…and don’t think I’m too good for buying and saving a few potted mums and seeing if they survive to bloom another year…

Hmmm. Has the leftover sand been sitting in the driveway since August? Someone better move it before that same someone accidentally tries to run a snowblower through it in December.

Speaking of surviving for another year, the pots are starting to migrate closer to the garage and their winter housing. The new bed on the side of the garage has been perfect for keeping things off the driveway… sort of… as I realize there are half a dozen fairly large pots sitting alongside the sand pile…

I suspect this cold front will push all the caladiums into dormancy. They’ll probably go into the garage first so they can stay out of the rain as they die down.

So that’s the mid October update. Chrysanthemums and the wait for the first frost pretty much sum it up and given the ten day forecast both will be around until at least the end of the month. I’m fine with that and I won’t even mention those other things which are starting to preoccupy my every other plant thought. The first ones are starting to sprout and of course new bulbs have been planted.

Have a great week 🙂

November Gardening Tasks

Nov24

Every now and then it occurs to me that this blog should be more…. useful?… and as I was sitting there with a nice cozy blanket watching Gardener’s World I noticed the weekly ‘things to do in the garden’ segment, and thought to myself what an easy idea to steal. So let me start by saying you’re welcome and just jump right in.

Not much to see along the street anymore but I try to leave a few things uncut to keep it from looking too desolate.

My first thoughts in the morning went to the dozens of unplanted daffodils and perennial seedlings which have been sitting around for weeks, so…

1. Stand by the back door with a cup of coffee and imagine how nice it will all look someday when things finally grow or plants finally get moved. After 20 minutes you may prefer to lean on the other side of the door and imagine changes to the other side of the view. Keep in mind you might want to do this first thing in the morning since it’s easier to ignore a messy room and far less possible to be “redirected” when there’s no one else there.

Most of the fall colors have faded to blah, but the Amsonia is finally showing some of the yellow it’s supposed to show each year. Fyi mine rarely does this.

2. Sit down at the computer since it’s still not all that warm out and look up plants on the internet. Look up other plants, look at other people’s plants, think about how those plants would look in your garden, think how you can fit them all in and then search out who has them for sale. Stop just short of ordering them, there’s plenty of time for that in January…. unless it’s a clearance sale on bulbs of course. Order those and don’t even think about the unplanted ones in the garage.

My best cardoon did not appreciate the recent 24F night. I’m still hoping it proves hardy this winter.

3. Make a second cup of coffee and go outside. If it’s warm enough in the sun make sure you take advantage with a little more sitting, otherwise shuffle around the garden and look at every single plant especially the ones which look the same as yesterday. Don’t put your coffee down to do anything, you’ll forget where you left it.

The potager is looking quite neat with mulched beds and some of the frosted veggies removed. Just looking at it hurts my lazy bone, and I’m honestly not sure who did all this work.

4. Return the empty coffee cup to the kitchen. When you do remember to cross these tasks off your list since having a list and crossing things off is super important when organizing. Sometimes I do more than just cross out, I completely black out the task since it’s done and over. No one needs to judge your past, just make sure they see you’re accomplishing things and then redirect them to the future.

A few cabbages yet to be harvested. Don’t lose your nerve and rush out in the dark to pick the biggest one after everything’s been freezing for the last day and a half, since frozen cabbage stems are dangerously hard to cut while holding a flashlight and watching a dog.

5. Grab the planting trowel and head out to plant some bulbs. As you pass the witch hazel, stop and spend at least half an hour picking off the yellowed leaves so that they don’t sit on it all winter and then interfere with the flowers as they open in January. When you’re almost done give up and wander off to look for the trowel.

Lycoris radiata and Lycoris houdyshelii, both not likely to do more than just survive in this zone (if I’m lucky) and both kind of expensive to experiment with but there they are.

6. Forget you were looking for the trowel when you pass the camellia. See if the buds have grown any (they haven’t) since the last time you looked and then check the 10 day forecast to see when you next have to drag the pot into the garage for the night. Pull a few other things out of the garage again since the weather looks nice and they can use a few more days of sun before the long, dark winter.

In and out the Cyclamen coum go as I try to get them as much sun and fresh air before committing them permanently to the winter garden. Hmmmmm. I thought I had so many, but now I see it’s not nearly enough.

7. Look at the unplanted bulbs and then decide to mow the lawn. Sure with a self-propelling mower it’s basically the same as the back and forth wandering you were doing before, but no one accuses you of doing nothing when you’re mowing the lawn, plus there were a few new leaves on it and better to capture them for mulch before they blow off to the neighbor’s.

8. Clean out the garage. Just kidding. It’s far too late in the day and you should always have something left on the list for next time. Plus something really ambitious like this as a leftover will really make all the darkened out ‘finished’ tasks even more impressive.

So there you have it. Hopefully this was amazingly useful and helped organize your time somewhat and gets you ready for the upcoming week and approaching holiday. Follow me for more awesome tips but don’t expect those bulbs to get in the ground anytime soon. I suspect there will be demands for Christmas lights and absolutely no one wants to hear about unplanted daffodils after returning from a Longwood Christmas so Christmas lights it is. Have a great week.

More Fall

Oct24

Who would have thought but this autumn continues to be a somewhat pleasant experience (pandemics notwithstanding), and we are enjoying a fairly warm October. Warmth in October is nice. People like warm fall days. I on the other hand wouldn’t mind a little more cold.

A hanging baskets was emptied to provide a spot for some of the gourd harvest.

Dried leaves and dead stalks, with pollen and fluff and dust blowing all over are not doing my sinuses any favors so my latest excuse for sleepy laziness is my allergies. Even with a congested head and squinty eyes though, out in the garden is where I’d like to be and in spite of it all I did manage to get a few things done. First of all I power washed. When I told my mom how I’d power washed the birch trees, at first she couldn’t make sense of what I was saying, so I explained how they were looking a little dingy and algae-coated and in need of a wash but that didn’t help. ” I think I could have thought of better things to do” was her response, so I told her I washed the car afterwards and left out how I first cleaned the stone sides of the new coldframe and then we moved on to other topics.

I apologize to every weekend warrior who will now feel the need to power wash their birch clumps, but they do look much nicer.

That took a lot out of me so I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting around enjoying the glow of the fall foliage.

From the right angle I can enjoy the fall color without seeing the dozens of potted plants which still need to come in…

The next few days didn’t see much more in the way of questionable productivity. I’ve been obsessing about chrysanthemums after all, and how can you think of overwintering potted porch plants when there are mums in full autumnal splendor!?

The chrysanthemum bed is now officially in full bloom. Two beds would be nicer, but even one looks quite extravagant.

I don’t care about mums in May, but fortunately this year I still managed to plant these out and even added in a few seedlings which survived my springtime neglect.

This pink seedling will be nice if it proves hardy. Unfortunately the rest of this year’s crop is kinda boring.

The seedlings are fun, but the staking and fussing that went into caring for my last surviving football mum has really paid off. All I do is stare at it and wish I had more.

The amazing orange blooms of ‘Cheerleader’ tower over the others.

‘Cheerleader’ is about 3 or four feet tall even after an early spring pinching. She requires strong wooden stakes and I even went as far as to disbud a few stems to see if the main flower would turn out nicer. I think they did. Hopefully next year I can repeat this.

I did manage to cut a few for the house, but most are being enjoyed in situ.

While I contemplate a new career in raising fancy show chrysanthemums, and consider a roadtrip down to the Longwood chrysanthemum show (which goes until Nov 22), I do want to point out a small project I did manage to finish up this week. It’s a new raised bed, one made out of cement blocks and hopefully one which outlasts the wooden ones.

Concrete blocks on end, the whole thing held together with metal strapping.

Honestly I should have just stuck with the wooden theme, but I had an idea and that idea might be worth a try if it meant not having to replace every last bed in a dozen years. In the meantime I just hope no one looks too closely at my credit card receipts and questions just how much was spent on a 1/2″ steel strapping kit. Let’s run a quick distraction with some nice photos of wonderful fall bulbs.

A surprise flower on the non hardy Bessera elegans. It’s just one more potful which has to still come in for the winter.

Just the fact the Bessera is alive is amazing and that it’s still sending up a bloom or two after flowering earlier in the summer is also a shock since I had given them up for dead months ago. Actually it wasn’t so much giving up than it was throwing them into the furnace room back in the fall of 2018 and then just being too lazy to pull them out the next spring. So they sat. Bone dry. For six months. Then ten…. then twelve… then sixteen… Finally a year and a half later I went back there looking for emergency potting soil and found the pot. I was shocked (and a little annoyed, since I really needed more potting soil) to find a pot full of perfectly healthy corms, no worse than the day I put them back there. Out onto the sidewalk they went, and one April shower later they were all sprouting.

A very elegant autumn blooming snowdrop (Galanthus bursanus). You can probably guess just how often I check on this newest pet.

The bessera is a summer bulb, but autumn snowdrops represent a new season, and by that I mean winter. I love seeing them coming up and from now until next March it’s snowdrop season. Sure it slows down a bit in January, but for the last few years that slowdown is only a few days and not the usual months long lockdown of cold and ice that we used to endure. I guess a global climate disaster can have a bright side if you look hard enough.

Galanthus peshmenii? I believe not, if only because the “are you sure?” backup peshmenii I bought is living up to its reputation and slowly fading away while this one gets better each year.

Did I mention how much I paid for the latest snowdrops? Of course not, and I won’t. By now I know better than to put things like snowdrops on anything which produces a receipt. Explaining away a 1/2″ steel strapping kit produces a bored look but when I try to justify the excitement over an expensive little bulb, all I get is that judgemental eye roll.

Have a great weekend, and for those who are curious I followed some tips for finding a backdoor to the old WordPress editor, and it’s made my blogging life tolerable once again.

Fall

Oct9

So here I am, finally forced to use the new block editor for WordPress. I don’t like it. Everything is adrift in a sea of white and I can’t fix how the photos and captions are displayed. There is no desire in me to be a web designer, I just want to post a couple pictures and write a few comments and since I’m struggling with that I’ll just assume it’s too smart for me.

Feather reed grass along the street. Things are looking autumnal.

I just want to complain. I don’t like it. I want menus and boxes and structure, not symbols and icons and dots that I somehow have to know to click on… or double click on… or whatever alt hold and click combo I’m supposed to just know or remember or whatever.

The front border from the other side. I’m quite pleased, but this is all the beginning of the end, as things color up, dry up, and die off…

Why the heck does everything need to be in stupid blocks!? I don’t like it. I just want it to be intuitive and let me write and I can throw in a picture whenever I want. Now I have to add a stupid photo block and then start a paragraph block and then go on to the next block. I seriously had less trouble editing html code than I do with this cloud of one size fits all.

chrysopsis Heterotheca villosa ruth baumgardner — Heterotheca(aka Chrysopsis) villosa ‘Ruth Baumgardner’. Still glowing brightly from the end of the front border.

I’ll stop now. I don’t like it. Maybe what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, but that’s not exactly the kind of win-win scenario I strive for either so… on to the fall garden. It’s here. It’s winding down. Still colorful, but fading fast. All the smarter plants are packing it in for the winter they know is coming, but the foolish tropicals are still carrying on like there’s always a tomorrow.

dahlia happy single flame — Dahlia happy single flame. This one always seems at its best during the last weeks of fall.

The tropicals were saved at the last minute by some rain and an almost-but-not quite-frost. The rain was just in time, but late September would have been tragically early for a frost date. Only a few things were touched though so I’ll count my blessings, especially since others North and South of us were not as lucky.

white cactus dahlia — The last big hurrah for dahlias and the red rose ‘Black Forest’ isn’t doing too bad either.

I’m enjoying the final flowers, but I’m afraid sometimes the impression is that everything is an overflowing wonder of color and interest in this garden. Angles and cropping make a big difference. The photo above vs the photo below shows how the full clump of big white dahlias looks much thinner and poorly staked from a different angle.

autumn dahlia garden — Things look a lot gappier from the back. Honestly everything is too close to the path and a mess, but at this time of year who really cares? I’m just enjoying the color.

The lack of big tropicals in the tropical border this year bothered me for a little bit, but I’m not going to miss all the canna root digging and elephant ear lugging that normally happens in October. It still looks fake-tropical lush with grasses and pokeweed, but my big plant of happiness is the non-tropical ‘Michigan hardy’ cardoon seedling which will hopefully prove to be more hardy than previous seedlings. It’s become a monster and I wonder if I’ll ever hope that winter takes this one out like it has all my others.

hardy cardoon — This is another really nice camera angle. All year I hated how this combo worked (or didn’t work), but here at just the right angle the cardoon is nestled in perfectly between grasses, pokeweed and dahlias.

I reeeeaaaallly like the cardoon although again it’s one of those spiny, pokey, too-big, weedy looking, things that takes up all the room that a peony could shine in, but… let’s just move on. The potager still looks respectable even if a few too many ‘Hopi Red Dye’ amaranthus were allowed to grow in all the wrong places.

the potager pergola — Parts of the potager are still neat and weed free. Let’s hope I can keep this up for a second year!

We’re still picking a few things such as eggplant and tomatoes but for me the chrysanthemums and gourds are so much more entertaining. Now that fall transplanting season is upon us it will take resolve of steel to keep from filling all the beds with tulips and transplants of everything which would likely do better in more cultivated soil.

diy pergola — The raised beds are nice, but my favorite spot is the pergola. Already I’m wondering what to do with the four corners next year!

A bed or two of phlox, multiple beds filled with tulips, a few for chrysanthemums, maybe just a few coleus here and there 🙂

Just is case you’re wondering how my feelings towards the new editor are going… I don’t like it…. but what I do like are colchicums. And just typing the word immediately lowered my blood pressure a bit and made the three days I’ve been screwing around with this post seem just a little less wasted.

colchicum flowers — The last of the colchicum with a leaner sister of the big lusty cardoon that’s growing in the tropical bed. I think this is mostly ‘Nancy Lindsay’ and maybe ‘Lilac Wonder’?

I really try to avoid showing the same plant again and again, but the dry, cool weather has the colchicums lasting and lasting. So here again is my group of C. speciosum giganteum group.

colchicum speciosum gigantea group — Colchicum giganteum still looking good after two weeks.

And although my friend Cathy grows this one much better than I do, Colchicum autumnale album plenum is slowly spreading into a small clump that will hopefully some day become a small drift of white.

And one more. C. speciosum ‘Atrorubens’ came up pale but has now darkened down to a rich color which bleeds onto the stem almost to the ground.

colchicum speciosum atrorubens — Colchicum speciosum ‘Atrorubens’

Oh and one other announcement. After about ten years of holding onto an old shower door, two years of thinking I should use it for a coldframe, and four weekends of staring and planning and considering, the coldframe is finally done. “What took so long?” you ask… well I don’t know. I’ve just been lazy.

diy coldframe — It took forever for me to figure out how to use the hoarded door, wood scraps, and salvaged pink marble to build… but once the last screw was in it took me about 15 minutes to fill it with plants.

In case you’re wondering, the door slides flat in order to cover the plants, it’s just folded up right now to enjoy the sun and breezes of autumn… and since I look at it multiple times a day, I might as well leave it open anyway. I like it. I’m happy it’s done, and with that albatross off my neck I’m free to do more fun-erer things until the next simple project weighs me down.

homegrown gourd harvest — As soon as I finished basking in the glow of a project done, and congratulated myself one last time, it was time to harvest the gourds. An excellent haul me thinks!

I noticed the pink marble of the coldframe isn’t quite as pink as it could be and what’s the sense of a marble coldframe if everyone doesn’t realize it’s marble? I worry that garden tours will pass by and think it’s just fieldstone or any old stone block or something, and that could be embarrassing… especially after they’ve experienced the fancy that is our potager. Perhaps this weekend’s to-do list will have to start with some powerwashing. I’m sure in the grand scheme of gardening tasks which I neglect, powerwashing the blocks under a crusty little coldframe is the most effective use of my gardening energies. On a side note, it’s obvious why I could never do this professionally.

new england aster alma — “Alma Potschke” New England aster along the runoff path for the gutters. I should call it the ‘rain garden’, that has a nicer ring to it.

Honestly there are so many more important things to do, such as replanting a couple hundred daffodils or bringing in dozens of potted plants or doing all the other fall prep, but I suspect I’ll start the weekend off with powerwashing. Ok, full honesty means that I also looked at the birch trees and decided they should be whiter and cleaner as well. If you never see another photo with the birch trees in it you’ll know how that went.

Hope your weekend turns out more productive, but even if it’s not have a great one! -btw I think I survived the new editor…

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Tag Archives: autumn