The sugar maples in the drive are putting on a beautiful display right now, at the end of October. The first windy rain storm will take their pretty coats, so I'm torn between hoping for rain and hoping for no rain.
The garden is essentially bare except for some herbs, lettuce and arugula and a couple small tatsoi plants and a couple rows of dead globe basil and lima beans. I'll leave them for their roots to rot in the soil over winter, adding some compost value, and loosening up the soil when I pull them out in spring.
dead Globe Basil
Arugula, lettuce in the background
Too bad I don't have a taste for salad when the weather is cool, because the arugula and lettuce look quite nice.
Cilantro volunteers are growing well.
Perennial oregano, chives and tarragon are generally harvestable year-round unless it freezes really hard, and then they come right back to life as soon as there's a little milder weather. These have been growing since the garden was first installed four years ago and only died down this last winter.
My second planting of beets grew to a fair size and then just sat there. I never harvested them, wondering what they would do. Nothing. They didn't grow any more, and they didn't fade or die back. I pulled them this weekend and cooked them. The greens (or in the case of 'Bull's Blood' variety, purples) were okay, but the beetroot was bitter.
I'll have to get on the ball more quickly next year to plant a fall crop of cucumbers. They were coming along beautifully, and I got one cucumber large enough to harvest.
Then we had a hard frost. And then another. They bit the dust.
This Viceroy the second week of October was the last butterfly of the season. I hope it got somewhere warm, but I think it was lagging too far behind its kin.
The hummingbirds vanished at the same time.
I'm surprised at what's still alive in the cut flower garden, even after two hard frosts. I had no idea snapdragons would stay green so long. They quit flowering a few weeks ago, but that was because hordes of some caterpillar were eating the flower buds.
The lupine is still green, and I'm excited to see what colors bloom next year. I'm assuming something will. None of those I planted this year flowered, but last year's one surviving plant did, and it was fabulous.
Two or three delphiniums are blooming, if pathetically sparsely. I didn't realize they bloom in early summer and again in fall. Hopefully I'll get a better stand of them next year. And I'll plant as many as I have seed now that I know they bloom so long into the year.
None of the plants in the cut flower garden look especially pretty now, but it's nice to see they're still alive and green. Hopefully that means the perennials are putting some good stores of energy in their roots. The Farmers Almanac says this area will have a mild, snowy winter, so maybe even the snapdragons will survive. If not, then maybe they will self-seed.
The frost killed the leaves of the 'Black Pearl' peppers, leaving them with bare berries, which are mostly red now and drying up. I'll take down most of them so they don't sprout too many volunteers next summer, and I'll cut them back early on to make shorter, bushier plants. They got way too tall this year for their location.
I decided I have too much space in the shady end of the garden for the crops I never end up eating, so next year, I'm going to interplant beets, arugula and lettuce in one plot, and tatsoi, sorrel and celtuce (something new to me) in another. That's going to give me a bed under the mimosa tree for spring bulbs. I've ordered three different gorgeous tulips, a bi-colored Muscari, Thalia daffodils and Hawara Narcissus online from Tulips.com. If they turn out to be good plants, I'll add that company to my list of sources in the sidebar.
In the meantime, I prepared the bed by putting down a layer of maple leaves I raked up and bagged last fall.
I added a layer of good soil from the compost pile. Then I realized that the leaves, although they were beginning to mold, might still form a barrier to rain and chopped through the soil and leaves with a shovel. I hope it was enough.
Finally, I put down a layer of finely shredded cedar mulch.
I may be sorry.*
bulb installation
On another bed, I raked up this year's leaves and ran over them with the lawn mower first to make them break down quicker, and then added a layer of compost from the last of the tree mulch we got from the county roadside crew three years ago. I used some of that directly as mulch on a couple of beds last spring and wasn't sure that would work out, but it all broke down nicely. I didn't have a leaf layer underneath, though.
I'm sure this is not a recommended way to add compost to your garden, but I like to experiment, so we'll see. I will be putting some of the tulip bulbs in pots of commercial potting soil, but if I check on the layered bed in late winter and find that nothing is breaking down at all, I'll be raking everything off the top and replacing it with soil from the compost pile and then a layer of mulch.
The roses are still green, but fading. 'Dark Desire' was tenderer than the others and shows signs of burn from those frosts. All the shrubs got much larger and bushier than I expected. Probably because there was no leaf disease due to the long, hot spring and summer. And take a look at the 'Grande Amore' rose in the upper right corner of the bed in the picture below. It's supposed to be a 4-5 feet high shrub. Those two tallest canes are now about 7 feet tall! I don't know where they think they're going.
Although the Japanese beetles are gone, shield bugs and cucumber beetles are still trying to feed on the rose blossoms. After that first hard frost, I put little organza bags over some of the last buds to try to protect them from cold and insect feeding and get the last blooms for cutting.
From a little digging I did in the rose bed, I unearthed a slew of Japanese beetle grubs. I thought I had kept on top of them pretty well, but I guess not. Sigh.
Everything in that bed got huge. I had to take out the 'Caradonna' Salvia and the Gaura, so then I had to create another small bed across the aisle, taking out more wildflowers. No telling where this will all end.
It's interesting to me to see how cold weather changes the color of some plants. This was 'Acropolis' rose in summer:
And here it is today:
This is the normal coloring of 'Shazam!' (taken the first of this month before the frosts):
And this is what the last few look like now:
I did get a few more nice bouquets earlier this month. Here's one:
'Winter Sun', 'Shazam', 'Grande Amore', Globe Amaranth, Pyracantha berries and white Delphinium
Speaking of how cold weather changes coloration, the 'Julia Child' yellow rose took on a pink blush, which made it pair nicely with the bright pink 'Knockout'.
And, here's 'Neptune' cold...
...versus 'Neptune' warm...
I've been watching the BBC TV series "Gardeners' World" through a Britbox subscription, and it's fabulous. English cottage garden style is so joyful, and there's lots more to this excellent series. If you love gardens and gardening, I recommend getting a trial subscription (free for a week, I think) and checking it out.
I also recently ran across this on the internet:
How gorgeous is that? I would love to be able to do it. Alas, it's not likely to happen in this lifetime. I have, however, made my garden plan for next year.
We'll see what actually happens.
Until then...
Eat, drink and dream of a garden paradise.
UPDATE:
*When I got my bulbs, the literature that came with them said not to mulc with cedar! So I had to rake it off and replace it with a light layer of composted wood chips. I then went online to try to find out why cedar was bad for tulips and didn't come away any more enlightened. Some sources talk about chemicals that repel certain insects, and one mentioned "cedar mulch toxicity" but called it a myth. But, since the company selling the bulbs said no cedar mulch, I better obey.
UPDATE 11/9:
An early snow before the leaves have dropped from the trees was our first of the season, bookending the first snow of the year that came late. All in all, it wasn't a good year for the vegetable garden, though the roses loved it.
That seven foot 'Grande Amore' rose was laid low last night.
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