Frost and Fire ~ Indian Summer

This October is proving to be another beautiful autumn.  The weather has turned again giving us a week of Indian Summer weather which is perfect for enjoying the last of the garden chores.

My dahlias survived several frosts and these frosts have had a beautiful effect on the trees.  Two of our yard trees have opposite patterns of leaf color.  The Firepit Maple turns yellow on the outside from the top down.

And Ole Hickory turns on the inside from the bottom up.

Each fall we always end up with a burn pile.  Each year we think we have done all of the major clearing and maintenance and this will be a year where we do not use the chain saw or create a burn pile.  We are always mistaken.

We waited until we had a cool rainy stretch, and at the end of it, when all of the grass is well saturated, we light the fire. My husband squirts Kerosene on it while we light it, and I apply the leaf blower and it instantly springs to life.  This pile six feet tall and very compact because twice as we were building it we crushed it down with the tractor loader.

We chose a beautiful clear day in the mid-40s with no breeze to speak of.  Burning in the cool weather of autumn is so much easier on the fire tenders than say July with the heat and humidity.

A fire such as this requires constant attendance for one to two hours.  I put my flame resistant hoodie on and we take turns raking with a leaf rake to get the loose leaves and twigs back towards the bare ground beneath the fire to prevent the grass from catching.  I remember one fire when conditions were much drier when we filled the tractor loader with water and used watering cans to douse the surrounding grass.  The ground is squishy at this point so there is little danger of the grass supporting much flame.

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Even when the flames diminish, it is throwing heat off that you do not want to get your face close to.

20 Minutes

As the center burns we use a metal garden rake so push the unburned ends of limbs into the fire.

40 Minutes

The fire reduces to a manageable size quite quickly, and we enjoy sitting out in the nice weather.  Back when I built my potting bench and compost sifter from a pile of scrap wood, we still had a few boards leftover.  From that we built three simple camp stools to replace the stools that had rotted away over the last twenty years.

It is so peaceful out here watching the golden leaves drift lazily to the ground.

After an hour and a half the fire can be left unattended.  We continue to check back through the afternoon, pushing ends into the center and stirring the coals.  By morning this will be a cold pile of ash with nothing identifiable left.

The next morning there was a colder frost, and my Dahlias are beginning to die.

Next chore: digging dahlias 

Coleus Cuttings

 Since I had such good luck with propagating Coleus from cuttings this spring, I have decided to give it a whirl this winter.  My hope would be to keep a few plants indoors that could either be set out or have cuttings taken from them in early spring.  The frost burned plants were looking a little rough but I was able to find enough side shoots at the base to take for cuttings.

I mixed up 50/50 compost and fine vermiculite and watered it well with a watering can.  The vermiculite will stay moist, and the compost will give them some nutrients.  I removed the lower leaves, and dipped the stem in rooting hormone.  Them I made a hole in the cell, inserted the stem, and firmed the mix down around them to make good contact with the stem.  I placed the cells in a solid tray so I can bottom water them.  I set them in the shade for the afternoon and today I am putting them in under a LED grow light.  This spring I had no trouble with them wilting, but if that were to happen, I may need to put a moisture dome over them.

I took 24 cuttings.  In about a month I will see if they are rooting, and if so, I will transplant them into larger cells with potting mix.  Yes, there is a cost to overwintering plants, but 24 El Brighto Coleus would cost at least $120 in a nursery or $240 mail order.  Hopefully some of these plants will look good in the spring, or at least provide more cuttings.

Harvesting Sweet Potatoes

Time to find out what is under these big piles of leaves.  I planted these May 9th from my own slips.  They are in 25 gallon grow bags filled with fresh Moisture Control Miracle Gro Potting Mix and amended with Bone Meal and Garden Tone.   There were five slips in each bag.  I topped them with shredded leaf mulch and watered them Every Day.  Every Darn Day.  Even the rainy days.  Because sweet potatoes are tropical and they like a lot of water.  I know the approximate flow rate from my garden hose and I count seconds to meter the water.  These containers got a minimum of two gallons a day when they were fully leafed out.  On some of the hotter days the bag with the thicker foliage would begin to wilt and got extra water.

Despite being planted up identically, and receiving identical care, one bag produced about four times as much as the other.  I guess I will have to start actually measuring fertilizer and bone meal?  Because that would be the only variant, the amount that got poured on.

We dumped the smaller bag first and it was a bit of a bust.  I got five good tubers and a few little scraps.  When we dumped the next bag I was expecting more just because of the size of the foliage, but the difference was amazing!  I did not weigh them, but I know that my hod holds about twenty pounds when full.  We got about thirty to thirty five pounds of good sized, storable tubers.

...and a frog.  Who will have to find a new home.

Here they are all laid out as I sorted them.

I culled anything small or broken.

Now the tubers have to cure for a week or two to convert all of the starches into sugars.  This improves the taste and storage life.  They need to be in 85F degree heat and high humidity.  To do this I use a thermostat controlled heat mat and a jar of water.

This year my harvest did not fit in one Sterlite container.  I had to use two.

This morning we awoke to a good frost.  It was 37F in the garden, but the roofs were coated in frost and some plants got touched.

The Dahlias are OK for now.

But the Coleus are not.  I will be going outside to trim some things now.

The Coleus under the shade tree were protected and look better.  If they still look good now when I go out I am going to take some cuttings and put them under a grow light and see if I can create a few plants even if I have to take cuttings off of those in the spring.  Its worth a try.

We are going to be another frost tonight, and then next week is going to be cold and rainy. That will end the dahlias and digging and storing them will be the final gardening chore of the year.

Everything Gets A Haircut

The past two weeks we have been getting ready for the next stage of the garden which is Leaf Season.  We try to have everything cut back and ready for winter by October 1st.  We can get snow in October, and the leaves will be falling soon.  Everything in the landscape is looking pretty over grown and disheveled by mid-September so cutting it back to a clean slate can be refreshing.

I harvested the last of the Broccoli side shoots.  I wanted to show you what the variety Belstar means by "smaller side shoots".   That's a secondary plant coming off the side!

I usually plant some Basil although I rarely use it.  It smells like licorice and I like to pinch some off while I am in the garden and enjoy its fragrance.   I generally consider the flowers to be a bonus because the bees love them.  But this year I tried the Emerald Towers variety.  The flower stage of Basil changes the taste so if you want it to remain sweet and edible you have to constantly pinch it back.  Not so with Emerald Towers.  Here it is at the end of the season with not a flower in sight.

I left the volunteer Snapdragons and Cosmos for the bees.  Last year I planted Cosmos here and was reminded how messy they can be.  I pulled most of the volunteers when they were small, but I left one growing because it chose the center of the bed.

Things look a little barren with the huge grasses cut down.  It takes us about three stints of a couple hours each to cut everything in each bed.  Then we have to spend time going through and pulling all of the weeds that have been hiding.

I began pulling annuals weeks ago, and put tree tubes on all of our smaller trees.  Last year the deer did a lot of damage, and I also worry about rabbits girdling the fruit trees.

The Dahlias are still going strong.  I have begun pruning some of them back a bit.

The ball style dahlias are looking gorgeous.

Down in the corner is a mystery dahlia that popped up out of nowhere.  It can't be an over wintered tuber because last year I had singles in this area.   Best guess is a stray seed from a Dana and Lady Darlene cross two or three years ago because I discarded Dana awhile ago.   Not very attractive in my opinion but my first volunteer growing dahlias for seven years.

It looks like a frizzle chicken

The seed must have dropped when I cleaned the tubers on the patio.  And then it just hung out for a couple of years waiting for inspiration.

This is Dana, the only Cactus style I've ever grown.

But the broken color reminds me much more of Lady Darlene.

Right now Bumble Rumble is the variety doing the most in the singles bed.

My strawberries rooted in well and today I snipped all of the runners.

Hello there big Toad!  He was bigger than my fist.

Here is Foxtrot Pennisetum showing why that name was chosen

And with that, I am pretty much done with fall garden chores.  I have a bag of daffodils to plant, Sweet Potatoes to harvest, and the Dahlia tubers to put away.  Other than that, we can just relax and enjoy the beautiful fall weather until we have to start blowing leaves.

Strawberries

Today I transplanted my baby strawberry plants.  We have four days of cool, rainy weather in the forecast.  It has been two weeks since we've had any rain.  They were rooting in very well and ready to move.

I used earth staples to pin the runner babies to a good spot.  They should be able to find the soil with their roots just fine.

When I took a break, I went to the firepit and swept one of the chairs clear of dry leaves and found this little tree frog.  I don't very often encounter spring peepers even though I know they must be out there somewhere..