I am puttering along doing seasonal things. It is difficult to realize that we are only two weeks away from our average first frost date. It feels like June! The plants don't look like June though. They are tired out. I took cuttings from my Coleus plants to over winter indoors. I am also experimenting with Marigold cuttings. You can root them in water, but I mix up worm castings and vermiculite and use a rooting hormone powder. I put the cells in a solid tray so I can bottom water them I had great luck with these last year. I have turned four Coleus plants into dozens.
Let's take a moment before I pull this Thai Basil plant out to admire its amazing growth habit. This is Thai Towers. Last year I grew Emerald Towers. These two varieties are specifically bred to be slow to bolt. Both varieties made it through the entire gardening season with no flowers. Of course when Basil plants flower they begin to taste bitter, and they stop putting out fresh leaves. This plant is 43 inches tall.
We have started our biggest fall landscaping chore - cutting down ornamental grasses. We whittle them down to size by looping a rope around them and cutting them off with a Stihl gas powered scythe much like a hedge trimmer. It makes short work of them. I have already done all of the Daylilies and Hosta and have started on other plants like Echinacea. I like to take my time dividing and transplanting and removing things over several weeks, but grasses are a team effort. Now I have to go through the dry creek bed, cleaning up stray blades of grass and pulling all of the weeds that the grasses have been hiding.
The grasses are showing their fall colors. Below is Cheyenne Sky Panicum.
Can you guess how delicious this Seascape strawberry was?
Seascape is an everbearing variety that I just planted from bare root plants this past spring. They are getting well established now and have recently begun blooming again.
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