Summer, it’s officially over! From commentor Lapassionara:
If you need garden photos, I snapped some of the fall color in my garden. The top photo is a close up of my Mexican Sunflower. It is starting to go to seed, but it has been a wonderful butterfly magnet this summer.
Some sassafras leaves…
Some oak leaf hydrangea leaves…
And some Virginia sweetspire bushes, all getting their fall color.
The final photo is of my small sunflowers, which really did well this year.
I gave up trying to grow vegetables years ago, and I am envious of all the wonderful harvest photos from other jackals.
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What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
AlaskaReader
Where I’m at in Alaska we’ve had a few days of frost in the mornings and several trees in my yard and surrounding forests have few leaves left. That said, we sure can bear witness to global warming up here, our winters used to be dry and subfreezing all winter, lately we have weird freeze and thaw, refreeze and rethaw cycles making winter a wet icy nightmare. We will have snow that melts to puddles and then freezes solid making any low areas an ice rink. The ground will then freeze to a depth of a couple feet or more, then the next thaw will happen and we will get rain that just sits on top of the ground until it freezes into vast sheets of ice.
Whole yards and city parking lots become slip and fall obstacle courses for walkers, while roads are a real carnival ride for slip sliding in cars and trucks.
Most gardeners who garden without greenhouses or high tunnels have put their gardens to bed for the winter. It’s time now to get the lights out and grow some greens indoors until spring returns.
JPL
@AlaskaReader: What will it take for republican politicians to wake up and see what is happening? I assume someone with more money than oil companies.
Oak Leaf Hydrangeas are such beautiful plants.
satby
Beautiful fall colors Lapassionara! My favorite season, since you can usually enjoy some lovely days with flowers still blooming after hiding indoors from the heat and humidity of summer.
My garden was a bust this year, as I previously mentioned. Near drought conditions not really alleviated by spot watering meant my plants just held on. Most of the tomatoes I bought were cherry or grape tomatoes, tasty but lousy for sandwiches, and the larger varieties struggled to produce much during the worst of the heat. Now in the cooler weather and after some good rains two weeks ago I finally have a few sunflowers, roses resumed blooming, and my rudbeckias are sending out some new blooms. So, a last gasp before fall is in full swing. Colors are just really getting started here.
Mary G
Love the baby sunflowers. Do you know the variety?
Geminid
The tithonia looks great! I also had luck with tithonia this year. Autumn is the time for cover crops, and this week I went by a local ag co-op and scored a 3 lb. bag of crimson clover seed. Crimson clover is an annual. Sown in the fall, it puts out a very pretty flower by February, besides adding nitrogen to the soil. I sometimes see crimson clover sold as a wildflower, in small but beautifully illustrated packets. I paid $12 for 3lbs. But I figure that if repackaged with some nice simple artwork and inspiring copy, a 3lb bag of seed could have a street value of over $400.
Lapassionara
@satby: About tomatoes, I learned when I lived in Tucson that tomatoes do not do well in heat. Eggplants, on the other hand, thrived. But I really wanted homegrown tomatoes, so I kept trying.
We need rain here, but the lower temperatures are welcomed.
Good morning, everyone.
Lapassionara
@Mary G: I do not know, but they are supposed to “bush out,” and stay about 2 to 3 feet tall.
NotMax
Why not a little music as well?
Baud
@Lapassionara: Very pretty garden.
Lapassionara
@Baud: thank you.
satby
I guess the feral / outdoor (not sure which) cat I’ve been feeding at the abandoned house across the street wants me to stick to a schedule. Today he came trotting down the street to the retaining wall on the front yard at the house, jumped up and laid down, and gave me a fixed stare as I was drinking my coffee on my porch. So, knowing my duty, I put my coffee down and went to get his food and water. He watched me cross the street, rinse out the water bowl, and put down his fresh water and food from the wall, and waited until I was back across the street before majestically climbing up the stairs of the porch to have his breakfast. Gorgeous orange cat.
R-Jud
I’m just beginning to work on the garden at the house I’m renting. I moved here in July and spent the first months getting the indoors sorted out. It’s late in the year to plant much, but I put some cyclamen plants in for colour now, plus iris, crocuses, hyacinths and tulips for successive waves of colour in the spring and summer.
If this were my house, I’d move the very awkwardly placed wisteria bush. Monty likes it, though.
raven
NIce!
Steverino
Need rain so badly near Boston.
Immanentize
@Steverino: you can say that again. I’m getting sick of the guys on the radio saying, “it’s going to be a beautiful day today!” While everything is burned up and my water bill is rising. Rain!!
debbie
@satby:
Someone’s got you wrapped around their paw!
Lovely colors, too.
debbie
@R-Jud:
Is that a tree the wisteria’s overtaking?
OzarkHillbilly
My veggie garden this year was…. Meh.
Good for pickling: Sauer Kraut, cucumber pickles, dilly beans.
Not so good for fresh veggies. Tomatoes were productively OK, but taste was… well… taste was…. What was the question again? They were so bland it felt like I was eating the cartons that walmart tomatoes are shipped in. I think it was just waaaay too much rain. I’ve got good drainage and soil porosity but when it rains an inch or more almost every damned day it just doesn’t matter.
I got some sweet peppers out of the store bought plants I was forced to use but in both flavor and production they just don’t match up to the Italian sweets I grow from seed. The store bought jalapenos and poblanos did well at least but I never did get any peppers out of the Nu Mex plants. My store bought eggplants did OK, tonight will probably see us eat the last of them for the year.
Beans were more and less good. Plenty of emerites and french gold filets for fresh eating and most of my dried beans were plenty productive: Cherokee Trail of Tears, Tiger’s Eye, Hidatsa Reds, and Good Mother Stollards are all filling the bean jars, while the new to me Xmas Limas have been a disappointment, and the Haricot Tarbais and Snowcap beans were complete failures. Those last 2 were real good producers last year but I’m pretty sure the blame lies with me: I suspect they got soaked for too long. Lesson learned.
The one inarguable success has been the return of summer squash to my garden. I planted them on July 7th and have seen not a single squash bug. I’ve been eating plenty and today I am going to shred and freeze a bunch more for winter baking. Next year I’ll do some of the smaller winter squash too and see how much I can get out of them in the shortened growing season.
So it went.
ETA thanx for sharing some nice pics Lapassionara
Immanentize
@Lapassionara: it all looks so nice! No sasafrass here near Boston, but I sure am going to add some oak leaf hydrangea to the border next year. Thank you!
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
When you shred and freeze zucchini, what do you do about all of the water in the zucchini?
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: Woodchucks (and possum?) Ate my spring leafy veg’s and all but one of my tomatillo plants (still putting out fruit, but no harvest yet). They also oddly munched on the leaves of the hot peppers really only allowing the serranos to get through and produce. Tomatoes were great — especially the Rutgers. The yellow pear did not get wilty until late August so I got a lot from there. Sungold and Campari are still producing and the Rutgers and Celebrity still have nice big ones ripening. I already pressed a bunch to freeze for sauce later. Good tomato year for me. ??
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: This is the first time the squash bugs have allowed me the opportunity to freeze it and I am unsure how best to deal with the issue. I’ll probably squeeze it out of at least half of the squash, more if my hands are up to the task and maybe just drain the other half and see if there is any difference between the two. I’m going to freeze them in 1 cup sized balls and then saverseal them for the long term storage.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Thanks. I think I’ll get a few at the farmer’s market and give it a shot.
OzarkHillbilly
Huh, Every year I have to watch out for depredations of my sweet pepper plants but they never bother my hot peppers. Our rabbit population crashed last year and they have yet to rebound to the point of being problematic. Same for the raccoons. After repeated failures at live trapping my fat bottomed wood chuck, I finally took care of her. They can play hell with building foundations and I’ve got one hell of a hole to fill.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ve been told gumballs do the trick. Haven’t had the heart yet. This is year two.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: I should add that the Romanesco don’t have near as much water in them as other types.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: by the way, missing rabbits and racoons says ‘coyotes’ to me.
Geminid
@Immanentize: I think Wiley Coyote gave up on chasing Roadrunner, and said to his grandchildren, “Go East, young pups!” Coyotes are all over Virginia, although they are not seen much.
satby
@Immanentize: I was told Doublemint gum. Mine are probably moles, and I’m going to use castor oil repellent on the lawn and garden first. I had decent luck with it in Michigan, it makes the grubs they like to eat taste bad. Need to combine it with a good grub killer too because I want them both gone.
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: Studies have shown that the populations track really closely, that soon after a crash in prey numbers comes a crash in predator numbers. For every rabbit a coyote eats, they can birth 3 more. As to what exactly causes the crash of prey the short story is over loading the environment.
I saw a fox the other day and they don’t get along well with coyotes so there aren’t very many in this neighborhood right now.
Jeffery
I can already tell the fall color in Philly will be a bust again this year.
As a kid in the 50’s the color was reliable. One house near where I lived sat on a corner and had two sugar maples in front of the house facing one street and four sugar maples on the side that faced the other street. I would make a point of going to see the brilliant orange/yellow/red of those trees.
Now all the color is muted if the leaves bother to change color. A lot of leaves die, turn brown then fall off.
bjacques
@OzarkHillbilly: I learned about exactly that in Differential Equations class back in the day, and the model was for bunnies and coyotes. It’s also why vampires shouldn’t be so free in offering the Dark Gift.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone???
LivingInExile
Still picking tomatoes, pole beans, and strawberries. They are slowing down though. Bought a rear tined tiller at a garage sa!e for 55 dollars. The tiller is old with newer motor. I had to buy a few parts, but it’s up and runing for less than 100 dollars.
rikyrah
Beautiful pictures??
SiubhanDuinne
The pictures are lovely, Lapassionara. Autumn is a season of tugging emotions — everything is beautiful and brilliant, yet you know in your bones that the coming months may bring darkness, destitution, and death. It’s my favourite season, and my most hated and feared season, simultaneously.
On another (off-) topic: I never paid much attention to Dr. Jill Biden when she was Second Lady, apart from noting approvingly that she signed on to many of Michelle Obama’s initiatives. But the more I see of her in 2020, the more I like and admire her. She’s on Jake Tapper’s program, and she is delightful and passionate. I think she’ll be a great FLOTUS!
Immanentize
@SiubhanDuinne: perhaps, but what is her position on Oak Leaf hydrangea?
O. Felix Culpa
@OzarkHillbilly: We have a lot fewer rabbits this year. The coyotes are plentiful and serenade us both morning and evening.
OzarkHillbilly
@O. Felix Culpa: Something else is filling the gap at the moment. I can still here them in the distance here.
SiubhanDuinne
@Immanentize:
Jake didn’t ask. And he calls himself a journalist! Sheeeesh…
Steeplejack
Catching a rerun of Elementary that always makes me laugh. Phil Simms has a brief cameo as “arguably the world’s greatest knife thrower,” who wasted his talent in the NFL (according to Sherlock). Simms is deadpan and very funny.
Mike in DC
Beautiful garden. For Adam Silverman, can we get a read on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia later today? Thanks in advance.
Quinerly
Beautiful!!!
MomSense
@satby:
That cat is royalty – or would be in a more compassionate world.
O. Felix Culpa
@OzarkHillbilly: I wish the coyotes would take care of the ground squirrels, which have been raiding my tomatoes. I found one half-eaten beautiful Roma under my truck. Grrr. I’m now harvesting as soon as the tomatoes get blush.
Immanentize
@O. Felix Culpa: I have a nice cedar fence around my back yard which comes up near my back door which is glass. My squirrels take a ripening tomato to that spot on the fence. Eat maybe a third, then leave the rest for me to spot in the morning from my kitchen — before I even get a cup of coffee. Bastards!
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: I had a possum for awhile. Not by choice, but in the backyard. He would s-l-o-w-l-y amber right past the sliding glass door, even with the kitties sitting right there, and me standing right there.
And would not only amber by, but he would turn and look at you as he ambled, essentially giving us the finger and he ever so slowly walked by.
MomSense
Lapassionara, your garden is beautiful.
I’m waiting for my montauk daisy to offer its end of season showing.
Geminid
O. Felix Culpa
@Immanentize: I think they do it to taunt us. Bastards!
Miss Bianca
@satby:
Ha ha, for some reason that image just made my morning.
Miss Bianca
@Steeplejack: I love that show. Binge-watching Season 4 now. The procedural part of it is pretty much always a “meh” as far as I’m concerned, it’s the character work and Jonny Lee Miller’s Holmesian snark that slays me. Have a bit of a crush on JLM at the moment. And Lucy Liu. And I’ve always had a thing for Aidan Quinn, so…I’m helpless, helpless, helpless, helpless…
oldgold
I recommend following Daniel Dale on Twitter.
Reading Dale’s tweet this morning, I was somewhere between laughing and crying.
Daniel Dale:
“After accusing Biden of being on drugs and Bloomberg of bribery, calling for the impeachment of a senator, repeating his usual vague insinuations about ballots and his usual vague promise of an Obamacare replacement, Trump has arrived at his golf club.“
tisalaska
@JPL: Big oil is on the ballot here in November and for the umpteenth time Alaskans will be asked to pull their head out of the tundra and insist the fossil fuel giants who now supply jobs mostly for people who live outside of the state pay their fair share. Even with the state finances on the brink of bankruptcy it probably won’t pass. Politics in Alaska never fails to disappoint.
J R in WV
@satby:
In our experience, orange cats have a great personality, friendly, and affectionate… eta: independent, though. Harvey was a 9-pound alley cat in town, loved having a home.
John Revolta
Mexican sunflowers are the best. We’ve got gobs of ’em out back. They get like 7 feet tall and the Monarchs and bumblebees love ’em. Even the hummingbirds stop by sometimes on their way to the honeysuckle.