home + garden

The eggplants have finally arrived.  

This growing season was weird.  We  had a super cold, wet spring; temps in August so high plants stopped production; and nothing for eggplants until the end of September.  Because I try to cram all the vegetable production I can into my little backyard garden space, I know that the eggplants would be crowded by peppers and spinach but I didn't anticipate such low production!

I clipped back the gorgeous purple eggplant flowers at the end of August hoping that would push out at least one fruit.  And that's all I got -- one.  And... it's only about 3" long.  We aren't supposed to have frost for a while, so I'll let it grow; but my dreams of eggplant parmesan and lasagne are dashed.

As with any garden, there is always hope.  My Brussels Sprouts are doing great.  I have four plants that I nestled beside my zucchini.  After frost and a freezer full of shredded logs, I pulled the plants. The sprouts took over.  They like the cold and the space.

Every year, like fellow Greengirl Martha, I tell myself to write things down.  What went well, what didn't and where things were located in my garden. I found an online service for garden journals. Maybe I should try that out.

Gardening is like exercising, eating right or changing habits.  You never have the time, but you need to take the time to do it.  I probably won't take the time this year -- I'll be satisfied to walk through the yard and dream of next year's crops. 

How about you?  Take a minute and send us your Highlight and/or Lowlight for this 2011.  Maybe collectively we will create our own journal and be able to check back next year into the archives!

What will you be doing on Saturday? 

I'll be getting rid of the mountains of buckthorn branches now piled in my back yard and driveway. They've been there since last week when I grabbed a chainsaw and attacked them with a vengeance. Sometimes they fought back, poking me with their thorns until I had bloody scratches up and down my arms. It was a grueling battle, but ultimately very satisfying.

And this time, they're not coming back -- not if I can help it. This time I went medieval, dousing the freshly cut stumps with Roundup. I hate using chemicals in my landscape but buckthorn is such a relentless bully that I made an exception.

I've been pulling out little buckthorns and cutting down big buckthorns for as long as I've been living in my current house (in northern Eden Prairie). But the big ones always come roaring back, bigger and badder than ever.

What's the urgency with getting rid of buckthorn? In natural areas, the invasive shrub is so fast-growing and aggressive that it chokes out native plants that support songbirds and other wildlife. In home landscapes, it does the same thing, plus it's scraggly and ugly, quickly shooting to twice the size of everything around it.

Fall is an ideal time to battle this monster, when its leaves are still green, making it easy to identify. If you don't have time to tackle all your buckthorn, concentrate on the female plants, the ones with the blackish-purple berries. They're the ones that will produce armies of new buckthorn for you to battle. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has some good information about buckthorn eradication on its website: http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/terrestrialplants/woody/buckthorn/control.html

As for getting rid of buckthorn branches, most waste haulers will pick them up as yard waste if they're cut and bundled. I've got so many that I'd be sawing and bundling until Christmas. Instead, I'm going to haul it to the Mulch Store (www.mulchstoremn.com), which has four Minnesota Department of Agriculture-certified sites for disposal of tree branches and other yard waste. 

Is your yard plagued with buckthorn? Or  is something else on your "most hated" list?

There's always unfinished business down the garden path. Or on it, in my case.

Some people craft formal resolutions Jan. 1. For me, resolutions are more likely to be muttered beneath my breath in fall, as I wrap up another year's attempt at gardening and mentally move into the "next year" mode. Next year, I will do a better job of trimming and staking my tomatoes. .... Next year, I will stay ahead of the weeds. .... Next year, I will put in the watering system before it's 95 degrees.

That's probably one of the appeals of gardening: There's always the promise of another year to take the pressure off  to achieve perfection in a compact five-month frenzy. To offset the list of should-haves, I try to look around and give myself credit for what accomplishments I managed: getting a rain barrel in place, replacing the scraggly evergreens with blueberry bushes, finally rearranging some perennials to more suitable spots.

But then I'm back to the next years: I will pick more Swiss chard throughout the year so I'm not picking it all under threat of freeze. I will do a better job of recording what I put where so I know what's what in spring. I'll start my seedlings earlier, I'll dutifully deadhead, and finally tackle that corner of dueling invasive spreaders. No really. Maybe.

This year's biggest challenge is on pace to still be next year's: Finish the back-yard pathways around the raised beds. After a flourishing start, the project hit a snag and is now stalled. Since one of its side effects is an enormous dirt pile where my tomato bed usually is, I've got some incentive to make inroads before next planting season.

And when that's finished, who knows, maybe in some year I'll learn not to overcrowd and will vanquish harebells. Anything's possible, next year.

What's on your next year's wish list? And what accomplishments did you get to cross off your garden bucket list?

As the hostas get ragged and the tomatoes look wan, there are a few things I really cannot leave to the cold.
The amaryllis have to be hustled inside from their spot on the chilly deck, and the goldfish must be rescued from a too-shallow pond that will freeze solid this winter. A new and bigger aquarium might be in the offing — it looks like the fish had babies this summer.

 

My real challenge — the plant I really cannot let freeze — is the bird of paradise. Each spring I heave the plant and its pot up the basement stairs one at a time out into the back yard, where it spends the summer safely against a protective wall. In the fall the process is reversed, and I drag and bump the pot and the sprawling plant down the stairs as its leaves scratch against the stairwell and slap me in the face.
I started the bird of paradise from seeds my parents bought in Hawaii when I was 16. Each glossy brown seed had an amazing little beard of fluorescent orange, like something from another planet. Somehow I got one of them to sprout in a pot in my bedroom window.
I carried that little plant to college and crammed an increasingly large plant into cars when I moved to southern Minnesota, North Dakota, Connecticut and back to Minneapolis. After almost 40 years and several divisions that required use of an ax, the plant is five feet high and nearly that wide. It seems to get heavier each year. But it won’t bloom if it doesn’t get its season in the sun.
This spring I roped the leaves together and tied the pot to a dolly to drag it up the basement stairs. Now I have to tie the leaves together again and bump the pot down the stairs. The plant spends the winter next to the goldfish under a shop light, where it usually throws up its amazing blooms in January or February.
Most weeks, I only see the flowers when I go to the basement to do laundry.  Still I cannot let the plant go. That bird of paradise is an old friend, and I will drag it in and out of the basement as long as I can.
Do you have a plant you refuse to give up to the cold?
 

Our neighbors put down new sod right before the heat wave hit.  They've been very good at watering, and their lawn looks super.  Our 20-year-old lawn pales in comparison.  This made me pick up the UofM recommendations on Fall Lawn Care.  In order to have a great looking lawn in Spring here's what they recommend:

1.  Overseeding and sodding.  Oops should have done that in mid August

2.  Fertilizing.  Oops again, last fertilizer should have gone down Labor Day weekend.

3. Watering.  Ah ha, I can still do that.  One inch per week is what is recommended,

but watch the weather.  The ground should feel moist but not wet.  (the old stick your finger in the ground trick!)

4. Mowing height.  Another one I'm not too late to do.  Lower from 3" (Summer height) gradually down to 2".  This helps reduce snow mold.  The lawn's not ready to mow yet, so I can put that off.

5. Lawn aerification & thatch control.  Wow, sounds like work.  Rending a core aerifier.  We'll see if one is available this weekend.  We did it two years ago, is it that important?

6. Broadleaf weed control.  Now's the time to get the dandelions and creeping Charlie!  They may not look dead in the Fall, but the poison will flow quickly througout the plant and there will be less chance of the pesky buggers in the Spring. 

Blue Hydrangea

For right now, I think I'll enjoy the Fall hues of my Hydrangeas. 

White hydrangea

 

Pink Hydrangea

What are you doing in your garden right now?  I think that I'll grab another cup of coffee and wait for the weekend!