Henny Penny Farmette

Each year on the first day of autumn here on the Henny Penny Farmette, I take stock of my fruit trees and vegetable and flower gardens.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac points to mid-October 2019 for early rain in Northern California, so there’s much for me to do over the next two or three weeks.

Nothing says “autumn” like ripe pomegranates

My chores list includes the following items. They’re roughly the same from year to year.

1. Gather seeds from self-seeding or heirloom, open-pollinated plants (flowers and vegetables) for next year’s garden. Dry seeds and store them for planting next spring.

Gather seeds from plants such as coreopsis, cosmos, and marigolds for drying for next year’s garden

2. Sow spring-blooming bulbs (such as daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, ranunculus, crocus, and buttercups available in garden centers now).

Siberian scilla adds a lot of color for a small grouping of bulbs

3. Turn soil and prepare beds for the cool-season vegetable garden (broccoli, cabbage, beets, and parsnips).

4. Inspect and divide perennials.

5. Harvest olives and preserve them.

Bartlett late summer pears

6. Pick late summer pears and ripe pomegranates. The leathery covering of pomegranates already may be splitting open and showing ruby red seeds. The juice of the seeds makes a wonderful jelly.

7. Check persimmons for ripeness. Pick if they’re ready. They might need another month.

Hachiya persimmons are delicious when they ripen to softness

8. Harvest and store pumpkins and butternut squash. Peel, remove seeds, and cut the flesh into squares for freezing.

9. Compost old garden vines and vegetable plants that are done bearing for the season. Check tomato plants infected with bacterial or fungal diseases and do NOT add any of these to the compost pile.

10. Begin the process of cleaning and storing gardening items not required over the winter.

11. Sow spring-blooming wildflowers in prepared beds.

12. Schedule time to prune back crop-bearing fruit trees (like apricot, peach, and plum).

I actually look forward to those chores. They’re part of the natural rhythm of farmette life. With a list and plan to get everything done, I won’t be caught by surprise when the weather turns cold, dark, and rainy.

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There’s nothing to rejuvenate a weary soul like time spent in a garden. Death of one season’s plants yields to new shoots the next. Because I appreciate the ever-evolving nature of a garden, I choose plants, bulbs, bushes, and trees that offer visual interest in each season. Thoughtful planting generates an ever-evolving landscape of color, texture, and visual interest.

Pumpkins show orange and yellow, signalling the arrival of the cool season

The autumn garden has almost completely morphed into a winter landscape now. Pumpkin and tomato vines have been pulled out and perennials in the bee garden  have gone to seed or been cut back. Winter offers little color in the garden except for the cape honeysuckle, white geranium, lavender florets, and early flowering bulbs.

Deciduous trees have mostly lost their leaves, however, the eucalyptus and the pepper trees here on the farmette remain leafy and green. The rains have come and a dusting of snow on nearby mountain peaks is in the forecast ahead. Foliage and blooms are mostly gone. It’s that time of year to cover frost-sensitive plants.

The pomegranates that were ablaze in golden color a few weeks ago have dropped all leaves. What remains is the lovely arching pattern of branches since I’ve trained them from bushes into trees.

Pomegranate leaves  turn gold in the fall

The showy pink flowers over summer of the crape myrtle are a memory. Gone now, too, are the red-gold leaves of fall. What remains is an interesting gray-green bark.

Autumn leaves of the crepe myrtle create a spectacle against the blooming Cecile Brunner rose

The seeds from the giant yellow-orange coreopsis that stood eight feet tall and towered over zinnias, Borage, and rows of lavender have long ago been harvested. Also, my patch of lavender is flourishing. The plants have pushed out long stalks of purple florets.

Dark green shoots of bulbs are pushing up out of the earth where I interplanted them with chrysanthemums. I cut back the mums and they will reappear in the spring to flower again. This is the time of year that shoots of bulbs and rhizomes are birthing daffodils, anemones, tulips, hyacinths, and, to come later, lilies and irises of many colors.

Siberian scilla adds a lot of color for a small grouping of bulbs

In raised beds, shoots of fall-planted onions and garlic are now pushing up. The bees are drawn to the sweet scent of narcissus bulbs that have naturalized after being planted years ago. The Meyer lemon now has lots of yellow thin-skinned fruit and also a few early blooms.

On the dark days and nights of winter, white blooming plants stand in stark contrast to gray wooden fences and leafless trees.  Honor roses, Iceberg roses, and climbing Sally Holmes roses have showy white blooms and may even have some this time of year unless they’ve been cut back. Winter-blooming gardenias and white geraniums have a quiet impact when grouped together in hedges, beds, or containers.

The “Honor” rose is an elegant white blooming rose that is spectacular under moonlight

With so many bulbs and plants available this time of year, putting interest into your winter garden is easy and contributes to an ever-evolving landscape.

Consider plants with gray-green or otherwise pretty foliage and colorful berries. Also plant trees with interesting bark colors, textures, patterns, or scaffolding shapes. When you think of plants for each season of the year, you’ll have a garden to nurture you throughout the year.

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I planted bagfuls of tulips, daffodils, crocus, and grape hyacinths over the last two years in the autumn. The daffodils are blooming now and the other bulbs in my garden have plenty of foliage.

Masses of blooming daffodils provide a focus and cheery greeting in a bleak winter garden

Because voles, moles, gophers, squirrels, raccoons, and other critters will dig and eat the bulbs and deer will devour the blooms at first blush of color, a savvy gardener must figure out how to protect these beautiful flowers.

The bees are drawn to the sweet scent of narcissus that have now naturalized in my Henny Penny Farmette gardens

Throughout the Midwest of my youth, hillsides, front yards, and cemeteries were always places where daffodils grew in perfusion. Along with the arrival of robins and other songbirds, these flowering bulbs herald the coming light and warmth of spring. I’ve lost plenty of these plantings myself so have some tips to help you prevent such a loss.

These fragrant lilies return every year and bloom mid-summer

Seven ways to protect flowering bulbs.

1. Grow them behind a double fence barrier. Deer can jump high and might go over one fence, but not a second one built near the first.

2.  Use mesh to deter moles, voles, gophers, groundhogs, and other digging critters.

3. Erect fences that are at least three feet tall and with at least a foot buried beneath the earth.

4. Plant in raised beds covered with mesh. The bulbs will be protected while the foliage and blooms poke through toward the light.

5. Clean up the area in the fall after planting the bulbs. That way, critters won’t be attracted to your bulb beds.

6. Consider using deer-repellent sprays on tulips and growing deer-resistant bulbs.

7. Use ammonia-soaked rags in coffee cans or old planting buckets around the garden to repel pests with a keen sense of smell such as rabbits and opossums.

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Falling leaves, shorter days, and colder weather signal that winter is around the corner. With roughly a month left before winter officially begins, there are plenty of tasks for the home gardener. Don’t put away your boots, buckets, gloves, trowel, and spade just yet.

After the grape harvest, the leaves change from green to gold or brown and become dry

If you grow grapes and raspberries or blackberries, now would be the time to prune those back before mulching with compost, leaves, or sawdust. Composting suppresses weed growth.

Pick and pumpkins, apples, and winter squash. Store them in a dry area at temperature of about 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

This young rhubarb flourishes in rich soil and some protection from intense, direct sun

Rhubarb plants can be divided now. Make sure there’s an eye on each new plant and tuck into rich soil and mulch.

This candy-stripe rose requires a good pruning in the fall to generate a large bush with beautiful blooms in the spring

Remove leaves and prune back roses to 12 to 18 inches. Add some bone meal to the base of the bush and work into the soil.

Plant bulbs that will flower in the spring such as daffodils, tulips, hyacinth, crocus, and scillas.

Prepare a bed for onion seedlings or sets and plant them now for spring harvesting.

Plant red, yellow, or white onions in the fall for spring harvesting

Fill bird feeders, hang a warming light in your hen house for the freezing nights ahead, and put blankets around your bee hives.

Transfer potted mums into garden soil. Most are perennials and will return year after year.

Plant kale, ornamental cabbage, and winter-hardy plants such as pansies in the garden or window boxes for winter color.

Move cold-sensitive houseplants indoors.

Narcissus jonquilla are picture-pretty and smell divine

If spring hasn’t arrived in your corner of the world, be of good cheer. You can effectively bring spring indoors by forcing bulbs to open or branches of spring-flowering trees to bloom in your home.

Trees that bloom in the spring need to have sufficient chilling hours before they break their dormancy, so it’s advisable to try forcing blooms during the months of January and February rather than in December.

Choose half-inch branches  of golden forsythia, pussy willow, coral quince, or almost any fruit tree. Using sharp pruning shears or a knife, cut diagonally above a bud so that you have two- or three-feet long branches to force into bloom.

After bringing the branches indoors, you’ll want to cut slits into the bottom of the branches to ensure water is more easily absorbed. Put the branches in a container of water. Every other day, trim the stems and change the water. Bring in new branches every few days to ensure continuous blooms.

Nothing beats the paper-white narcissus or buttery yellow daffodil for brightening a kitchen on a dreary winter’s day. Choose healthy a bulb (or bulbs) free of bruising, cuts, of infection. In a bowl, glass, or saucer, place glass marbles or pebbles. Add water.

Position the bulb or bulbs securely so that the roots can grow down into the water, but the bulb remains out of the water sitting on top of the marbles or pebbles. Ensure that the water level beneath the bulb remains constant and add more water as necessary.

Paper-white narcissus, purple hyacinth, and certain daffodils add not only spring color to an indoor environment but also a lovely sweet scent wherever they are placed.