A CHORES LIST FOR THE AUTUMN GARDEN
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.
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.
2. Sow spring-blooming bulbs (such as daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, ranunculus, crocus, and buttercups available in garden centers now).
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.
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.
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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Critter-proofing Your Bulbs
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.
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.
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.
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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Gardening Tasks for Late Autumn
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.
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.
Rhubarb plants can be divided now. Make sure there’s an eye on each new plant and tuck into rich soil and mulch.
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.
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.
Tis the Season to Plant Bulbs for Spring/Summer Bloom
After the recent rainstorm, I walked around my farmette and noticed small slivers of green sprouting up. They seemed to be everywhere.
I could understand the grass coming back, but the sight of summer-blooming lilies shooting through the soil was quite surprising. The sight of them got me to thinking about planting some bulbs for a springtime bloom.
Over the weekend, I dug a bed for some tulips and planted nearly 100 bulbs–some early and others late-blooming.
I also will plant some sweetly fragrant grape hyacinth. The bees are attracted to the pollen because of the scent. Honeybees especially love foraging for pollen on violet-hued tulips.
Honeybees need to find pollen all through the year, so planting bulbs that bloom before the spring wildflowers makes sense for those of us who care about the bees.
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