With a little warm Garlic butter and a week or three earlier, this would have been a delight. We all sort of know that the Artichoke we eat is actually a flower bud but we don’t actually think of it that way. If you procrastinate eating one of them and leave them on the plant this gorgeous flower opens and makes us realize that the wonderful foliage of Artichokes also produces an equally wonderful flower. Will my next Dorito covered in Artichoke dip taste as good knowing what a beauty I was eating?
As the cool weather starts to arrive, albeit a bit later than usual, we start to think about our feathered friends and their winter survival. Found the bird feeder in the back of the garage and mounted it on its pole outside the solarium. It was purchased as a squirrel proof feeder and it has mostly lived up to its billing. This cute rodent apparently likes to prove that he’s not a squirrel and can help himself at that feeder. Looking closely you can observe that he has only one of his four feet on the weighted bar and has figured out how to get the other three on the serving platter. I have to admire his agility while lamenting the amount of bird seed he can pack into those cheek pouches. I’m certain that this was not an accident and he will be back to repeat the feat.
It’s two days until November and my Banana and its Begonia neighbour are still with us. The Banana is looking a little the worse from the few cool nights but the Begonia still thinks its mid summer. Mind you it was 20C here today and we were gardening in our short sleeved shirts. I’m resisting the urge to add the Banana to the compost heap until I can say that it grew in my garden until November. Of course, we are also still picking fresh Tomatoes and Peppers. We have seen articles that suggest that Bananas are almost a weed in some warmer parts of the world and if you leave even a small part of its rhizome in the soil it will regrow. That leads us to planning to dig up that rhizome from its container and see if we can overwinter it and regrow it in the spring like we would with a Dahlia. Stay tuned.
Sweet Potatoes were my big experiment this year. This picture is my entire harvest from the 5 plants that were spreading rapidly over the garden. The slightly bigger one was quite delicious but I would have to suggest that I might not try again. While I proved that it is technically possible to grow Sweet Potatoes here what I discovered is that they occupy a significant hunk of land. They are a vine that grows rapidly and roots at every node and those roots develop into the tubers that we eat. There are other varieties that might be more suitable to our climate but I just don’t have the ground to spare and obviously they did not have enough time to fully develop their tubers. I admit that I didn’t give them room to run early enough in the season as the regular Potatoes were busy using that space. I suppose I could grow fewer Potatoes and give some of their space to the Sweet Potatoes. I’ll contemplate that
for next spring.
This gorgeous Colocasia was growing directly in a small pond with lots of flowing water. When I try to adjust the basket it is growing in, I find that difficult to do because the mass of roots that have developed outside ot that basket are just filling up that little pond thus making it impossible to move. That’s not really a problem as it is happy there and looking beautiful at the top of the waterfall. I was trying to adjust it as that mass of roots was forcing the water in that pond high enough to flow over its edge and slowly drain the ponds. We solved the problem, more than once, and continue to admire it. It looks a bit rough today but the lack of frost keeps it attractive enough to save it from a trip to the compost heap. I suspect that it has developed a large corm that we will try to rescue and overwinter with the Banana rhizome. One of the many joys of gardening is constantly trying something new and for the frugal among us, the ability to not having to spend
real dollars next spring to duplicate this year’s delights.
The massive Walnut tree that shades our deck and our house all summer is wonderful to have until it tries to reproduce. It has had a significant crop of nuts this year and disposing of them is a bit of work. The squirrels try to utilize as many as they can but that also means lots of holes in the garden and even the containers as they try to fill up their larder for the winter. They invariably don’t find them all and we find them as weeds popping up in the most unlikely places and did I mention that you have to dig them out, just pulling is a waste of energy. They also require us to adjust our gardening attire as a hard hat is always necessary when working anywhere near that tree. A 125 gm walnut falling from the top of a 35m tree can be quite lethal. Walnuts ripen and Tulips get planted at the same time and why can’t the squirrels restrict their diet to the much easier to find walnuts??
This little bed relates back to the previous comment. It has just been planted with 50 new Tulips and I would love to see all 50 of them bloom next spring. The light brown mush that is visible on top of the soil is an organic fertilizer called Actisol which is made from hen manure. It’s aroma, while almost undetectable to us, inhibits the squirrel’s ability to find the Tulip bulbs. I often combine it with a little blood meal in the hole with the bulb where it has a similar effect and both of them are great fertilizers for those Tulips.
Lots of our cool season vegetables are happy growing well into the autumn. Here are Brussels Sprouts, Swiss Chard and the leaves in the foreground are Parsnips. The Sprouts in particular are waiting for that frost which signals their system to start converting the starches they have made all summer, into sugars to help them survive the winter. That makes them a much sweeter and tastier vegetable. The Parsnips can be left in the ground all winter and dug in the spring for an early treat. If you mulch them with a lot of straw or leaves to stop the soil from freezing then you can dig them up in mid winter to add to your fresh vegetable selection. The Swiss Chard develops even bigger leaves at this time of year making it possible to produce the stuffed Swiss Chard rolls that I like to make and freeze for winter consumption. I use a mixture of ground lamb, garlic, peppers and orzo or rice for the stuffing then bake them covered with a tomato sauce.
Hamamelis virginiana, common Witch hazel is a lovely shrub or small tree that blooms at this time of year. The native one has these bright yellow flowers but there are several hybrids of it that will bloom in late February or early March with reddish flowers. This particular one is interesting. It was originally one of the March blooming hybrids that was grafted on the native root stock. After several years it slowly died for unknown reasons and many suckers from the root stock started to shoot up. I removed them all to see what I would get and it has grown into this little yellow flowering tree. Once again gardening leads us down interesting paths and provides us yet another surprise.
The roads are pleasant to drive on this time of year, as I am travelling around sharing my various presentations with hort. societies, garden clubs and corporate presentations for lunch and learns. I would love to come and visit your organization. Check out my web
page at Gardening-enjoyed.com for more details on topics and availability.
If you have any gardening questions just “reply” to this emailed newsletter and I will attempt to answer them and then share them here if they are of wide interest.
Dan Asks?
I usually wait for a frost before I do my Autumn cleanup. With no frost to date and none in the next week is it ok to start cutting back my Black Eye Susan's, Shasta Lilies, Cone Flowers Hosta and other perennials. They have turned brown or yellow.
Ken Answers!I love my Banana plant and Begonia baskets but I'm a "little" tired of watering them every day, because they are so big, and I've started cutting and composting. The Asparagus was the first to go and the others are following quickly. I actually want to see if I can keep a Banana alive in Canada until November:-) A lot of those perennials you
mentioned I don't deal with until spring. Some of them provide seed heads for the birds and others supply winter homes for some of our beneficial insects. That's one of the best rationales I've found for procrastination:-)
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