autumn/fall gardening and how to make leaf mould

[forestdale]

It's a great time of year in the garden now.  Leaves are beginning to change to orange and red, and berries and rosehips are full and bright.  There's a nip in the air and the colder days make you think about getting ready for winter.

No matter what zone you live in, it's a good idea to tidy up your garden now. Clip off dead flower heads but leave the seed heads on for birds, or scatter the seeds on the ground so they find them.   Bring all your tender pot plants to shelter before the risk of frost damage.  Check the plants for insects before you leave them to rest until spring.  If you live in an area that gets frost or snow, don't forget to bring in your terracotta pots as well.

Now is the time to plant your spring bulbs and if you're thinking of planting a deciduous tree or shrub, now is the time for that too.

Rake up all your autumn leaves and compost them.  Leaf mould is a wonderful soil conditioner that will add to the fertility of your soil.  To make leaf mould simply mow all the leaves on your lawn and add the content of the mower's catcher basket to a big plactic bag.  If your leaves are in other places, rake them up and add some lawn clippings to them.  The mown leaves with decompose faster but they will all make great leaf mould.  Tie a knot in the bags when they're full and leave them in an area where they'll be undisturbed for at least a year.  When it's ready to use it's got a lovely earthy smell and it's a dark rich colour.  You can use it as a mulch or dig it into your soil.

[Kimberlina]

Rhonda, I was just thinking it must be ime for a fall garden thread.

I am starting to save seeds. I got Kentucky Wonder pole bean seds dried already, and more pods still on the plants waiting to get a little bigger. I will be trying to save tomato and pepper seeds, too. Not sure what else I will be saving.

We have los of leaves piled up decomposing, too. It kills me when I see all those bags of yard debris waiting to be taken to the landfill. I wish I were bold enough to go get them and compost them. Oh well, at least they are generally in decomposable paper bags.

[forestdale]

Kimberly, saving seeds is one of the best things to do as a gardener. I wrote a bit about it in some other threads. When you save your own seeds year after year, you actually develop a seed that's better suited to the conditions in your area.

I knew you'd be a seed saver.

[Valerie in WA]

I'm actually keeping a winter garden this year! This is a first for me and I'm excited to venture into new territory. I'm really starting to feel accomplished as a gardener.

I have planted onions & garlic to winter over.

I also have carrots in a cold frame. These are 'regular' carrots. I also have some seed for 'wintering' carrots, but they said to plant in mid-July & I did not have space at that time.

And I have a salad garden in a cold frame: crisp-head lettuce for dh, spinach for me, two short (2ft) rows of green onion, and a few 'mixed' lettuce (usually green leaf, red leaf or romaine).

My brussels sprouts are still going. I think they tolerate frost.

And my tomato plant is still ripening; although as of yesterday it is covered with plastic sheeting. It got down to 34F last night (32 is freezing).

My pumpkins were from saved seed - the first time I've done that. Rhonda, I'll have to run a search for your information on that. I also saved pole bean seeds this year, but other than drying them before I store them, I really have no idea what I'm doing!!

I'm branching into flower gardening this year as well. Our dear furrbaby, Kitty, died unexpectedly in February. She rests in the front yard and I've been putting bulbs in that area. Currently, I have daffodils & clematis (spring blooming) as well as amaryllis & something else I can't remember (which are late summer blooming). Last week I picked up some hyacinth bulbs to plant there for next spring. I'll get those in this week.

Oh, and Kimberly...go read this thread: Dumpster Diving=Skip Raiding ..and then go get yourself some composting material!!!

[forestdale]

Valerie, I hope your winter garden is very successful. Brussel sprouts like a mild freeze, it helps to sweeten them up a bit.

As for the saved seeds, as long as you harvest and store them correctly, so they aren't damaged and don't go mouldy or rot, you treat them like any other seed.

I'm so pleased our FV gardeners are saving seeds. It's the way to tailor-made seeds for your conditions, it's very frugal and it keeps our money out of the hands of the big seeds companies who often hybridize seeds to maintain their profits - at the expense of losing many non-profitable seeds.

Here is the seed saving thread:
Seed saving, first grow the plant.

When my dog Murphy died a few years ago, we planted a Boronia Rose for her. I've also planted Magnolias for my mother who died 1993. I talk to mum and Murphy when I'm tending their plants. Yeah, I know, DH says I'm nuts.

If you need more infomation, or info on a specific vegetable, just knock.

[jlxian]

I've been slowly tidying up in the garden by pulling up spent plants. But I've still got a few hanger-on melons ripening and the tomatoes are going strong still. Our sweet potato plants probably need to be dug and the potatoes harvested and stored --- maybe this weekend, we'll see.

I want to try to keep at least one of the tomato plants for as long as I can and I'm thinking of building some kind of haybale shelter with a tarp cover around it to protect it from close to freezing night time temperatures. We usually get a frost that kills everything by mid or late October and then several weeks of warmish weather again after that. So if I can save one tomato plant through the frost we can probably have tomatoes up to Thanksgiving time.

DH usually rakes the leaves in our yard into bags and then overwinters them to use in the garden in the spring. We don't chop them with the lawnmower first --- I may try to encourage that step this year.

I've saved some melon seed this year, and I need to harvest some of the flower seed (morning glories, zinnias, cosmos, moon vine, etc). I've found that purple coneflower is very agressive and this year rather than leave the seed heads in the flower beds for the birds I'm going to clip them off and take them into another part of the property to dump.

I also have grown some plants from seeds (in pots) that have not flowered this year --- butterfly weed and echinops. I'm wondering if I plant the existing plant in the garden now will it come back next growing season?

[jlxian]

I forgot to add that I have some peas and beets planted for my fall gardening attempts. They are not too far along so I'm not sure if I'll get much out of them, but I thought it was worth a try.