Autumn progresses.

Tags

aster, waterlily

It’s one of the ironies of gardening in temperate zones (at least, around here) that there’s more to do when the weather is less conducive to it. Spring here is cold and wet: spring cleanup, hardening off, planting out. Autumn here is cold and wet: autumn cleanup, harvesting produce and seeds, winter preparations. On the other hand, summer here is warm and sunny and all there really is to do is watering and occasional pruning. (Pest management and weeding are constant throughout.)

I packed up the water lilies for winter today. The larger of the native fragrant water lilies (Nymphaea odorata) was threatening to split its pot, so I decided to repot it now rather than in spring; it’s one of the hazards of growing rhizomatous plants in containers, and N. odorata is quite the vigourous grower. A few bits of rhizome broke off, so I brought them in and now I have yet another experiment in indoor water gardening. I’m going to pot most of them up and put them in storage, but I’ll drop a few into the aquarium to see what happens over winter.

Other than that, the tomatoes are cleared out, the excess sky-blue asters (Symphyotrichum oolentangiense) are cleared out and such potted plants and bonsai that have gone dormant are coming in.

One next-door neighbour has a large Norway maple (Acer platanoides) that’s just begun to shed its leaves. We try to discourage people from planting those, as they’re very invasive to the local ecologies and they often create problems in gardens. This one, I have to admit, is quite beneficial to me because it shades the western side of my house nicely in summer and provides literally a windfall of leaves in autumn. A lot of homeowners dread autumn leaf-fall, but dead leaves are like gold to gardeners. Usually I just rake them into the beds and let them break down, but this year I’m going to collect as much as I can into a cubic metre bag and let them turn into leafmould over winter. That stuff is better than compost; it’s easier to make but takes longer.

Maple leaves break down relatively quickly; I wouldn’t be able to get away with it with oak leaves, for example, which have high levels of tannin and can take three years to decompose. Conifer needles take even longer. Next to the maple tree is a white birch (Betula papyrifera) that unfortunately probably won’t last much longer. Birch leaves break down quickly too.

Final thought is that it’s the third week of October and while it’s been chilly there hasn’t been a real frost here yet. Enjoy it while it lasts.

The indoor pond.

Tags

bladderwort, duckweed, water hyacinth

…by which I mean, the little hexagonal aquarium I’m using to overwinter some aquatic plants indoors. It’s an experiment in more ways than one, because I’m using an ordinary swing lamp with a 60-watt Phillips Agro-Lite bulb as a plant light – “For The Acceleration Of Indoor Plant Growth”. It honestly seems a little dim for 60 watts, but plants perceive light wavelengths differently, so who knows, it might work. To be honest I’m really not sure what I’m expecting from this light bulb, if anything. The plants in question are tropical water hyacinths (Eichhornia crassipes), and tropical water plants like lots of light.

Along with the water hyacinths are some floating bladdwort (Utricularia gibba) and the ubiquitous duckweed (Lemna sp.). I’m finding this aquarium to be a fascinating experience, because along with these floating plants came all sorts of little beasties clinging to them from the tub ponds. In the tubs they’re simply not apparent, but in an aquarium with light shining through it, it’s a whole new world in there. I used to keep fish a long time ago, but in its own way this is more interesting.

Water hyacinths are extremely good at drawing nutrients from the water column; so much so that aside from their attractive mauve flowers, pond keepers use them to keep the water clean. This means that their dangling roots attract a lot of waterborne detritus; some of this got tranferred with the plants from the tubs to the aquarium, and then knocked off, so there’s a thin, patchy carpet of…muck, I guess, on the bottom. And it’s alive.

I’m not terribly good at identifying the things in the tank, because dammit, Jim, I’m a botanist, not a limnologist. The everpresent Physalid snails are there, of course, along with Daphnia and Cyclops, commonly called water fleas. The muck at the bottom gets collected into little tube structures for Chironomid midge larvae (sometimes called bloodworms) to live in. What really interested me were the three (at least) mayfly larvae (probably Baetidae) and the several Hydra creeping through the muck. I’d mistakenly thought the mayfly nymphs were some weird freshwater shrimp at first. Part of me is sorely tempted to add one little fish, just one, to see how it affects this nascent ecosystem.

Just as a PSA, water hyacinths are extremely fast spreading and extremely invasive in warm areas. They’re not a problem here because they just wouldn’t survive a local winter, but in many areas they are banned. Even if they aren’t, a responsible pond keeper never ever ever disposes of them close to a natural waterway. If you have them, please be responsible.

Regarding the outdoor tub ponds, the water lilies (various Nymphaea spp.) are just about dormant. Soon it will be time to pack them up for winter. The water in the tubs can be saved to top up the aquarium; it probably contains all sorts of interesting things.

Bulbs in and out.

Tags

camassia, garlic, narcissus, tulip

Planted the garlic (Allium sativum) today. This year I actually dug a trench and filled in the bottom with the last of the year’s compost. The soil in my area is pretty poor, so I’ve always had mixed results with root crops. Amending the soil like this will almost certainly have a much better result than all the fertiliser in the world (comfrey liquid in my case).

There’s been an incentive to make the extra effort because this year I bought a head of ‘Music’ garlic to try out; I’ve never planted a horticultural variety before. Usually I just use whatever cloves are beginning to sprout from the garlic I get at the grocery; they say you shouldn’t do it, but I’ve never had any problems from it. In any case, that stuff’s often been in storage for gods know how long, so it often sprouts not long after it comes home. It was only one head of ‘Music’, which provided four cloves, so the rest was all from store descent (none of it actually from the grocery this time).

Last Thursday the camassias (Camassia quamash) went into the ground. I would have much preferred C. scilloides, which is native to this area (C. quamash is native to the west coast regions), but this is the only species I’ve been able to find available that I can be confident is nursery raised and not ripped from the wild. As a bonus, when they start multiplying in a couple years, they can serve as another crop; all the camassias were a staple food for local tribes before Europeans showed up.

Ironically I seriously would also like to get some Anticlea elegans (formerly Zigadenas elegans) bulbs, commonly known as death camas. A. elegans is also native and a camassia lookalike until it flowers, but the bulbs are deadly toxic. It would tickle my warped sense of humour to grow both.

I got some ‘Antoinette’ tulips from the Master Gardener fall plant sale (along with the ‘Music’ garlic, camassias, and ‘Ziva’ paperwhite Narcissus) as a gift for the neighbours. They’re nice looking enough: white and yellow with pink that shows up later. They’re also a multiflowering type, with several blooms per stem instead of the usual one. The other neighbours will get some paperwhites for indoor forcing, but I don’t know if I’ll start them before I give them…it’s more work for me, I’d have to find a nice pot to put them in, and I have my own to deal with.

Most of the tender things are indoors now. There hasn’t been a frost yet, but it’s just a matter of time.

Some gardeners never learn.

Tags

camassia, cardamom, castor bean, garlic, jasmine, narcissus

It’s been a somewhat tiring weekend. We had the fall plant sale on Saturday and now I’m scrambling around trying to find homes for the leftovers. And now it’s just about time to start bringing the tender things indoors for the winter, or preparing them for it.

I’ve got four jasmine plants (Jasminum sambac) in pots, don’t ask why. They’d gotten pretty overgrown during summer, so I spent probably twenty minutes giving them a damn good pruning. They always seem to get whitefly in late winter no matter what I do, so this time I’m going to drench them in insecticidal soap along with the soil to see if it helps.

I brought home for myself (from the sale) two, possibly three, more houseplants…I never learn. One of them is a night-blooming jasmine (Cestrum nocturnum), which as the genus name suggests, isn’t a jasmine at all. Where I lived in the tropics we call it Ladies of the Night. One of my Master Gardener colleagues said it sounds like a bunch of hookers. The other one is a cardamom, although I have to check and find out if it’s green cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum) or black cardamom (Amomum sp.). I hope it’s the former. There’s a second cardamom plant that I’m willing to adopt, but hope to find a permanent home for.

And of course, besides reacclimitising the tender plants to indoor life there’s a good deal of other garden pruning and cleanup to get done. The week of rain isn’t helping. I’m rather dreading the first frost, because the two castor beans (Ricinus communis) have gotten huge, and they’ll just melt as soon as a frost hits. The dahlias will be tame in comparison.

Oh yes, and bulbs…got some camassia (Camassia quamash) bulbs to plant too. And some ‘Music’ garlic. And some paperwhite Narcissus ‘Ziva’ for indoor winter forcing. Sucker for punishment, me.