Why Do Leaves Change Color in the Fall?

You'd think that learning the science behind the mystery and beauty of why leaves change color in the fall would taint my appreciation of this annual display, but not so. In fact, I'm more in awe than ever of the wondrous world around me here on the farm as I learn the intricate dance between genetics and environment that transforms the trees at Seven Oaks into fireworks of color.  Please read my latest essay for Main Line Gardening here, where I summarize the science behind why leaves change color. 

Cool Weather Is Coming - Are Your House Plants Ready?

It's warm and humid today, but by the weekend, evening temperatures are expected to be in the high 40s in my little corner of the Commonwealth. That's the signal to begin bringing houseplants, and any annuals you want to winter over, inside. There are a few steps you should take, however, to ensure that you are only bringing your house plants inside and not half the insect kingdom.

Spiders are notorious for leaving egg sacs under the rims of flower pots. Be very careful when you move your plants, and use the hose set on a high spray to dislodge any critters who have taken up residence.  Don't forget to look under pots, too, especially if you slip your plastic pots into pretty outdoor patio containers.

Bugs lurking under leaves or near the soil are another matter.  The only sure way I have found to remove as many as possible is to repot houseplants and shake off as much of the old soil as possible. Not only does it give the plants some new soil (and nutrients) but any eggs or critters in the soil get left outside.

I've written a new article this week for Hub Pages How to Bring House Plants Indoors for the Winter.

Now you know that it involves more than carrying them inside. Happy gardening!

Financial Savings of Organic Gardening

It seems as if every autumn, I'm writing something about the rewards and financial savings and benefits of organic gardening. Last fall, it was 79 pounds of sweet potatoes from my $16 investment.  This year, it's carrots.  I guess that's because autumn is harvest time. I'm busy pulling carrots, gathering peppers, and canning, blanching, and freezing everything I can before the first frost. I sometimes feel like a squirrel gathering acorns for fall with the exception that I always remember where I've stashed my loot.

This morning, it was too rainy, squishy and wet to do any gardening, but the carrots were overdue for harvesting. I'd purchased five large freezer containers to store them and my plan was to pull them up, clean and take the tops off outside so I could just run the bucket over to the compost pile and avoid getting dirt in the kitchen sink, then peel, coin, blanch and freeze them.

I couldn't believe the heavy yield in the garden. I pulled up about a quarter of what was growing out there and I ended up freezing approximately 10 cups of carrots.

I spent 99 cents on a package of seeds. Assuming that a can of organic carrots is $1 - and it's probably more expensive than that, but I have only seen conventional in my local supermarket, so I'm going by that price - that a 10x profit from my investment.

Carrots are some of the easiest vegetables to grow. What do you do to grow them? NOTHING. At least I don't do anything. I directly sow the seeds into the soil in the raised beds once the last danger of frost is past, and that's it. I weed early in the season but after the carrots begin to form, weeding tends to pull up immature carrots along with the big clumps of crabgrass and whatnot that spring up in the beds, so I just leave the weeds.  When I pull up the carrots, I pull up the weeds.

I do not have a pressure canner, but if I did, I'd can the carrots instead of freezing them.  Both methods are helpful but I would prefer canned carrots just in case we get a power outage of some sort.

I now have stacked containers of carrots in the freezer. I found a recipe for spiced pickled carrots that can be safely canned in the hot water bath canner, so that's a project for later this week, along with canning the last of the beets.

$1 worth of seeds yields at least $10 worth of produce.

Let me ask you, if your stock market portfolio or bank account paid that kind of dividend, wouldn't you invest in it?

Get growing! Grow your own food. Not only will you save money, you'll have better quality food. It's fresher. You know what's in it and what's not (as in - no pesticides or chemical fertilizer used on my carrots.)  And as I sit and type this, I feel a great sense of satisfaction knowing that I can feed my family some healthy vegetables, grown less than 20 feet from my kitchen door.

Organic vegetable gardening is wonderful!

Beer for Your Slugs

Although it seems like a waste of a good brew, beer traps do work to drown slugs in the garden. I've just written a new organic gardening article and I include five methods of organic slug control, of which beer lures and traps are just one.  There's saucers of beer to drown the critters, diotomaceous earth to shred them, oak leaves to repel them, gravel to repel and shred them, and copper tapes and spray to zap them.

Did I mention how much I loathe slugs?

Know your enemy! Yuck!

Luckily there aren't too many here in Virginia. One benefit to always using organic gardening methods is that there are plenty of birds and other creatures to patrol for insects in the garden  I also don't plant too many hosta, and those I do are in the front garden beds with a gravel path separating them from any moist, dark areas where slugs can hide. Deer also love to munch on hosta, so the few specimens I've planted are quite near the house.

If you hate slugs as much as I do, please click the link and read my article on Getting Rid of Slugs - Organic Slug Control.

I'd raise a beer to you, but I"m saving it for my slugs.

Wondering About Wonder

I walked Shadow around the flower garden today, and noticed with surprise that the lavender border I planted around the roses is blooming again.  Most years I get one beautiful show of lavender in June, then nothing for the rest of the season.  This has been the oddest fall temperature and plant-wise since I moved to Virginia. It's been very rainy, with five inches of rain in one week, and cool. Perhaps that has something to do with it? Perhaps the lavender thinks it is spring again? I can't quite figure it out.

We have an odd vine that is growing out of the driveway, and it has set fruit. I'm betting it's a stray cantaloupe. I am careful not to compost the seeds and I did not grow any this year, but every once in a while a seed clings to the compost bin or to the rind, and my best guess is that a squirrel carried the seed with him across the driveway and accidentally planted it. The gravel driveway has made a neat little micro climate, and the heat radiating up from the dark gravel must be keeping the melon toasty warm during this cool snap. I wonder how long we can keep it alive? Every day we go outside and check out little melon. We guided the vines back into the flower garden so that the car won't run it over every time someone drives in and out.

In the vegetable garden, the tomatoes seem to have finally cried 'uncle' and given up. They're flopping this way and that with nary a tomato in sight. Shelob, the giant spider named after the spider in the Lord of the Rings series of books, still holds court in the tomato bed. She turned in the opposite direction, however, with her back facing the sun instead of her abdomen facing the sun, and she's turner her web now so that instead of it on a direct north-south access, it's slightly angled east-west.  Another thing that fascinates me but to which I have no answer. Did she sense the windy days we have had over the past week, with winds coming from the east, and change direction so that insects are blown into her web?

There are so many questions I have about my garden. Why did we get gigantic 'fairy rings' of mushrooms this year, not just in our yard, but in the neighbors' yards too? I'm talking gigantic 10-20 foot circles of perfectly formed mushrooms, the likes of which we have never seen before. Why was this a great year for peppers and a not so great year for tomatoes? Why did the spider angle her web different?  Why is my lavender blooming in September? And why oh why are all the dogwood trees already turning colors, and the under story trees, as if they sense an extra cold winter on hand?

I think that if you love a garden and you have even a modicum of curiosity, you will never be bored. There is always something to learn, explore and wonder about. It seems like every day as I walk to get the mail or just walk the dog, I stumble over another mystery, raise another question. 

"I wonder" has become my mantra.

Seeds of Change

This is the time of year that always makes me think of new beginnings, of change. It's the change of seasons, I guess, although that phrase means less to me now than it did years ago. I love Virginia's long, slow change of seasons, the transition from spring to summer and fall to winter more drawn-out than what I used to experience on Long Island. There, it always seemed as if winter's icy breath changed to summer's gentle kiss in an instant, and we'd move from hot, sunny autumn days to cold snaps and pumpkins without pause. You'd be wearing t-shirts and jeans to school one day and the next day be bundled up inside your parka and searching for a missing glove.

This is the season when the garden slowly begins its descent into death. I walked among the paths in the flower garden this morning, marveling at how the marigolds have formed such dense orange tufts that they spill over the walkway. I have marigolds growing among the blocks my husband placed on a solid bed of sand in the back; no soil, no moisture, no nutrients, but the seeds grew into mature, thriving plants. I have morning glories turning brown, leaves drifting onto the paths, seeds falling among the flower beds. I'm forever picking heart-shaped vines out of the paths. This year I left some to grow among the flowers.

I marvel at the seeds each plant produces in abundance. Some we save - in a week or two we'll begin taking pails out in the garden and collect the marigold seeds. Some I'll just let nature sow where she wants them. I'll find drifts of coreopsis in the driveway, marigolds in the sand.

My garden has taught me many things, but the lesson that I learned lately is the lesson from the marigold seeds. Not just bloom where you are planted, but let nature tug you to where you should be planted. I tend to be a planner, logical, methodical, write the to-do list and check it off. The problem with being so methodical is that often, I end up closing myself off to inspiration, to creativity, to the joy of the moment. A friend will call me in the morning with the unexpected gift of tickets to a professional horse show she knows I'd love to see, but I cannot embrace the moment - I've got that to-do list, you see.

My garden is like my to-do list. It's planned. I mapped out the pathways, I tried charting the plants on graph paper. Nature has other ideas. Some plants grow in certain spots, other seeds drift to new ground and form beautiful clusters and clumps of plants I would never have dared plant there. As I look at the marigolds this year, at the morning glories twining among the boxwoods, I understand the lesson the garden has for me this year. Change is good. Be open to the drift of possibility, the tug of creativity, the spark of inspiration.  Plan, yes, for only the fool does not plan. But be open, be creative, be free.

Seasons change, and so do I...

Butterfly wing

Time to Shop for Spring Flowering Bulbs

Fall is one of my favorite times of year for many reasons. The days remain warm, but the nights are cooler. Football. Apples. Apple cider. The Prospect Fire Department Harvest Festival, complete with yard sale and old-fashioned auction. The Five County Fair. Pumpkins, mums...and buying bulbs. Tulips, daffodils and more. It's really an act of faith to buy bags of bulbs now, and plant them in the cooler days near Halloween, then wait until the promise of spring. I always forget where I plant my bulbs. I think that makes me more sensitive to the plight of squirrels...

I've written some tips today for Main Line Gardening on the things you need to think about when buying your spring flowering bulbs. You can read the original article on Main Line Gardening - click the underlined words.

Weeding After Weeks Away

I meant to write that essay on Sunday, but decided against it.  It's not that I didn't want to sit down and write - I did. But the weekend passed in a hazy blur of chores, and I was studiously avoiding anything that might trigger reflections, musing or blathering about September 11.  So I decided to follow the Shaker maxim of "Hands to work, hearts to God" and work I did, giving my heart some room to pray.

Saturday morning, I tackled the weeds in the flower garden. Now that might not sound like such a big deal, but the flower garden is large and the weeds are strong. Plus, they've had nearly six weeks to grow unchecked.  In early August, my sister came for a visit, then we had a weekend 'off', then two weekends in a row, John's sister and her family were here visiting. The next two weeks? Hurricane Irene, followed by yet another weekend of rain! So this really was the first sunny weekend for weeding.

I spent two hours pulling weeds, and finally got the edges of the garden at least into law and order. I uncovered one poor azalea that had been smothered by crabgrass and managed to give myself a great unidentified rash on the arm. It was itching so badly I feared something dreadful, like poison ivy, but I knew I hadn't seen that particular evil one in the garden.  I must be allergic to another weed. I wear gloves, but the rash was in the crook of the elbow.  A bit of soap and water, some first aid spray, and I soldiered on.

You can really see in just these few weeks how fall has crept into the garden. The marigolds are at their peak. Some grew up in the cracks between the sidewalk in the little pathway leading from the garage to our back deck. I don't know what they live on - they are growing in pure sand, and underneath, a bed of hard packed clay. Yet they thrive. I don't have the heart to pull them up in the spring. If they are tough enough to grow under those conditions, they are plants to be admired.

Leaves are starting to turn golden on the tulip poplars along the driveway.  I spent time taking pictures of mushrooms, in all their glory. We found several perfect rings of mushrooms growing in the lawn which my husband dubbed "Shroom Henge."  It is amazing to watch each mushroom (fungi? what is the proper name anyhow?) unfold daily. Some start as small baseballs, then suddenly grow up on stems as thick as a man's wrist. The baseball unfurls into an umbrella with what looks like a car filter underneath. Then the umbrella collapses, the mushroom shrinks back into the earth, and the cycle continues. I am slightly in awe of them.  I don't quite understand them.

After grubbing about in the garden for hours, I was ready for some indoor house-wifey tasks. Saturday afternoon, I canned eight pints of pickled peppers, which is good because the family keeps eating them faster than I am able to can them. That's a sign they like my recipes!  The pickled beets are also disappearing from the shelves.  I keep eying the pressure canner in the Lehman's catalog. Maybe next year....

Sunday church, then off to do the shopping, then the afternoon filled with house cleaning. I finally curled up on the back patio to read the latest issue of Countryside and Small Stock Journal, only to get dive-bombed by a bee jealously guarding "his" part of the patio. It got so bad he actually chased me inside. It was either that or he was going to be a dead bee...

So honestly, although my heart wanted to write, all I managed to do was curl up in my big fat armchair last night and watch the weekend reruns of my favorite TV show, Monk.  My garden is neat and tidy, my peppers - all 13 pounds of them - canned, and my house sparkles.

That, I think, made up for the lack of essay.

Woods here at Seven Oaks

Wordless Wednesday - September Sunflowers

September...a time for new beginnings. The start of a new school year. In Judaism, the start of the new year. I In honor of fresh beginnings and changes, I'm announcing some changes to the blog.   I'll participate in Wordless Wednesday, sharing with you images from around Seven Oaks each Wednesday.  Also on Sundays, I will feature a personal essay on spiritual topics, so look for that this weekend. The rest of the week will be devoted to gardening posts as always.

Are you ready for Wordless Wednesday?

September Sunflowers

Types of Chrysanthemums Explained

Quill Mum, courtesy of Morguefile

After writing yesterday about fall mums, I decided to explore the many types of chrysanthemums for the home garden. Looking at pictures on the National Chrysanthemum Society website brought back many fond childhood memories of Friday night setups at Farmingdale Community College, helping my dad place his show mums in old glass milk bottles at the agricultural college.  Dad would hand me the bottle and a green paper sleeve and his neatly typed entry card, and I would bring each out to the show table.  That was the only night in the entire year - no exaggeration! - that we ate at a fast food restaurant. In fact, I never even HAD fast food until 1975 when my dad first entered a mum show. And then my mom chose Arthur Treacher Fish and Chips, thinking it was 'healthy' because fish was involved! I remember being all excited because on that Friday before the mum show, usually the first weekend in October if memory serves me correctly, I'd get to stay up late to help my dad at the show.  Then we would get the fast food on the way home. Then the weekend - the excitement - to see what, if any, ribbons my dad won.  He won quite a lot and we used to have the awards proudly displayed on our fireplace mantle.

Over the long weekend of the mum show, my dad would be on hand to help out. I'd stand with a clip board near the doorway. My dad asked me to count the number of visitors coming into the round agricultural college auditorium. He taught me how to do a tick list, or make the slash marks to count visitors. Now that I think about it, he probably did that so that I wouldn't get in trouble and bother anyone.

I'd wander for hours looking at all the beautiful mums. My favorite displays were the ones that showed a dining room scene. There would be gorgeous floral displays on the center of the table. I always wanted to enter that contest. Maybe I can, someday!

After the show ended on Sunday, we'd bring home the chrysanthemum flowers.  We'd run out of vases and stand them in buckets in front of the fireplace. On Monday, I would bring two bouquets to school: one for my teacher, and the other for the statue of the Blessed Mother in the hallway at Our Lady of Victory school.  I'd carefully choose the most beautiful flowers for that particular display. It made me so happy to place the bouquet at the Blessed Mother's feet, and I was proud of my dad's accomplishments. 


When Farmingdale College got rid of its ag program, the show was moved to Planting Fields Arboretum, a gorgeous 19th century Tudor mansion and formal garden in Nassau County, Long Island, that's now open to the public as an arboretum. If you are ever on Long Island, go to the greenhouses in February for the annual camellia display; it's breath-taking and they have a great collection.


I hope you enjoy the results of my research this morning in my latest article - Types of Chrysanthemums for the Home Garden. Click the title to read the article.  Feel free to share the link, too (just not the actual words, okay?)  Thanks!

Hardy Mums in the Garden

We've got plenty of hardy mums in the gardens here at Seven Oaks, and more added this year.  I forgot to cut most of them back in the spring, and ended up with a continuous show of mums blooming as early as July! Someone reminded me that you're supposed to cut mums back around May and again in late June so that they bloom later. One large mum in the little flower garden next to the deck threatened to grow right over the top of the garden lanterns, so I cut it way back in June, and am glad I did. At the time, I worried that I'd pruned it back too much, but now it is finally getting buds.

I have several bronze, purple and yellow chrysanthemum plants, and these hardy mums act as perennials in the flower gardens, returning year after year.  Last year, I added a beautiful subtle pink mum with large flowers that I bought at the Heart of Virginia plant sale down at the old Farmville Train Depot, run by the Master Gardeners of Virginia. They were labeled with the color but not the variety name, so I have no idea what I bought. All I know is that I planted my mums too close together and ended up with one gigantic tangle of green that bursts into bright pink in September.

My latest acquisitions hasn't bloomed yet, but did appear to settle in quite well in the same garden space. It's a spoon mum, and I was happy to find it in the Burgess catalog. Spoon mums have long, thin petals with a little "spoon" at the end. When my dad showed his mums in the Long Island Chrysanthemum Society, the big football mums and the spoon mums were my favorites.

I keep the mums in garden beds close to the house, because deer love to chomp on them. My friend Mary Alice once told me a story about her home in Pennsylvania when the deer found her mums. She had purchased over a dozen yellow mums from the garden center and spent a Saturday afternoon planting them among the foundation hedges around her house. She went inside to cook dinner, and idly looked out the window an hour later.  Suddenly she realized not one single flower was left along that entire strip of mums she had planted! A glance out a side window revealed a doe, happily grazing among the new flowers and pinching off each bud to eat them!  Deer will do that.  I don't know why they were so bold as to come right up to Mary Alice's doorstep, but here they leave my little side garden alone. I suspect "German shepherd power" or the fact that Shadow sets up a ferocious bark every time she spies a deer.

I'll post more pictures of mums as time goes by and more bloom. But for today, enjoy these early charmers, hardy mums in the garden.

Beneficial Insects and Organic Gardening

Part of the fun of organic gardening is getting to know your neighbors - beneficial insects. Because organic gardening practices include the use of natural methods to control problems and boosting soil fertility, insects love organic gardens. Most of the time, beneficial insects visit my garden.  Today I took some beneficial insects pictures out in the vegetable garden and in the little cottage garden next to the shed. The praying mantis has been frightening me on the porch every day.  He lurks on the door frame or right over your head as you step onto the porch. Then he turns his head and fixes you with a beady eye, moving his 'praying' hands as if clapping. I don't know whether he's cheering me on or being sarcastic that I'm out walking the dog again.  I give him a wider berth.

Let me introduce you to the beneficial insects I met in my organic garden and around Seven Oaks....

Argiope aurantia

Meet Argiope aurantia...the black and yellow garden spider. (She is also referred to as a St. Andrews Cross spider because of the black markings on her body.) She is HUGE. I made her acquaintance while reaching for some ripe tomatoes in the garden. I stuck my hand into the tomato bed, leaned forward...and my face was about six inches away from good old Argiope aurantia. I let out a squeak, slowly closed my hand around the tomato, and backed out.  The web was torn and she seemed agitated, possibly thinking she had some good, juicy prey.  After that, I picked tomatoes all around the center of the bed. She made her large web between several plants in the center of the bed. She can have those tomatoes.  Yes, my dear, you can have all the room you want....

She is about four inches long and hangs upside down in her web. My tomatoes have been amazingly bug-free this year. So thank you, Argiope.

The other day my husband grabbed the basket we use to collect garden veggies and headed out to the garden to pick tomatoes. I said to him, "Watch out for the bed of beefsteak tomatoes; we've got a really big spider there." He sort of made a face at me. He knows I'm a little afraid of spiders. I think he thought I was exaggerating. I smiled to myself and kept working in the kitchen. A few minutes later, I heard a muffled exclamation float in through the kitchen windows, "Holy cow!"  I looked out and my hubby was circling the tomato bed, peering at the spider, gently touching the web, just as fascinated as I was by her large yellow and black striped self.

She's so big, she's become like a pet.  She's a great beneficial insect!

 

This spider is tricky. I found him or her this morning on the zinnias in front of the garden shed. I wanted to snap photos of the big zinnias since the flowers are really beautiful right now.  As I looked through the camera's view finder, I realized there was a big white spider with a large round abdomen hiding among the petals.  I took two pictures, and then moved on to another zinnia. Imagine my surprise when I found several tiny yet similar spiders on that zinnia. I won't be picking flowers from that garden bed any time soon to bring into the house, that's for sure. There were baby spiders jumping all over the zinnia flowers.

Does anyone know what kind of spider this is? There were no webs near the zinnias.

Praying mantis or Preying mantis

This guy thinks he's moved into my house. Every fall, we get at least one praying mantis on either the front or the back porch who hangs out in a place where we can watch him quite easily.  This year, it's the front porch. You're looking up at the ceiling of my porch where the praying mantis decided to perch today. He's about four inches long with a beautifully mottled green and brown body.  When I walk near him in the mornings, he moves his front legs up as if clapping, and swivels his head around, fixing me with those frightening insectile eyes they have. 

Among all the beneficial insects in the garden, I'm fascinated the most by the praying mantis.  They seem both graceful and deadly, moving with precision and speed that often surprises me. I know why this particular beneficial insects has chosen my front porch for his hunting grounds. We have one of the doorbells that glows at night, and it attracts moths. By hanging over the doorbell area, he snags many flying insects each night.

Don't be afraid of the bugs in the garden. When my little nephew was here, all he wanted to do was kill bugs. His parents had taught him "all bugs are bad" and Billy the Exterminator is one of his favorite shows.  When we walked around the garden, I had to stop him from stomping bees, spiders, praying mantis and lady bugs.  I hope he remembered that some bugs are his friends, and not all bugs are bad.

House Plant Health

I've been growing house plants my whole life, ever since I brought a terrarium in an old plastic shoe box to my first grade class. Our first grade class picture shows my friend Gina and I holding the little terrarium - my dad's influence on me, and the first sign of my impending gardening mania...(I'll have to find that picture or beg my sister to look through the old family photo albums for it!)

I was in for a rude awakening this week when I discovered a large pothos in my office so waterlogged and pot bound that I'm ashamed to admit it. It's like admitting your house is dirty and you run a Merry Maids franchise.

My "plant room"

My poor plant has been moved into the plant room awaiting a transplant, along with a bunch of African violets that are so overgrown I can see their roots not just underneath the pot but curling UP the sides of the cachepot, the way elf shoes curl up at the toes.

My essay, The Importance of Checking on Your House Plants, can be read on Main Line Gardening's community website.

May my tips spare your house plants some distress!