It is hard to believe we are in November already. Fallen leaves have blown everywhere, and the autumnal atmosphere increases as the nights draw in, even while days of beautiful weather continue, and frost holds off a while longer. Dahlias and marigolds soldier on.
Indispensable ingredients
For those who like to cook, and eat, the onion family is one of the joys in life. We are fortunate that they are cold-tolerant and we can grow them. Running out of onions? Garlic? Recipe calls for scallions? Due to their ubiquitous presence in recipes, onion family members also form a perpetual category on grocery shopping lists. Until darkest winter, just head outside to the garden, or to the pantry.
Orders of bulbs of flowers and garlic and shallots arrived while we were away on a short vacation. For once, I was able to congratulate myself for having already done the garlic bed prep. All I needed to do was open up furrows with an edging tool and string, and pop the seed bulbs in.
This area was mellow and soft when I furrowed it. I previously cultivated the area in September; top-dressed it with low-number organic soil food (fertilizer); and covered it with a bale of chopped straw mulch.
The shallots, ‘Grey Griselle’ (Allium escalonicum) are a variety that is new to me. According to Southern Exposure Seed Exchange’s catalogue, this is the gourmet, heirloom, and “true shallot.” It is somewhat confusing, but the rest of what are called shallots are actually a dainty form of onion, Allium cepa var. aggregatum.
In any case, planting shallots is the same as seed garlic. About three weeks before hard frosts, open a furrow and push the bulbs or separated cloves down into the soil about two inches deep and six to eight inches apart, in rows two feet apart. Very lightly close the furrow, sit back, and wait until spring, when the tops will be evident; then weed carefully, because the crop is vulnerable to weed competition.
Elsewhere in the vegetable garden, fallen flowerheads of leeks have sprouted mini forests of green and crazy threadlike seedling leeks. This is the easiest way to grow leeks as an almost perennial vegetable. Just help yourself to a trowel full of seedlings and line them out in rows. Do this a couple of times, and over a season there should be leeks at various stages of growth, from pencil leeks to seriously large ones.
Other, easily grown, onion family members provide onion security to the cook and pantry, including potato onions (A. cepa var. aggregatum), bunching onions (A. fistulosum), and Egyptian (“walking”) onions (A. cepa var. proliferum).
Garden cleanup
Cut it all down? Or leave it for wildlife? Several modes of closing the garden for the season are in use presently. They seem mutually incompatible. One is the antiseptic practice of cutting and removing any debris or waste plant material that might harbor disease or pests, a kind of control theory of outdoor life. Most of the people we work for favor this approach. After all, why hire gardeners, if they leave the garden looking messy?
On the other hand is the awareness that wildlife exists in gardens year-round, and needs resources to survive and thrive, just as all living things do. It is possible that areas of heavy human development may in fact be wildlife deserts. The term wildlife extends to not only fun or interesting species such as birds and squirrels, but also to arthropods and other less glamorous inhabitants, such as slugs, voles, and deer. Everything eats or is eaten, but ceases to exist if starved.
According to the principles of respected ecological garden makers, a new way of thinking about the importance of gardens in the post–wild world is to view them as sanctuaries for the nonhuman species that share and support our existence.
People already expect to feed birds in winter, or are familiar with the idea of planting milkweed to support endangered monarch butterflies; in fact, it appears that gardens in the aggregate may be far more important to supporting wildlife than was previously thought. In built-up regions of the Boston–Washington corridor, gardens may be critical habitat factors.
Seedheads and berries are an obvious source of food for small birds and mammals, and hollow stems and leaf litter provide overwintering places for insect life. Without leaving the garden looking “messy,” see what can be left for the winter until spring cleanup. And then maybe plant more of it?
Off-Island, off-topic
The recent vacation in Colorado and New Mexico exposed me to ecosystems, climate, and plants that were definitely outside my watershed. The billows of yellow chamisa appear like an analog of stands of goldenrod, and I loved the native junipers and piñon pine trees.
Points of interest: noticing how roses thrive in that environment. Familiar cultivars grow as magnificent specimens in the arid atmosphere that appears to quell even the idea of foliar disease! Common lilacs are go-to plants, in much the same way that we rely upon them here, and perovskia and salvias are much used in Southwest gardens.
Grasses seem appropriate and inevitable in those dry landscapes. Nassella tenuissima is used everywhere, and little bluestem appears frequently. Here on the Island, I do not much care for Calamagrostis x. acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster,’ whose seedheads often seem mildewy, but in numerous Southwestern town and urban plantings, it was blond and elegant. It interested me to see several grasses that I know mainly from books growing along roadsides, such as the blue grama, Bouteloua gracilis, with its flaglike seedheads standing at right angles to the stems.