Autumn colors arrive early, possibly drought-induced. Strands of vivid Virginia creeper decorating roadsides startle in contrast against the bluest of skies. Exulting in these beautiful days is universal. Weddings, public events, and daily life flow more easily and successfully under clear October skies.
However, rain has been scarce here and throughout southeastern Massachusetts for months now (bit.ly/NIDIS_NortheastDrought) .
All our potable water comes from the sky. Let’s take falling water tables into account when agreeing to permit more development. Five hundred additional bedrooms? What does that translate into in numbers of baths and showers, numbers of flushes, loads of wash, additional irrigated lawn and landscaping? Where is that water going to come from?
Buck rubbing
With deer-mating season upon us, it is time to provide protection for saplings that deer may use for “buck rubbing.” This is an annual set of behaviors that coincides with the rut, and with bucks’ shedding their previous pair of antlers and rubbing the velvet off the new pair. Various kinds of wraps are available to protect tree trunks. Targeted are smallish trees, or limbs, of the right size to hook antlers around and rub off the velvet. Doing so is also leaving a scent trail that is part of bucks’ territorial marking. However, apart from unsightliness, it can also be fatal for the tree if too much bark is lost and girdling occurs.
“Buck rubbing” is not the only behavior that afflicts trees. Girdling of bark closer to ground level occurs when rabbits and small rodents nibble bark, especially when mulch heaped around trunks hides the activity. Keep mulch clear a minimum of three inches. Fruit trees are especially tasty, but all plantings are vulnerable; encircle trunks with hardware cloth. The rut is also time to be alert for car/deer collisions. Bucks chase does across roadways, regardless of oncoming traffic. It is their biological imperative. The recent roadside trimming gives drivers better visibility, and may provide the margin necessary to prevent car/deer collisions.
In the garden
Autumn and harvest time produce seed that can be planted or germinated once they are ripened. Look for grass seedheads, snapdragons, sunflowers, dogwood and magnolia fruits, asparagus fruits, and many others. Look for harvestable seedlings, too.
Our vegetable garden is light-compromised. Daily the sun sinks farther behind the tree line. Now the main produce is kale, everbearing red raspberries, beet greens, peppers, leeks, small salads, and bush beans. Here, pole beans and tomatoes are largely kaput, but they continue in gardens elsewhere.
For ornament, dahlias, marigolds, cardoons, and zinnias carry on. Nasturtiums are going into overdrive, with easy-to-save seed ripening now. A homemade wall system for next season’s strawberries holds plants in insert pots. These will be heeled in for the winter later, under garden soil.
Being on a well makes for being super-mindful about watering; when I do, using a timer, the plants’ outputs respond immediately.
‘Kosmic’ kale
The beautiful, variegated perennial kale bred by Dick Degenhardt in the nursery hub of Boskoop, Netherlands, is an outstanding ornamental edible. Interest in ‘perennializing’ what is possible in vegetable gardens is increasing, because most of what we grow to eat in zone 7A is annual.
Annuals must be reseeded each year; seed must be farmed and purchased, or saved by the gardener. Seed crops may fail. Perennial vegetables are an essential part of the sustainable garden. One plant, however, is not enough to prove the point about perennial vegetables; the coming winter will test the potential of ‘Kosmic.’
I purchased one ‘Kosmic’ plant, along with a perennial collard, ‘Purple Tree,’ from Territorial Seed Co. It is a nice addition to the vegetable garden. Decorative, too — visualize it in a mixed flower bed (as pictured, with flowering sedum).
New designs and challenges
Is there room to add plants or plantings that interest you? To remove others? Is shrinking the lawn while enlarging the garden provoking debates within households? Is it unthinkable to reimagine a well-loved, familiar area in a new configuration? Will wildlife destroy what has been planned?
What will change with the eventual loss of the many beeches and their dense canopy? At the moment, the increased light reaching the woodland floor is encouraging combinations of wild natives and introduced nonnative plants: woody vines such as bittersweet, poison ivy, and Virginia creeper; wineberries, greenbriar, and Japanese honeysuckle, sarsaparilla. They grow fast to fill the vacuum the beeches leave.
Island autumn is the time to take action if these questions apply. Transplant shock will be less, the ground is more workable, and changing light reminds that our sun is not always the “giant light bulb,” directly overhead, in the sky. The questions are reminders that there is nothing static about gardens.
Wildlife impacts? Or ours?
Island gardeners are learning that there is no foolproof deer-resistant plant, despite what plant tags say. The half-dozen very poisonous, deep blue aconites I planted as surefire, deer-proof additions to a shady bed are eaten down to the nibs. Crape myrtles formerly ignored are browsed.
We are shrinking the habitat available to wildlife, which is tempted into human precincts to see what there is to eat.
Daily, one passes the landscapers’ trucks laden with the Island’s vegetation, poor Martha’s flesh and blood, ripped out by the roots to provide time-shares, short-term rentals, and “estates.”
Returning home after work, the scenery is so laden with beautiful vignettes that I feel sadness for the widespread clearing to make way for cookie-cutter, overperfected landscapes. The people from away do not seem to be content with what is uniquely already here. Instead, the Vineyard must be improved and made interchangeable with elsewhere.
