Autumn is settling in. Grasses and Amsonia hubrichtii light up fall gardens, while ajuga ages colorfully. Native witch hazel opens its first pale, threadlike flowers. The recent rains appear to drain the trees and foliage of green, leaving us with novel but ephemeral beauty.
These small events occur while daily, mundane life binds us to routines — the store, work, school — that could be happening anywhere. Yet we live in a place with accessible nature and beauty that are incomparable, if we get out of the car and our habitual ruts.
Autumn intentions
The RHS says, “For gardeners, the message is clear: Make the most of autumn and winter to improve soil, establish plants, and reduce the amount of watering your garden will need next year.”
Another maxim: Get to work: next season’s garden starts at the end of this season’s. This includes the all-essential addition of humus. Humus is the remains of decayed or organic matter. While not itself a nutrient, it supports soil life and makes nutrients more available to plant roots, and creates good topsoil.
Humus holds water and makes soil easier to work. Almost all who garden have access to biomass: leaves, plant and kitchen waste. Compost it all and add it into the topsoil, not the landfill.
Make yet another thought, “modest design, extravagant care,” a reality. Mulching with the organic matter available is a thrifty response to rising costs of everything. Compost, pine needles, seaweed, chopped-up leaves — all free — are examples of extravagant soil improvers whose costs are in the effort, not the price.
Lawns rebound
Fall is the time for aerating island lawns. (Skunks may be doing this for you, signifying the presence of white grubs.) Continue cutting at two inches. Poorly growing patches might benefit from a thin application of screened compost or leafmold, and overseeding.
Lawn professionals abhor white clover in their ideal lawns. However, its presence makes lots of sense. Nitrogen fixing, erosion and wear resisting, and water-wise: Dark green clover improves the looks of any lawn, in my opinion.
Soil is softer after rains, and edging beds sets them off nicely. Grass revives in fall, whether extra lawncare steps are taken or whether it is simply its natural response to cooler conditions and natural rainfall. This includes “edge-creep,” where grass eagerly extends tillers and rhizomes into the edges of flowerbeds and shrubberies. Tillers are secondary stems that develop off the main plant; the grass thickens as it senses favorable growing conditions, and grows toward them.
Beech update
According to this post from Holden Arboretum’s “Get Growing” blog, progress is occurring in the mission to end-run beech leaf disease (BLD): “Nearly a third of beech trees near BLD’s epicenter in northeast Ohio … have died since the disease was discovered in 2012.” Documenting and monitoring trees that appear healthier in otherwise heavily symptomatic areas has resulted in building a database of these healthy trees.
“Such trees will be conserved for use in further experiments to determine if genetic resistance to BLD is a genetic trait that can be passed from parent trees to their progeny, an essential step required in the development of a breeding program to create resistant trees.”
An existing research planting of American beech (Fagus grandifolia) at the Holden Arboretum provided an opportunity to test beech for genetic resistance to BLD. The trees were established years before BLD arrived, in 2005, and had been selected, bred, and tested by the U.S. Forest Service for resistance to a different disease, beech bark disease. Once BLD arrived, the research team noticed that not all the trees were showing symptoms.
Read more about these encouraging developments at bit.ly/HFG_BLDResistance.
Defoliators
In the aftermath of the recent heavy rains, damage from defoliation by several organisms became apparent: buxus, orchard trees, lilac, and shadbush suffered. Fall webworm damage emerged.
The identity of specific leaf blights (fall webworm, cedar/quince rust, lilac leaf blights, and more) must be diagnosed by pathology labs such as the one at UMass: bit.ly/UMass_PDL. Lilacs alone are subject to several different ones. However, to generalize, warm, moist conditions promote the spread and development of these problems.
Good culture appropriate to the species is always pertinent. Try to learn the requirements of the plants you intend to grow. In the small collection of nine lilacs here, mostly Syringa vulgaris, three are not defoliated. Why, and what are the differences?
It is hard to say. A venerable white lilac, a ‘Miss Kim,’ and a Syringa x hyacinthiflora ‘Clarke’s Giant’ have retained their foliage, while nearby plants are skeletal. Lilacs are suited to full sun locations and neutral soils with good drainage. The site here becomes shadier by the year, and not all of these lilacs are planted in ideal locations.
Home poultry
Feathers are everywhere! The shortening length of daylight hours signals the end of egg laying, and the start of molt. This also means changing over chickenfeed from layer formulas to refeathering ones.
It is an opportunity to do coop housekeeping. Remove cobsweb from the overhead and compost old bedding, replacing with fresh shavings, hay, or even fallen leaves. Replace nesting box material, and be liberal with food-grade diatomaceous earth in them to deter insect parasites (mites and lice) that stress birds.
Spray down roosts with undiluted vinegar. Inside dusting boxes are nice features for birds when bad weather keeps them shut up. A number of different materials work: wood ash, dry soil, ground limestone, or a combination.
In addition to compost piles, vegetable gardens are great destinations for the bedding and droppings. It is soil cover, and can be sheet-composted to mellow over winter, during which it should break down.
In the garden
Check gutters. Harvest and cure sweet potatoes.
Bring hippeastrums under cover. For reflowering, give 10 weeks of dormancy in low light with cool temperatures and just-moist soil.
Spring flowering bulbs: ordering, planting!
