No, not that one. You want a prepper website for that ‘fall’- or possibly a religious one. Both subjects can be interesting for what they tell you about characters and world-building- do your characters have disaster plans?- do they think they know what happens when It All Goes Wrong on a cosmic level?
Weighty subjects, for another time. Today is one of those days where my to-do list expands every time I look at it, and everything is time-sensitive, so let’s chat about gardening and the change of seasons.
This area got its first frost about a week ago, right on time, though in typical continental climate fashion, it immediately warmed back up and we’re supposed to have a day or two of temperatures in the low eighties next week. But that one frost knocked out a few of my more sensitive plants like the beans, and the tomatoes and cucumbers are just barely hanging on. Once their last few fruits ripen, I’ll pull them out and batten down those hatches for winter. The herbs all survived, as did the few carrots, greens, and my single, lonely scallion. I’m still scratching my head over that failure- why only the one scallion, when I sowed ten or a dozen seeds in that pot?
Oh, well. Better than no scallions at all. I also have one, single celery plant, but I expected that because it’s notoriously hard to grow. I’ll harvest those over the next couple of weeks, before it gets really cold. There’s something happy-making about eating fresh green things out of my own garden in November.
Normally, the onset of autumn and the end of the garden would provoke a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth from me. I love summer; I’m not at all fond of winter, and it’s been a few years since I could look at the trees changing color and not be instantly depressed at an obvious sign of the approaching winter.
But I’ve found myself in one of the prettiest parts of the country this year, a place where even dying leaves are lovely. The farmers have cut most of the corn and beans, and now the landscape is a lovely golden sheet of stubble fields interspersed with copses of trees in a hundred shades of green, yellow, orange, red, and even some that approach purple. When I got here, four months ago, it was all green and beautiful. It’s not purely green anymore, but it’s still beautiful, and I’m able to admire it even though I know winter’s on its way, with all the cold and wind and darkness that makes it so hard to do anything. Might as well enjoy the pretty things while they last. Before I know it, the year will have turned and it’ll be Moving Time again, location still TBD.
Despite its limitations, this year’s garden was shockingly successful. Growing food in pots on a balcony has been an interesting challenge, one that I’ll be happy to set aside as soon as possible.
How does your garden grow, as the year moves from summer to winter?
Mad Genius Club 
7 responses to “The Fall”
Ours is winding down. We had some decent spring peas (snow and sugar snap), and plenty of beans (green and Italian). Summer squash were OK, but not gangbusters like they did in ’21. I got a few tomatoes off the tomato plants, but no peppers at all. I’m also giving up on starting tomato and pepper plants indoors. We just don’t have the right setup for it, and they always come out badly. Next year I’ll just go to Meijer’s garden department and pick up six-packs of tomato and pepper plants.
The fall peas are actually bearing, and I need to pick them this weekend. They’re still blooming, so if the weather stays warm we may have more to harvest. We’ll see how much we get out of them before we get a hard enough frost to kill them. Then I need to turn over the remaining beds and cover everything with branches to protect the soil over the winter (we’ve been doing a bunch of cutting of overgrown brush, so we have plenty of branches for that job).
The terraforming proceeds apace. Little native bees and other fliers swarmed the calico aster, my last heavy bloomers. Since it’s October, having such late season bloom was pretty satisfying. When we terraform Mars, calico aster is on the list.
I’ve been sharing river oats in both plant form and seed with friends and my garden group. (The garden group doesn’t know they’re terraformers, but they are, since they all plant native.) River oats feed caterpillars for certain butterflies, skippers, and a moth, so river oats, too, are on the Mars manifest.
The October Ladies’ Tresses bloomed in September, which I find confusing. What’s great is that they’re starting to multiply. They are so small and thin I can’t imagine what bees like them.
I’ve put in Canadian honewort, wild peturnia, and something I’d never heard of until recently–Carolina elephant’s foot. Elephants aren’t native to CONUS, so that’s confusing, too, but I scored several at a plant swap and am all gleeful.
No, no I can’t grow vegetables, but I can feed the insects and thus the birds. And I’m ready for when Terraformers, Inc. wants components that all work together in an interlocking ecosystem to replicate Earth afar.
Sigh. Never proofread after posting: *petunia*
A dry fall, so it’s slowly yielding. The impatiens only look a little sad, but a garden down in the valley has frost damage, so I know it’s coming.
Impatiens don’t just die from frost. They collapse. Their leaves turn to black, thin, hanging things that look like they have rotted for a month or two — and that’s the next morning.
you really need to drive down skyline drive in fall. Not this year, because its closed from hurricane damage, but some year…
The tomatoes failed. Why remains a mystery, but we’ve had poor luck the past three years – too cool and wet, then too hot, and the smoke haze weakened the sun they needed. The roses are on their second wind. Three dead bushes have been removed, and one that had the dwindles is also gone. The trees started turning this past week, with peak probably around November 5 or so. They are odd this year. The weather is cooling in fits and starts.
Some year, I will just accept that autumn starts at the end of October, not early September. Some year …
Blake, you can construct a light cold frame to protect your more delicate plants. You might need to use a hand saw briefly.
Get 5 1″X2″X8′ wood strips from about any lumber store. They are commonly called furring strips.
Cut 2 of the furring strips into 2′ sections, then connect them to the other pieces, making a triangle. You should have enough of the cut pieces to use to brace the frame in the middle of the length. You can use screws or nails to connnect them.
Then get some contractor grade plastic – it comes in fat rolls, folded up. A 10′ package will be sufficient. Staple the plastic to surround the cold frame. Fold the ends of the plastic to close off the end of the cold frame . You don’t need to cover the bottom of the frame.
Now you have a cold frame suitable for protecting plants down to 20*F. When it got that low I would put a couple of drop lights under the frame. Use a couple of heat lamps to warm it up. Don’t point them at the plants.
When I did this a couple of decades ago, it kept the inside to a toasty 85F+. I also raised tomatoes from mid-April to the following mid-February.