September is time to look back on gardening season

September 2012

These September mornings have a wee nip in the air now. I check the weather forecast for projected low temperatures, in case my tomatoes are in danger of frost. For the first time since June, I have needed a light jacket for my daily walks. Soon, in our shortest, most glorious season, the maples and oaks will blaze in autumn colors before their leaves fall in great drifts over our lawns. The wide Idaho sky will turn a deep blue that seems to appear only in the fall. Smoke will start curling from neighborhood chimneys, and I will be baking bread and simmering Italian stews and soups again.

 

In January, when seed catalogs teeter in stacks on my reading table, I weave my fantasies for the coming spring. But September is the time when I look back on another season in the garden. Soon I will be outside, finishing my annual ritual of what I have always called taking down the garden. I will do a final dead-heading of the still-blooming roses, cut the remaining perennial stalks to the ground, and plant spring-flowering bulbs in new spots. Then I’ll tuck everybody in for the winter months under a blanket of WSU compost, the finest mulching compost I’ve found in many years of gardening.

My flower gardens were the stars of my gardening efforts this year. Delphiniums, roses, phlox, verbascum, pansies, hollyhocks, sweet peas, coreopsis, monarda, catmint – we understand each other. I find sunny spots where they can show off their colors, and they know what to do. In late summer, when the early bloomers finally faded, I did another planting of perennials for one last dance before the big chill arrives. 

This summer was my first attempt at vegetable gardening here in northern Idaho. Last spring, my husband built eight wooden raised beds for our side yard, and I have felt great pressure to perform. Let me just admit that I am glad I bought the book, “Vegetable Gardening for Dummies.” I followed the instructions for growing asparagus, including letting this, my first crop, all go to fern-like seed, and will have high hopes for many sweet green stalks next spring. My carrot patch is yielding enough beta carotene to share with the neighborhood’s wild rabbit. I have been pulling a few carrots nearly every night for salad or as part of a main dish, and leaving the rest in the ground until needed. The bunny seems to know that he doesn’t have to raid the entire patch at once. So far, we are coexisting peacefully, carrot-wise.

The corn crop has been disappointing, with many of the ears infested with weevils – and lady bugs. Why can’t those cute little red critters hang out on rose leaves where they belong, eating aphids? (Speaking of aphids, my greatest humiliation of the season was draping banana peels on the rose bushes in the misguided belief that the peels would kill aphids. Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.) Another hazard in the corn patch has been Benjamin BadKitten, my garden staff member. In mid-summer, when the stalks were high and the sun blazed, he decided that the perfect napping spot – pardon me: the perfect supervisory spot – was in the middle of the corn plants. Benjamin is a sound sleeper, and he apparently rolled his ample backside onto the stalks while taking a catnap. The result was a soundless cry of “Timber!” and a toppling of corn plants onto the cat. (I know this because I saw him emerge from the corn patch, wearing strands of corn silk over his ear.) We’re eating the few remaining undamaged ears of corn, and have found the kernels sweet but more chewy than crisp. I’m still optimistic about being a corn farmer, though, and will plant again next spring, using a different variety of seed.

After last year’s meager yield, the tomatoes are thriving this time. This is partly due to the absence of our golden retriever, who died in June. Kaylee had the skills and chutzpah of a born thief. There was no garden fence or wire netting she couldn’t crack, if it had fresh tomatoes or peas on the other side. If she had lived, she would have easily decimated my tomato garden – and I would gladly give up all the fat, red tomatoes out there now to have her back, healthy and smiling again, with tomato juice dropping off her face.

I will not plant artichokes again. When people here on the Palouse assured me that artichokes can be grown as annuals, I had to try. My five plants matured well and produced several artichokes each. But instead of the large, meaty leaves I have always found at a grocery store, these home-grown artichokes had tiny, delicate leaves – and far too much of the furry, inedible “choke” at the center. I deliberately let a few of the mature artichokes go to seed in their garden bed, to see the deep purple flower emerge from the center of each plant. I have found a lesson in those dramatic purple flowers: If an impetuous gardener has patience, beauty and joy can come even after a disappointment.