Tag Archives: perennials

Autumn Meanderings

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A few frosty mornings hailed the end of my beloved marigolds. They were a gorgeous addition to the raised beds, and I’ll definitely be planting more seeds next year.

Well, as expected, we had our first freezes this past week. The temps dipped back into the upper 20s one day, and each morning, the tips of every leaf and blade of grass have been covered in white frost. We said goodbye to the last of the zinnias, the marigolds, the hostas, sedums, as well as the remaining basil and oregano, pokeberry bush, and one lone tomato plant that I’d forgotten had planted itself beside the deck stairs.

We’ve had frost each morning for almost a week now. It finally feels like fall is here to stay.

I finally made it outside to attend to the hostas, sedum, and peony plants. After a hard freeze, the leaves of each of these plants tend to yellow and grow mushy. So, I went out and cut the plants back to the ground. The leaves were all tossed into the compost pile, and in a few months time, new shoots will sprout up for next seasons display. It’s always a little alarming to trim back a plant to its base. But, next year, new growth will pop up in the springtime.

I finally hacked back the hostas, and cleaned up things around the pond a bit. The area around the compost bin is next on the To Do List. You can barely see it in the corner here.

Taking these plants down gave me some good one-on-one time with the garden again. Really, it’s been awhile since I’ve been out to do much in the yard. It was just so bloody hot this summer, and humid (conditions I detest). Having some nice, cool days to get out and dig around a bit brought me a lot of happiness. I pulled some weeds, checked out the health of the plants that I’m leaving alone until next springs growth begins, and I did a bit of maintenance work around the pond. I pulled out the leaves and plant debris, and cleaned up a bit of the area around the water that I’d been letting grow wild. I’m still letting things grow, but it’s more of a controlled chaos.

Yesterday, I cut the hostas down to the ground. So long for now, beauties!

Over the weekend, in addition to the yard cleanup work, the husband took me to one of my favorite plant nurseries in the area: Groovy Plants Ranch. This was our second visit, and I was pretty much in planty heaven. The Ranch has several greenhouses, stocked full of exotic plants from all over the world. They have tropical varieties, cacti, succulents, and more in all shapes and sizes. The Ranch also has an area where you can pot up any new plants you’d like to buy there, as well as an old school house that they’ve converted into a little shop with local artwork, and seasonal plants. Right now, it is filled with all kinds of bulbs. The whole property is protected by a sweet Australian Shepherd who was quite fond of belly rubs. While the husband was distracted with her, I managed to sneak off to add a few more things to the basket.

My new pretties <3

Earlier this year, I’d made the decision that I wasn’t going to plant any more bulbs this year. I have tulips, a few varieties of daffodils, and crocuses already in the yard, and I don’t need any more. And, in years past, I’d had far more success trying to grow garlic by planting it in early spring than in the fall. So, naturally, I came home from The Ranch with an armload of daffodil and garlic bulbs. The daffodils went in under the big locust tree in our front yard, and the garlic went into one of the raised beds out back. What can I say? I am physically incapable of saying no to plants.

Garlic and daffodil bulbs… I don’t want to talk about it!

In addition to the bulbs, I nabbed a few more succulents, some more rock plants, and a pretty, frilly tropical plant whose name I forgot to write down. That reminds me… this winter, I want to take stock of all of my indoor plants. My collection has tripled in size since the Pandemic started, and I should probably be keeping better track of what all I’m growing. Anyway, I brought home lots of goodies. The kitchen windowsill is now completely filled with tiny potted succulents.

We’ve had some really pretty sunrises lately. Please ignore the giant floating phone reflection in the window!

I have one more recent plant acquisition to own up to: I bought a vanilla plant. It’s on its way in the mail. Vanilla, you may not know, is a type of orchid. The plant is a vine, and grows in the wild in Mexico. My little baby vine will be here soon, and I plan to train it up a potted trellis next to the loofah vines and the lemon tree in the husbands office. When it’s warm enough out again, all will move back to the deck. The vines take a bit of time to grow vanilla pods, but when they do, we’ll have our very own vanilla seeds. Picture the best custard you’ve ever had. Now imagine that, but 100x better, and that’s the crème brûlée that the husband will be making with our vanilla. I don’t mean to brag. Them’s just the facts.

The vanilla will likely take a few years to grow seed pods. In fact, it will probably be ready to harvest for the first time around the same time as our pineapples and lemons. But all will be worth the wait. That’s going to be one glorious summer, let me tell you.

In the summer, several of the peonies tend to end up in bouquets. In the fall, their spent flowers look almost as pretty, to me. I salvaged a few when I chopped the leaves down during fall clean up, and they ended up in a vase in the bathroom.

Anyway, for now, with the outdoor garden heading back to sleep, my attentions have been shifting to all my indoor plants. Many spend their summer on the deck, and move back inside as the temperatures fall. Some, I keep inside year-round, as we have much more rainfall than they prefer. I have a lot of them, as I’d mentioned, everything from air plants, to lithops, to long, vining pothos, and caterpillar plants. All of them make me quite happy, and have become a comfort during dark winter days, when my mood is not great. I’ll likely introduce them all to you at some point.

That’s all I have for this week. Whatever the size of your garden, or whichever season you are now in, I hope your plants are bringing you cheer. Happy gardening!

I found a few lacey leaves during fall clean up. They always catch my eye. Wonder who snacked on this one?

Springtime Plans

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It’s been snowing off and on here in Central Ohio for days. The snow isn’t sticking to the ground, but everything feels cold and damp, and we’ve all forgotten what the sun actually looks like. It’s definitely a good day to be indoors.

I spent some time on the floor today, covered in gardening books, colored pens, and my trusty notepad, looking ahead to springtime. In addition to the usual garden clean up I have in mind (like splitting up the lamb’s ear plants before they take over the entire yard), I want to tackle a few new landscaping projects.

  • January Flurries

I have three larger projects in mind for the spring: building two more raised beds for vegetables, turning one of the side yards into a wildflower bed, and fixing up the hellstrip out front by the road.

Project One: Raised Beds
Right now in the back yard, we have two raised beds for vegetables, in addition to a merry band of pots scattered around the deck, where I keep the herbs for easy access. The beds are (maybe?) three feet across, and six feet long. We have a crop of asparagus living in one, so there isn’t much room in that bed for anything else, and the other bed was built last year out of some leftover plywood I found in the garage.

  • Our first two vegetable beds

The beds live a little bit away from one another, but both spend the summer in full sun. I’d like to build two more this year (and by “I’d like to build,” I mean, “I’d like my husband to build”) so I’ll have more space for the massive number of seeds I plan to grow. My family makes salsa each year, and I simply cannot keep losing the battle for who grows the best tomatoes.

So, this is the first thing I’d like to tackle. It will be a cheap project, and shouldn’t take much more than a few hours to complete.

Project Two: Wildflower Bed
After the raised beds, I plan to combine my hatred for mowing the lawn with my desire to help out the local pollinator population by turning the barren wasteland on the side of our house into a wildflower bed. The space is aesthetically abhorrent right now, and I’ve decided this is the year I’m finally going to do something about it.

  • Clearly, we can do better than this.

In March, I plan to place some cardboard down over the grass to kill it. Then, I’ll turn the soil, maybe add some dirt to level things off a bit, and finally, in will go the wildflower seeds mix that I picked up this fall from the Ohio Prairie Nursery (I cannot recommend OPN enough for Midwest gardeners looking for native seeds and plants). I’ll edge the bed with some stone, add water, and wait for my mini prairie to start growing. Many native plant seeds here in Ohio require a cold period before they will wake up and start growing at all, so I hope to get the seed down well before our last frost date (which is usually in mid-May).

Project Three: Hellstrip Bed
I recently heard it described that the hellstrip (the patch of grass found between the sidewalk and the street in many a US yard) is called what it is because “no one knows what the hell to do with it.” Sometimes people will plant trees here, but other than that and the occasional mailbox, the area seems to just be patchy grass with not a lot going on, either for the local wildlife, or for anyone else.

We have two of these spaces, on either side of our driveway. I’ve been thinking about the best way to utilize the area for awhile now. This is the plan I’ve come up with (though it may change a few hundred times between now and April):

  • My design skills are unrivaled throughout the lands

On the one side of the driveway, for now, I’ll keep things simple. I want to put in a sugar maple tree. It’s native to Ohio, not too messy (since it will be right next to the street), and absolutely gorgeous in the fall, with fiery orange and red leaves.

The other side of the driveway will be a pollinator bed. The area gets lots of sun, and the soil there is pretty dry, so I chose plants that I knew would thrive in those conditions. I wanted plenty of native plants and flowers to make sure the wildlife in my area would be able to utilize them. I also wanted a pretty simple color scheme: greens and purples, with plants in bloom from early spring, through the end of fall. Finally, I wanted all of the plants to be perennials (which come back every year in the springtime), that require little to no maintenance. Here’s the list, with a bit of detail about each plant:

Meadowsage: Meadowsage is a great, deer-resistant butterfly magnet, with spikes of purple flowers that bloom from early summer to late fall.

Lamb’s Ear: My parents gave me some lamb’s ear from their garden a few years ago. It grows like mad, with silvery-green leaves and pretty purple flowers each summer. The bees love it, and I plan to move some from the backyard to the front to save on plant costs.

Prairie Blazing Star: Prairie Blazing Star is one of my favorite native flowers. The bees and butterflies are all over it when it flowers, in late summer, and the purple stalks of flowers bloom through the fall. This is a great flower to plant if you have clay soil.

Little Bluestem: Gardens just look good with grasses, and this Ohio native is high on my list of loves. It thrives in dry conditions, with silvery blue shoots of grass that get up to about 3 feet high. In fall, the grass turns a deep red.

Walker’s Low Nepeta: Though not an Ohio native, I can’t imagine having a garden without nepeta. It’s just the perfect plant. Nepeta (catmint) is super easy to grow. It’s hardy, loves the sun, and is resistant to most diseases and deer. The plant is covered in small purple blooms all summer and fall, and is a favorite for the bees in our yard. It smells amazing, looks whimsical, and has been known to attract the neighborhood cats (last summer, I accidentally summoned the local feline gang- they would take turns rolling around on the nepeta before staggering off, high as little kitty kites).

Irises: I am not sure what breed of irises that I have, but I plan to split some from the backyard to move out front. My irises came from my parents, who originally acquired theirs from my grandma’s family farm in Northeast Iowa. Each spring, they bloom with absolutely stunning pale purple flowers. It makes me think of my grandma every time I see them, and the shape of the flowers and silvery green-blue leaves adds some height and will match up with the bluestem perfectly.

Prairie Dropseed: Prairie Drop Seed is a compact little native Ohio grass. It doesn’t get very tall, and the grass blades are fine. Dropseed looks a bit feathery, like hair, with a bright green color that fade to gold in the fall. I thought it would be a nice texture against all the flowers.

Creeping Thyme: There are oodles of types of thyme around, but for a good ground cover in a sunny, warm spot, I love creeping thyme. It spreads nicely, attracts bees with its minty smell, and has really pretty purple-pink flowers in the summertime.

  • Black swallowtail on some prairie blazing star

While this is not my favorite time of year, I do like being able to take a step back, and plan for what’s to come. Researching new plants, and thinking up ideas for the springtime feels hopeful to me, like planting seeds. It’s a good reminder that soon, the sun will be out again, and I’ll be back in the garden, digging around and watching things grow. Happy gardening!