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Last week this space was devoted to a discussion of ornamental grasses. Their bloom is one of the harbingers of fall. For those that do not live in Florida or San Diego where there is little to distinguish the seasons, our environment gives us subtle or sometimes not-so-subtle clues that the calendar year is progressing.

The last week there was tremendous progress in our neighbors’ fields. Farmers have been out cutting tobacco, inverting it in the fields on a teepee of lath to dry, and then hanging it in their barns to further cure. Once fully dry, the leaves will be stripped from the stems and sorted by size for processing. The whole family is put to work cutting, stacking, and hauling.

Corn fields are also rapidly disappearing. I’ve been sharing the road with harvesters a lot more frequently as well. The green corn stalks cut now are chopped up for silage. Silage is fermented in silos (or wrapped in white plastic) and then fed to cows over the winter.

The corn that is left stand later into the fall to turn totally brown and dry is harvested for the kernels. Around here this is used primarily for animal feed, but further towards the Midwest where my husband grew up, a portion is used for a variety of products. You can probably quickly think of ethanol, the gasoline additive, and processed human food products like cereals, cornstarch, high fructose corn syrup and oil. Corn is also used in all kinds of other downstream products like industrial adhesives and cosmetics.

Not as plentiful as corn fields, but I’ve seen several pumpkin fields. Pumpkins are turning orange now and will soon be picked for Jack ‘o lanterns and fall decorating. Usually planted in June- pumpkins are a 90 day crop so when some of us are rejoicing that school is out- farmers are thinking ahead to fall.

In our local greenhouses, mums are popping up left and right. Mums planted in June are now starting to show a hint of color, ready to decorate your front porch, add some color to a flagging flower bed, or adorn fair parade floats. While many of us are thinking mums, Henry’s greenhouses posted on Instagram the other day that they are now planting their pointsettias. It is only 17 weeks to Christmas after all.

I lived in Florida for four years. The first Christmas I bought my tree in shorts and thought it was wonderful. After that I missed the seasons. I am so happy to be back in Lancaster County where I can watch the progression of time in the fields, my flower beds, and by the leaves on the trees. There is no place like home.

Last week’s cooler temperatures and the sudden appearance of yellow school busses lead me to believe fall is close at hand. The other clue is the ornamental grasses are starting to bloom.

Believe it or not, my husband and I don’t always agree. Nowhere is it as apparent as on the subject of ornamental grasses. When I start to wax poetic about the sunrise glittering like diamonds through the dew and delicate flowers of a switch grass, he starts muttering about pulling out the weed whacker.

He grew up in the Midwest where there are still a fair amount of native prairies. Grass has lost some of its appeal. For me, I appreciate the contrast in texture and flower form grasses can give. Mix a pennisetum with coral bells, mums, sedum and ornamental cabbage and nothing screams fall as much- except whatever Pumpkin Spice monstrostity Starbucks has just come up with.

The thing about grasses though, is by the time you really appreciate them, it is getting a little late to plant them. Most of our fall-blooming ornamental grasses like miscanthus, swich grass, little bluestem and pink muhly grass are warm-season, meaning they grow when soil and air temperatures are high. These do very well when planted from June- early September. Plant them too early in the spring or too late into the fall and they have a harder time establishing roots.

There are also cool-season grasses. These include the blue fescue, ‘Karl Foerrester’ Calamagrostis, deschampsia, quaking grass and the popular pony tail grasses (Nasella and Stipa). In contrast, these grasses grow best during cooler temperatures and often flower in mid-summer. They sometimes brown out a bit during heat spells; which looks interesting on the pony tail grass, but is not as attractive on the blue fescue.

The other thing to keep in mind is whether the grass is an annual or perennial. Red fountain grass is lovely, and looks especially fantastic in the fall. But as soon as heavy frost hits it is dead. They are tender and must be considered an annual in this area. Breeders have worked on trying to recreate that red color in perennial grasses with limited success. There are some switch grasses and blue stems that turn reddish in fall.

Most grasses do well in well drained soil and at least 4 hours of sun. I like to leave them up all winter and cut them down in the spring. Try to place them where the flower heads will be back lit by the sun. They look like diamonds. Trust me.

It’s the middle of August and I just planted some petunias, begonias and hybrid impatiens. The boss said throw them away and, like any eager first year greenhouse employee, I was determined to give the forsaken a second chance.

There is a purpose to my madness. With large trees, my landscape is basically shade, but there are edges where some of my shade perennials are requesting a second opinion. The problem is most acute in areas that get the late afternoon sun.Sure, you can successfully plant just about anything in morning sun. Most gardeners will suggest that four to six hours qualifies as full sun.

But what about two or three hours of intense sun in the late afternoon? That may require some experimentation.

In four seasons my yard has gone from a dust bowl with scattered grass and weeds to a rather decent lawn with developing flower beds of shade perennials and shrubs. On the grass side, I just made my fourth seeding. The area this August is much smaller than the first three plantings. Having made three seedings in August and one this past spring, I hands down favor August plantings.

I guess the rule of thumb that in the fall the air cools faster than the soil letting plants make roots rather than leaves applies to grass seedlings too.The shrubs in the beds are progressing nicely but need a bit more size to completely fill their role. The perennials are filling in well. Both suffered some from the extremely cold winters after season one and two.

Beyond the spring flowering shrubs and the texture and foliage color of the hosta and other perennials, my shade gardens need some additional late summer color. In year five I’ve been thinking about adding some annuals scattered among or on the edges of the gardens for more color.

That brings me back to the difficult edges. The full sun petunias may have two months to decide whether they like the sunniest edges. The impatiens were pushed back a little,but, they too, must decide how happy they are. The begonias get to try a spot with a few hours of bright mid-day sun.With success or failure, I will have learned something about my garden edges in the next weeks and besides, I gave a few plants a second chance. The results will be guidance for next season.

Last weekend I celebrated a milestone birthday with three other school friends. In the 20-odd years since high school we have all moved around the country so we decided to meet in Charleston, South Carolina for a long weekend getaway. One of my most memorable experiences was touring an old plantation.

In a previous life I worked for a cotton-breeding company in West Texas and was especially interested to learn more about Charleston’s famous Sea Island cotton. During the 1800s most of the worlds cotton was produced in the South, and the very best was the Sea Island cotton.

The United States is currently ranked third in cotton production behind China and India. Most of the cotton grown here nowis the Upland variety, grown across the South, Texas and throughout the Southwest. This is a knee-high plant with short, strong, relatively thick fibers. It is used for T-shirts, jeans and other clothing.

In contrast, Sea Island cotton is a different species with long, thin, soft fibers. It was commonly mixed with silk. The plant is also a lot taller. If you remember the song “Sumertime” fromPorgy and Bessthe lyrics

“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy

Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high”

refers to Sea Island cotton which reached 6 feet or more. The bolls grew up the stem requiring hand harvesting. Mechanical harvesting would damage the plants. It was also ginned differently as Eli Whitney's invention would damage the delicate fibers.

Sea Island cotton was a much higher quality than the cotton produced other places throughout the South and commanded a higher price from manufacturing in the North, in England, and other European countries in the 1800s. Primarily planted, cultivated, picked, sorted and cleaned by slaves, this was the main cash crop for coastal Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Even after slavery ended, this type of cotton was still cultivated by freemen and white planters until around the turn of the century when a pest, the boll weevil, came up from Mexico and slowly decimated the crop. By the 1930’s Sea Island cotton was basically eradicated.

Despite the chemical revolution of the 1950s and1960S, and breeding of insect-resistant cotton (Bttransgenic) around the turn of this century, Sea Island cotton never recovered. Most of the land has been developed for tourism, and the agriculture that remains is focused on truck farming of produce. You can still see cotton fields throughout the South, but almost all are the shorter Upland variety.

A close relative of Sea Island cotton, is Pima cotton, grown primarily in California. It has the long, fine fibers like Sea Island cotton, and is often mixed with silk, or used in very high thread count sheets.

The other interesting thing about our plantation tour, was the enormous back porch with tall white pillars. This was added on in the 1940s, after the movieGone With the Windcame out and tourists expected all plantations to look like the mythical Tara.

We also ate our way arund town on a culinary tour where we learned about the origins of okra, collards, smoked barbeque and cornbread. I had a great time catching up with old friends, eating delicious food and we even learned something.

Looking around the farm fields of Southern Lancaster County in late July there are three main things happening. The corn is in tassel, tobacco is starting to flower and I finally have fresh tomatoes for my BLTs.

The corn tassel is the male flower of the plant. Those yellow turkey-feet looking things contain over 10 million pollen grains. Each kernel of corn requires pollination by a separate pollen grain. While most plants require an insect or bird to complete their pollination, grasses like corn are wind pollinated. Tassels are high, at the top of the plant, so the pollen grains can fall onto the ears (female flowers) below, or be carried on the wind to nearby ears. A tassel releases its pollen mostly in the morning over several days. An entire field of corn will shed all its pollen in about two weeks. When temperatures are above 85, pollen shed is more rapid. For those allergy sufferers like me, the last few weeks have been rough.

Last week the tobacco started coming into flower too. Unlike corn, where the fruits are very important, tobacco is grown for the leaves. Tobacco is an annual plant, meaning it completes its life cycle in one season. The seeds germinate in the spring, the leaves grow though June and early July and the then it blooms to make more seed for the future. However farmers don’t want to make seed, they want many large leaves. To circumvent the plants natural life cycle, farmers will be out shortly removing all those stalks of large white flowers. This will keep the plants energy into making more leaves.

Looking at our own gardens tomatoes are coming in now. We’ve gotten several questions recently regarding blossom end rot. Despite its rather confusing name, it is not a fungus at all, but a nutrient deficiency. If you have brown spots at the bottom of your ripening fruit, your plants need more calcium. At the beginning of the season mix fast-acting lime into the top foot of your garden soil to both add calcium and raise soil pH to make calcium more available to the plant.

Late in the season when fruit is already developing, you can spray a calcium solution made to combat blossom end rot directly on your plants 2-3 times a week. This is a stop-gap measure at best. If you are struggling with blossom end rot now, remember to amend you soil next spring before planting tomatoes, peppers or eggplant. Pick off fruits already showing brown spots.

Keep tomato plants moist; drought stress exacerbates blossom end rot. This hot dry weather is not helping.

Looking forward on the garden calendar, now is the time to plant fall vegetables. Broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and cabbage should go in now so they have enough time to form nice large heads. Lettuce, kale and spinach can go in anytime from now through September.

Driving around Lancaster County farm fields look robust and wildflowers are blooming, but I wouldn’t say “no” to some rain.