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My husband is a great one for checklists. Whenever we go on a trip- whether to Iowa to visit his family or to Costco, the first thing we do is make a checklist. All the repair projects on the farm get written down and prioritized the same way. I am not naturally such a linear thinker and his list-making habits have thankfully worn off on me after 17 years of marriage. This year we have also made a checklist for the gardens.

1. Resow grass that is looking a little bare. Look for a good seed mix for your sun/shade conditions. Use the fall rains ( I hope they come soon!) to advantage to germinate and get it established before winter.

2. Get a handle on weeds. Perennial weeds are sending nutrients to their roots for winter dormancy and if you use herbicides, this is an especially effective time to treat. If you don’t, keep pulling. Anything you can do to disrupt the food storage for winter will weaken weeds. Pull annual weeds before they go to seed and deposit to the seed bank in the soil. This will pay dividends in the spring. (See what I did there? Bank, dividends? I crack myself up).  Pictured at left is dad with two huge weeds from the garden.  Whoops.

3. Divide summer or spring blooming perennials like iris, daylilies, monarda when they have finished blooming. Fall bloomers are best divided in the spring. The daylily bed below our kitchen door is first on the list.

4. Resist temptation and don’t overprune shrubs. Evergreens are best pruned in the spring after their first flush of growth. Fall pruning sends a hormonal signal to send out side branches. New top growth is not what you want going into winter. Prune spring bloomers like lilacs, ninebark or forsythia right after they are done blooming in early summer. They set buds for next spring in the late summer/fall. Late pruning this time of year cuts off next spring’s flowers.

5. REALLY resist temptation and don’t prune butterfly bushes, crape myrtle or other summer bloomers. The last two winters were definitely colder than many in recent memory and gardeners in PA, MD and DE lost butterfly bushes and crape myrtles that had been in the landscape for years. Pruning them in the fall can allow water to get into the crown and crack the trunks over the winter. Rather, prune them in late winter or just as new growth is starting to flush in March/April. For crape myrtles, wait until they’ve leafed out next year to trim back.

6. That being said- do prune crossing branches or sickly limbs to prevent breakage in the inevitable snow and ice of winter.

7. Plant bulbs. September and October are prime bulb planting months. Daffodils, crocus and scilla naturalize readily. Some tulips do as well. We always plant a large bed of tulips at the top of the driveway for spring color, because we never get there with annuals until the spring rush is past. Have fun with some unusual bulbs like fritillaria or giant alliums.

8. Clean up the vegetable bed. Pull out tomatoes, peppers and summer veggies as they finish. A fall crop of kale, lettuce or root veggies like radishes and turnips can easily take their spot.

9. Fall clean-up. Always a debate between those who like to do it in the spring vs fall. Leaving flower heads stand in the fall helps feed the birds, gives winter protection and also spreads a little seed around for next summer. If you don’t want to spend all of June pulling out baby cone flowers, do your clean up in the fall.

10. Mulch or compost leaves. Fallen leaves are a great source of nutrients. Rather than sending them to the dump- feed them back to the ground. Chop them up with the mower, and use them to mulch beds, or start a leaf- compost pile for spring soil amending.

That’s enough to get started!

Since few of us will take the time or make the effort to gain near total weed control before we plant, we often face a battle which only persistence can win.

As fall approaches we are often ready for the gardening season to end, and thus lose a great opportunity for year-long weed control.

As I make the rounds through the gardens I care for, I see varying levels of our biggest threat- summer annual weeds. Right now they are maturing seed. Unattended , even a few plants will produce enough seeds to make you wonder where they all came from next year. I have yet to encounter the hopeless garden. More details will soon follow.

Perennial weeds are now trans-locating food from the leaves to the roots. Repeated interruptions by removing the above ground green leaves and stems will weaken, and sometimes kill , the offending perennial weeds. The best results come from action right now.

Other strategies to reduce weed impact include mulch, SHALLOW cultivation, shade from dense planting and perhaps an occasional assist from herbicides. I’ll readily admit that careful, targeted applications of Round-Up play a role in my efforts. I’m not a fan of landscape fabric or pre-emergence herbicides.  Fabric is tough to plant through, harder to hide and when you get it successfully hid, weed seeds germinate in the cover and root through the ground cloth. Pre-emergence herbicides prevent biennials or desired perennials from reseeding. Most of them also seem to find a desired plant or two that they will kill. If you use them,be careful.

This spring I tackled the weeds on a small mountain pink bank (about a day) and a large daylily bed (over two days). I vowed to return every three or four weeks and I kept my vows. Several days ago I had the mountain pink done in about forty minutes and the daylilies in just over one hour.

At home my wife kept telling me that the three large beds, now two and three years old needed a Round-Up walk. In the beginning it was a back pack in each bed. This time I had about one third of the first tank left over. Persistence is the optimum word in weed control.

One more story. My dad was the oldest of six and as a young adult was forced to find off-farm employment. His job was sorting mail on the trains. That took my mother and him to Philadelphia. When Philadelphia didn’t agree, they bought a weed (Canada thistle) infested 20 acres near Mt Joy along the Lincoln Highway.The neighbors were amused at the plight of the city slickers from Philadelphia. While Dad headed for work, Mom headed for the field with a hoe. Three years later Dad quit the railroad and they earned a living with fruit, vegetables and chickens. That continued until my grandfather retired and they moved back to the home farm in Kirkwood.  I don’t know how long it took the neighbors to learn that Mom grew up on a farm south of Unicorn and Dad on one west of Kirkwood.  

Mom, Dad, my wife and I have won the weed battle many times with persistence. You can too, but don’t miss the golden opportunity that fall presents.

It is harvest season in the Southern End. For those of you not from a farming background, here is a primer on what is going around you for the next month. A big “thank you” to many of my neighbors for filling in the holes in my knowledge. Even though I grew up around here, and watched harvest season most of my life, I never really knew what was going on.

Silage- If you see entire corn stalks being harvested now, they are primarily for silage. The corn kernels themselves are not yet fully mature and the stalks are between 60-70% moisture content. The stalks are harvested with a “chopper” and either baled in those long plastic tubes you often see in fields near barns or packed tightly into a silo. The silage ferments and then is fed at a later date to cows and sometimes pigs over the winter.Neverhorses.

Silage has a narrow window of harvest. When it reaches that magical moisture level it must get chopped and loaded very quickly. Farmers often work well past dark. One farmer I spoke with works several crews 24 hrs a day to get it loaded in a timely fashion. If you see farm equipment on the road, please give your tired neighbors a break and don’t pass them recklessly or get impatient.

Silage is fodder with a high yield of energy per acre ratio and good digestibility for the animals. It is rarely shipped any distance, and not often sold on the open market. Farmers have to take special care to prevent molding of the crop and safety measures to prevent falling, respiratory ailments and poisoning from “silage gas”.

Shelled or Ear corn-This corn is harvested much later, when the kernels are fully mature and stalks are dried. Combines separate the seeds from the rest of the plant or other harvesters remove intact cobs. Shelled corn can be further processed and fed to animals, burned in stoves, or used for biofuels. It has a long storage time and is sold on the commodity market .

Tobacco Pennsylvania produces around 20 million pounds of tobacco annually. While just a drop in the bucket compared to North Carolina (at about 413 million pounds) or Kentucky (at 215 million pounds) tobacco is a cash crop for many farmers in this area.

Farmers grow a yellow variety called white burly, used primarily for cigarettes due to the higher nicotine content and two main green leaf varieties. The green leaf varieties are used for cigar wrappers and chewing tobacco as well as cigarette filler.

The white flower spikes are removed midsummer to keep the plant’s energy in producing large leaves. When ready to harvest the entire tobacco plant is cut. The yellow leaf tobacco is inverted in the field for several days to wilt. Then it is hung in a special barn with very good ventilation to dry. Often you see the side boards lifted for air circulation. Sometimes additional heat is added to speed drying. After the tobacco is dried, the leaves are stripped and bundled according to size and taken for sale.

Soybeansor “beans” are also harvested green for silage or when fully dried. They can be pressed for oil, or used as animal feed or other byproducts in human food manufacturing.

If you see farm equipment on the road, please give your tired neighbors a break and don’t pass them recklessly or get impatient.

Let’s be honest. When most people think of blooming perennials, the late May garden comes to mind. April showers generally bring May flowers and most gardens are bursting with peonies, poppies, iris, late bulbs, salvias, dianthus and the like. Summer gardens feature the yellows of the helianthus/heliopsis cousins, Black eyed Susans with some purple cone flowers, astilbes or phlox thrown in for good measure. The fall garden is often looking a bit peaked and could use some sprucing up. The following are our top 5 perennial picks for fall color.

1.Ceratostigma plumbaginoides. Easily my favorite Latin name to say out loud. Plumbago or leadwort is a low growing groundcover for sun or partial shade with beautiful bright blue flowers. The foliage also turns a gorgeous hot pinky-purple in the fall. It is definitely a knock-out. Pumbago is very late to wake up in the spring however, so don’t lose hope if you don’t see it right away.  (Pictured at left with low growing sedum).

2.Anemone. The fall-blooming anemones or wind-flowers are fantastic for a partial shade garden. I have a huge patch of single pink flowering ones in my front yard under a dogwood tree. I love the combination of the tree’s fall color and the flowers. Thin them every year or so as they spread healthily and can overrun a small area. A new dwarf series (the Pretty Lady) hybrids were released in the last few years that proved not as hearty or hardy. ‘Honorine Jobert’, ‘Queen Charlotte are two dependable older varieties.

3.Asters- It is hard to overlook asters as a staple of the fall perennial border. The native England and New York asters provide a long bloom seasons in shades of purple, pink and blue. The lovely daisy flowers provide lots of food for traveling butterflies and bees getting ready for winter. But my favorite continues to be the Tartarian aster, ‘Jindai’. This wide foliaged aster with strong bulky stems is the latest blooming of them all. Often still flowering at Thanksgiving it also has a much coarser texture and bulk to contrast with finer foliage neighbors.

4.Ajania pacifica- or silver and gold Chrysanthemum is the one of the latest blooming perennials I can think of. It has very attractive silver foliage all season. In late October through November it is topped with bright gold button-shaped flowers. A mild pinch in June helps keep it compact through the summer and fall.

5.Tricytis- toad lily. The exquisite, speckled flowers resemble small orchids but are much hardier. They grow well in partial sun/shade in moist soil forming spreading clumps. Do site them near walkways or where you can see the flowers up close as they are delicate and not seen well from a distance. They also make good cut flowers lasting at least a week in a vase.

6.Ok. I know I said top 5 but I have to throw in one more.Amsonia hubrichtii- while not a fall bloomer, is magnificent in the autumn. The fine threadleaf foliage turns a brilliant flaming gold and is such a great contribution to the autumnal landscape. The pale blue flowers in the spring are just a bonus.

Now that the weather is cooling a bit, if you are looking to add a little color to your perennial beds this fall you can’t go wrong with any of these top picks.

The dog days of summer are here. Of my two, the Golden Retriever regularly swims in the creek and any available mud puddle to cool off. My water-hating German Shepherd just looks hot most of the time.

Summer vegetable harvests are coming in strong. Due to ample rain in June and July the corn is tall, and harvests look good. Tomatoes abound as long as the aforementioned rain doesn’t make them crack. Local melons are about ready and we ate our first delicious peaches last week.

Bugs also abound. Also thanks to the rain- many of us are battling Japanese beetles. Pheromone traps work- sometimes too well, drawing every Japanese beetle in the neighborhood to your yard. My dad always jokes, place one at your neighbor’s- just don’t let them catch you. Sevin works, but it is a broad spectrum insecticide and also kills many helpful insects- many that eat spider mites. Picking Japanese beetles off into a jar, many parents preferred chore for bored young children, is quite laborious. Squishing them, while satisfying, may backfire, because that also emits a pheromone attracting more. Insecticidal soap doesn’t work because of their hard shell. Recent reports of using cedar oil diluted in water as a preventative and sprayed on plants they prefer may have some validity. I might have to try some on my crape myrtles and hibiscus before they are decimated.

Now is also the time to think about the fall vegetable garden. Brussels sprouts and cabbage should be planted soon if not already. Brussels sprouts take 80-100 to mature from seed. Many greenhouses have starts beginning in mid-July for planting. Best flavor when harvested after the first frost. My family loves them split in half tossed with olive oil, salted and oven-roasted. Last fall we fed them with vermicompost from the worms in the kitchen and they were the best we’ve ever grown.

Broccoli and cauliflower don’t take as long to mature. But they should be planted by the end of August. Rabbits love them, so protect them with a chicken wire fence. Or get lots of outdoor cats. Or a beagle. Cabbage white butterflies also love them. They lay their eggs on the leaves of all members of the cole family and the resulting green worms munch their way to maturity on the leaves. If this bothers you- they can be controlled organically with the bacteriaBacillus thuringiensis(Bt). It is effective at controlling the larvae but must be applied weekly.

We have about one month before the kids go back to school but quite a bit of time left in the gardening season.