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Several days after the Solanco Fair ended my wife and I told our car to go down the lane and not to come back for a while. Our mission was to visit high school buddies on the west coast, do some birding and to see a few more pieces of this big country.

On September 28 we found ourselves on the northern tip of Wisconsin where our host was busy feeding her horses and covering the tender plants in her vegetable garden. The report was that except for the first three weeks in September, they had had a cool, dry summer with an early frost feared for that evening.

A few sentences of that evening's conversations caught my attention. She said that the farm papers were full of ads for free horses. It had been dry and the hay crop was short and expensive.

It did not frost that night but two mornings later in western Minnesota we saw ample evidence of frosted cornfields. A wet spring had delayed planting and the crop was behind schedule.

By the time we reached eastern North Dakota, it was obvious that they had had a very wet year with cool temperatures. One of the wildlife refuges we visited seemed to set high and dry to me before I spotted the ruminants of the wall of sandbags that had protected their headquarters.

Moving west through western North Dakota and Montana there is some rough land but significant stretches of irrigated agriculture, fallow farming of spring wheat and grazing. Fallow farming uses a field every other year with the hope that in the off year the field gains some moisture reserves.

Our new car needed some warranty work in western Montana, so we spent our first icy morning in a dealer's waiting room. We had experienced our first light snow in the area of Glacier National Park.

With the delay, we picked up the pace and headed for the Washington peninsula. There we found some interesting weather patterns. Near the ocean there is a strip of temperate rainforest with up to 280 inches of rain annually. It would have been wet even if it had not been raining during our visit.

The next day was warm and sunny so we targeted the highest mountain in that area. I guess I had been warned, but by the time we reached the top the temperature had dropped 20 degrees and it was blowing and sleeting enough to send us hightailing back to the valley.

In the valley, we were told that on the mountainside of the area's main road it often rains or snows while the waterside of the road is drier or sunny. We are talking distances of less than five miles.

By mid October we met my buddies and had a great four-day reunion. We then swung a bit south and turned toward home, but we will save that report for next week.

I hope you were fortunate enough to enjoy the few gorgeous days we had last week. 70 degree temps the end of October are a gift. Around here we were painting greenhouses, and doing a little mulching. I also found some time to sneak out for a walk and admire the changing colors.

Dogwoods have almost all turned their deep burgundy color, and a few bright red berries remain, but the birds have been picking most of them clean. The native Itea virginica is turning a brilliant red as is the non-native burning bush Euonymous alata. Both are highly visible this time of year, but the Euonymous reseeds and is becoming a nuisance in area woodlands.

Oakleaf hydrangeas are entering their third season of interest with deep red foliage, which will soon be lost exposing beautiful exfoliating bark. Dad and I talk about this one a lot, mostly because it's great!

There are several perennials that are highlights in the autumn garden. For partial shade monkshood, or Aconitum has striking blue flowers spikes and reaches 3+ feet tall. Planted beneath a dogwood, the color combination is striking. Groundcover plumbago, Ceratostigma plumbaginoides has periwinkle blue flowers and bronze-pink foliage in the fall. Quite eye-catching, if I can only keep the rabbits away...

For sunnier spots, of course ornamental grasses shine this time of year with feathery, graceful seed heads. These are best situated in full-sun with well drained soil where they will be backlit by morning or afternoon sun.

Another of my favorites, Amsonia hubrichtii, Arkansas bluestar, blooms in the spring but the delicate foliage turns a golden yellow in the fall and is spectacular along a fence or retaining wall. Helianthus salicifolius has bright yellow daisy flowers that bloom from late Sept-end of October and are a nice alternative to mums.

I have quite a few old-time hardy mums my grandmother planted years ago just coming into their own. Tight balls of color these are not. Think more sprawling, daisy-shaped flowers in lavender, red, peach and yellow. Of course asters are another key player in the fall perennial border. 'October Skies' is a great one, as is Aster tataricus. There is an improved 'Purple Dome' called 'Vibrant Dome'. All of these are native, and bloom through October.

Heuchera, or coral bells, also color up nicely in the fall.They come in a wide variety of colors from lime green to silvery purple, but seem to deepen and become richer in fall's gentler light. Please take some time to enjoy the few remaining days of fall. Soon enough the snowflakes will fly and our gardening days will be behind us for another year.

**Last week I mentioned garden clubs as a way to share gardening experiences and learn. There is interest in getting one started in the Quarryville area to meet at the library and help with the landscaping around the building, as well as hosting speakers. If interested please contact Ann Zemsky at 548-3541.

My children are like little sponges. The number of new words and skills they soak up every day is amazing. Sometimes to my chagrin. Research shows us that to keeps our minds nimble and dementia at bay, we need to practice learning new things.

What's my point? As the growing season slows down, this is my opportunity to expand my gardening knowledge in other ways. We are fortunate to have several top-notch public gardens in the area that offer educational classes ranging from brief hour lectures, to several week-long courses.

Longwood Garden's Susan Nichols is excited by changes they are making to their Ornamental Certificate Series to include single session workshops on pruning, beekeeping and disease identification. In addition to learning hundreds of new plants through the series, these new courses will help students become better all-around gardeners.

During the holidays, lots of courses on natural decorating abound. If your interests reach more towards birding and native habitats, check out Mt Cuba Center's offerings.

The Penn State Lancaster County Master Gardeners host a variety of workshops and lectures throughout the year. Their symposium, held March 20th, at Willow Valley, is always a fun day with tons of great information.

The Master Gardeners also have a comprehensive listing of speakers available to give presentations to your local garden club or organization.

Speaking of garden clubs, there are several in Lancaster County. In addition to being a great place to chat about your own garden, most host educational speakers and garden tours even annual plant sales. Town and Country Garden club meets the first Wednesday of the month in the Rhorerstown area.

There are also tons of books on gardening. 'Second Nature: A Gardener's Education', by Michael Pollan is a great book, written almost 20 years ago, and is among my top 10 favorite gardening reads. Last winter, I read a lot about vegetables, composting and square foot gardening methods. My library card got a good workout, but it didn't cost me anything, aside from late fees.

This year I'm anxious to curl up with a nice cup of hot chocolate and peruse books on designing with perennials in anticipation of sprucing up my borders next summer. Despite this summer's bout with weeds, I'm thinking to expand a bit.

Be observant. Even a walk down a country lane or through your neighborhood will expand your knowledge. What shrubs have interesting fall color or berries? The purple-fruited beautyberries are among my fall favorites, as well as the beautiful red foliage of oakleaf hydrangeas, and Viburnum 'Wintethur'. Do you notice anything especially striking in the winter? Red berries on the deciduous hollies are a great addition to the landscape as are red- or yellow-twig dogwoods.

As much as we like to hibernate over the cold gray days of winter, take the opportunity to learn, read, and dream. It may just keep you young.

According to the statisticians who study such things, more people grew vegetables this year than in the recent past. Whether it was the economy, a desire to be "greener", or eat more locally, sales of vegetable seeds and starts were up around the country.

If you were new to vegetable gardening this year, will you try it again? This season had some unique challenges and also some real bumper crops. I'll touch on a few of them, as well as give some suggestions for next year.

The spring was perfect for cool season vegetables. The slow gradual warming and plentiful rain produced a long season for lettuce, cabbage, and the best broccoli I've grown in a while. Cool nights yielded sweet spinach I munched on into early June. Peas and onions produced nicely. Peas should be seeded in the ground by the 20th of March for best harvest, and our six short rows, yielded plenty for our two families to freeze, as well as our little ones to eat.

The challenges were in the warmer season crops. The late blight outbreak was well covered in the media and if your tomatoes were affected, you have my sympathies. Late blight is a fungal disease that affects members of the solanacea family, most notably tomatoes and potatoes. This was the villain of the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s. Symptoms include dark brown or black lesions on the foliage, spreading to the fruit. White fuzzy mold covers the plants in extreme cases. The only recourse is to remove the plants, making sure to get all the leaves, bag them and toss them in the trash or burn them. Keep them out of your compost pile, as the spores live on plant tissue and will persist.

Our cool, wet summer exacerbated late blight this year, but if you suspect you had this problem, rotate a different crop into that spot next year. Closely inspect transplants if you buy them from a nursery. There are no viable treatments for late blight, but fungicides containing mancozeb , chlorthalanil, or copper will work as a preventative.

Did you notice the scarcity of cucumbers at the fair this year? Another fungus, cucurbit downy mildew was to blame. Symptoms include small patches of yellowing on the surface of the leaves and in extreme cases white fuzzy mildew on the undersides of the leaves. This mildew can attack at any stage of the life cycle, but it severely reduces yield, eventually killing the plants.

The spores cannot survive our winters, but rather blow up from Florida, or travel on infected melon and squash plants. A Google seach for "cucurbit downy mildew" directs you to a map and forcasting tool from North Carolina State which tracks outbreaks. Extension agents all along the East coast grow and observe sentinel plots of key indicator plants, melons, cucumbers and squash, to inform farmers about the spread of the disease.

There are several preventative and curative products available to treat this disease. Look for resistant varieties in seed catalogues and from your garden center. Also, the spores don't seem to reach this far north until the end of July. Planting mid- to late May and using transplants instead of seeds, may buy some time to get a good harvest before the spores reach this far north. Although you may need to protect young plants if the nights are still cold.

It's not all gloom and doom. Potatoes didn't suffer much from the tomato late blight, and the cool, damp weather produced a bumper crop of spuds. My greenbeans, despite the best efforts of the rabbits and groundhogs, are still producing. My basil yielded a ton of pesto. The fall cabbage, broccoli and Brussels sprouts are also doing well.

My pumpkins were pathetic, but that was probably more my fault than anything else. We'll have a few for Halloween, but none made it to the fair this year. I also had a pleasant surprise. My first watermelon was yellow, as were the subsequent ten. Somehow a 'Yellow Doll' found it's way to my garden and it'll be back on purpose next summer.

So what now? This year it is especially important to pull out your finished plants. Plant a cover crop such as timothy or clover if you want. Or not. If you have an Amish or horse farm neighbor, spread a thin layer of manure. Or not. Make sure you rotate your crops. The only guarantee is it will all be a different next summer.

Now that the fair is behind us, the fall is here in earnest. The dogwood tree outside my window is starting to color up, and my white birch has already dropped her lacy leaves. Winter will be here before we know it.

Right about now, those brightly-labeled catalogues and cardboard boxes start popping up in hardware stores, supermarkets, garden centers and the like, promising a bit of spring after a long gray winter. I'm talking about spring- flowering bulbs, of course; tulips, daffodils, crocuses, hyacinths, scilla, and frittilaria for the more adventurous.

But even though bulbs generally appear for sale in mid-August, for best success hold off on planting until the soil temperature is around 60 degrees; roughly the end of September or beginning of October. A good rule of thumb is to wait until after the first frost. Some gardeners swear by planting under a waxing (growing) moon. That's an old-wives tale, but who knows?

When you do plant them, remember that most bulbs do best in a sunny location with good drainage. The more sun, the better the flowering will be. In terms of depth, you should generally plant each bulb in a hole three times its height. Plant crocuses, scilla, grape hyacinths and snowdrops 4-5". Tulips, daffodils and hyacinths should go deeper- approximately 8". For the cautious, an extra inch or so won't hurt and will provide a bit of protection from our "false springs". Several years ago I had daffodils breaking the surface in January last year. The subsequent plantings went a bit deeper.

For masses of color, dig your holes or trenches and place the bulbs in groups of one to three, pointed-side up. Keep them close together but not touching; for best display place them about twice a bulb-width apart. Cover them, tamp down the soil and then water them really well. If it hasn't rained, water again in 4 or 5 weeks. This year, that probably won't be a problem. If you like to mulch, you can mulch them lightly for a little more protection, but remember to scrape it away in the spring before they appear.

A word about deer: if you have them--and you know if you have them--stick with daffodils and grape hyacinths, snowdrops or scilla. Crocuses and tulips especially, are good deer-food. I was especially happy with my crocuses last year. But they are by the road out of the deer pathways.

Another thing to consider when you plant is this: some bulbs are naturalizers and some are not. If you are looking to plant a large area, you may want to stick with bulbs that will come back and multiply like daffodils, scilla and crocuses. You can divide these clumps after flowering every three to four years. Most tulips only look good the first year or two, and the second year depends on how long you are willing to put up with the dying foliage. Some tulips--the Darwin hybrids (tall), fosterianas (medium) and kaufmannianas (short)--will naturalize, but have slightly different flower forms than traditional hybrid tulips. My Darwin hybrids were spectacular the first year and good the second. Depending on how well they do this year, I might chalk that up to another failed experiment.

Next spring enjoy your fall labor, and then wait. And then wait some more, and then cut off the dead foliage. One of the most common questions we get every spring regards when to cut bulb foliage. Flowering uses up all the stored food in the bulb that needs to be replenished by photosynthesizing. If you cut off the foliage too soon, you will diminish the next year's flowers. Fertilizing immediately after flowering before the foliage browns will help, but it's most important not to cut them off too soon! If the unsightly foliage bothers you, plant bulbs where their dying leaves will be hidden by newly-emerging perennials in the border. Hostas, or fall-blooming plumbago are good choices. Whatever you do my mother begs you NOT to braid the foliage. This just makes her cringe.

Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square plants over 125,000 bulbs every fall. When you get spring fever next year, they may be worth a trip. Who knows, you may be inspired!