Now that it is officially fall, let’s take some time to enjoy the seasonal changes. Fall can be much more than just

Ornamental Kale

cleaning up and clearing. It is a great time to add some seasonal color to your homes landscape. Even though the garden is done for the year and most plants are slowing down their growth, you can add a new look to your home by making some colorful changes using plants like the following:

Ornamental kale when planted directly into the ground is easy to care for and can last well into the winter. It is native to North America, is easy to grow and some varieties can grow to be 18 inches in height. Kales feathery and lacy leaves range in colors from green to red to even white, depending on the variety that you choose. It thrives in temperatures below fifty degrees in well drained soil. Ornamental cabbage has similar traits buts its leaves are wavy edged and form rosettes with pink, purple, red or white centers.

Fall Pansies

Fall pansies add a nice punch of color to the dull brown and tan tones of the rest of the fall landscape. They have gained in popularity over the years and are easy to find in garden centers, hardware stores and home center stores. Choose compact plants with deep green foliage.  Plant in well-drained, rich soil, in a sunny to partly-shady area of your landscape.  As the plants flower through out the season deadhead the blossoms to extend flowering. Fall pansies are cool-weather lovers that can actually make it through frosts and even single-digit temperatures. They may even surprise you when they return voluntarily in the spring!

Chrysanthemums are a popular choice for fall color. They come in a variety of single and bi-colored blooms. There are many different kinds of flowers with cushion, daisy, and pom-pom being the most common. Mums are a wise choice for instant color and mostly come in decorative containers so you can just take them home and display them. They are also disease and pest resistant and make a big color splash with little effort.  Once they bloom out they can be left in their containers and stored in the garage for spring planting. Just do not let them dry out entirely.

Pumpkins, it would not be fall without them! You can even go to a local farm

Chrysanthemums

and pick them yourself! If picking them is not for you, don’t worry,  you can by them at roadside stands, garden centers and even at the grocery store. Choose one with a firm skin, with no soft spots and a uniform, deep orange color.  A   flat bottom  pumpkin will allow it to stand up on its own. A nice firm green stem makes a pumpkin really stand out. Do not carve it yet, cut pumpkins only last a short time. Know how you want to use them in your display and pick them up early when the selections are the best.  Add a few corn stalks and some gourds and you have an outstanding entrance way display!

Outdoor Halloween Decoration

A is for Assessing and Analyzing

• What worked well this year? Was there a type of plant or vegetable that grew well, were there
  

  Linda's Serenity Garden May 2010

  disappointments? We had a very dry year, some things survived the drought. In comparison, last year we had too much rain. Making notes of the strengths and weakness of your gardening efforts and then reviewing them in the Spring will help make your garden successful and enjoyable. Consider making a photo record too, digital pictures are easy to take and transfer to your computer, along with notes, and resources.

• Have you had a soil test recently? Whether you are planting perennials, annuals, bulbs, or lawns, the nutrients are depleted over time. Fall is the perfect time to have the soil tested and amended so it will produce the best results for you. Soil test Kits are available for $9.00 at the Penn State Extension office.

B is for Bulbs and Birds

• “Bulbs” is an inclusive term describing a variety of fleshy underground matter that includes true bulbs like
  

  Tulips Mount Vernon, WA April 2010

  tulips, corms such as crocus, and rhizomes for example: lily of the valley and bearded iris. Spring flowering bulbs need full sun, well drained soil, but only minimal care. These bulbs, once they start to show, serve as reminders that better and nicer days are ahead. Years of selection and breeding have provided spectacular color and disease resistant varieties.

• There are approximately thirty-five species of birds that can be seen in your yard in the winter time. Think about a family project of attracting birds and caring for them during the harsh months of the year. With the right feed and feeders, birds will provide entertainment, action and color. Bird watching, indentifying, and journaling them are good ways to pass the dreary days of winter. So take some time in the fall to select a good feeder, provide shelter and water for them.

C is for Cleaning and Composting

• As the growing season slows down, less time is required to maintain the home landscape. Now is a good time
  

  Compost Bin Made of Pallets

  to clean up while the weather is still nice. Take some time to edge around your plantings, remove any weeds and take out any insect eggs, nests, and debris. Taking them out now will prevent hundreds of seeds germinating in the Spring. Trim back any damaged limbs and branches. Sanitize and oil all your garden tools to prevent disease and corrosion. While you should continue to mow your grass, remember your mower should also be prepared properly for the winter. Change the oil and filter; check the plug, and lastly, drain the fuel. Doing all of this will extend the life of the mower and improve its performance.

• Your way of recycling naturally: start a compost pile with grass clippings and spent plants as you clean up your vegetable garden. You can also add the used potting soil from your container plantings. With the onslaught of falling leaves, they can be shredded with your mower and added to the compost pile too.

• By Steve Ward
  Master Gardener Coordinator
  Penn State Cooperative Extension in Lackawanna County
• “Penn State is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity, and the diversity of its workforce.”
• Used with permission

We have a patch of raspberries and blackberries in Linda’s Serenity Garden. The bushes have been in place for 3 years now and have become very hearty and have been growing taller each year. This year I built a trellis to help contain the bushes and make it possible to walk beside them and pick the berries with out getting all scratched up.

I took some 1″ PCV pipe and cut it into 4′ long sections on my chop saw. I then used U joints to connect the sections together. One cross section with legs. I laid the PCV pipe on the garage floor to help keep everything lined up and straight. For the back trellis I built one with 4 sections. The last section was cut back to 24″, which give it a length of 14 feet. The front trellis was built with 2 sections, for a length of 8 feet.

I placed the PVC pipe in the ground using a hammer and a small piece of 2″x4″ lumber. I then stretched a plastic mesh material that I purchased at a local nursery. This mesh was made for plant support. The mesh was attached with wire ties to the pipe and then cut to size with a pair of scissors.  After all of this was done the while plastic pipe just stood out in the garden like a sore thumb. Something needed to be done to make it blend in better with its surroundings. I went to the hardware store and purchased a can of black paint that is made to put on plastic furniture. I sprayed the pipe black and it blended in better with its surroundings. The two trellis did their job this season and we were able to pick berries without getting all scratched up.

White berry trellis.

One berry trellis painted black. You can see how it is already starting to blend into the garden.

Linda’s Serenity Garden has taken every inch of the front and backyards of our home. The only grass area’s left this Spring where the walkways.  When we needed to replace our lawn mower that tiny bit of grass did not justify purchasing a new mower.

We were planing to dig up the grass sod and then put down cedar wood chips as a walking surface. The arborist suggested that we use the chipped debris from the five trees he just removed from the south property line.  His suggestion would eliminate the labor of digging up the sod! Yeah!  The arborist recommended covering  the sod with the chipped debri at least four inches thick. We followed his advice and spread the chips over the  walkways.  Within two months, the chips had killed all of the grass and the chips had compressed down to less then 2 inches high.

However, the chips included the needles and branches from the evergreen trees and did not have the eye appeal we wanted.

I went to the local bark supply firm and brought home a load of cedar wood chips. I spread the cedar wood chips right over the first layer.  The appeal of the garden was transformed! The uniform color of the chips and the fullness of the covering of the walkways made the garden look complete. You can judge from the photos.

Walk way of grass between shrubbery.

REA Express wagon from above photo with new cedar wood chips layed down in the walkway. Compare the differance in looks.

Linda on a small grass walkway under the bird feeders, holding a friends puppy.

Prepairing the garden and walkways May 2010

Supplies and Materal need, woodchips, wheelbarrow & flat shovel. I found the short handle shovel was a lot easier to work with than the long handle shovel.

Here I am starting to cover the orginal wood chip base with the new cedar wood chips. The differance in the apperance between the two types of chips is quite striking.

Cedar chips on walkway to the green house

Walkway where Linda was on the grass holding the puppy with grass replaced by the new cedar wood chips.

We had a chair that the bottom strapping had worn out and broken through. In our town you just can not put a chair out next to your trash can and have it picked up. You have to take it to the transfer station and throw it into a inter-modal container which is then taken by truck to the railroad yard and put on the daily unit garbage train and taken to the landfill. The minimum fee for the transfer station is $20.00. Throwing this chair out was not worth $20.00 that was for sure.

Need is the mother of invention and we needed to find something to do with this old patio chair. Bob had the idea of turning it into a planter. We found a pot that would fit inside the chair frame. Bob had a some small cut off pieces of  2″x4″ treated lumber from building the fence. These where put on the ground and the pot set on top of them. Linda filled the pot with some gravel in the bottom for drainage and a mixture of potting soil and 1/3 compost, then planted the pot with some flowers We now had a new garden accent for the cost of a new pot! The cost of the pot was a lot less then the $20.00 fee at the transfer station.

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