“…..chill November’s surly blast
Made fields and forests bare.”
Robert Burns
The cold and bleakness of November is a bit easier to face knowing that the garlic has been planted and the potatoes, such as they are, have been dug and put away for winter. I’m grateful that I don’t really need the potatoes for sustenance. They were meagre this year with the heat and dryness of the early summer. In the cellar of this house there used to be a very large potato bin; a reminder of earlier and harder times.
Glads also have been dug and are drying for a few weeks on trays before being put away in dry peat moss for the winter.
After not doing any bulb planting last year I have more than made up for it this fall. I planted a good assortment of alliums from Vesey’s and thought I was done. But I couldn’t resist buying even more bulbs that were very cheap at the end of the season in the grocery store bin. I got some more alliums, including one I had never seen before, and double daffodils. I might regret the double daffodils since those are the ones that flop over when it rains. But they make great cut flowers. We will see in the spring whether I made a mistake or not.
The front porch is now bare of the colourful pots of annuals that sit there all summer. I bring some of these inside for the winter. An indoor plant jungle makes winter more bearable I find.
I have experimented a lot over the years with which annuals can successfully make the transition to winter inside. Geraniums, of course, will bloom all winter inside. I have also had success with gazanias and nicotines both large and small. Last winter I discovered that the beautiful feathery white euphorbia that is used as a filler in planters makes a striking specimen plant. I won’t go into my failures (and there have been many) but will only say that is usually obvious by early January if a plant is suited for growing inside.
I have found that some conventional wisdom about how plants should be grown is not always correct. I used to give my winter blooming amaryllis the dormant time in the basement and then bring them out months later to flower. I stopped doing this after seeing a friend who put hers out in planters for the summer and then brought them in and kept them growing. They bloomed just the same without the supposedly necessary rest period.
So the moral of the story is that there is always something new to learn where growing plants is concerned.
Finally, I recently came across a gardening book from the 1970’s by Thalassa Cruso. I heard her name often when I was young since she was the favourite gardening writer of one of my aunts.
In this particular book she was lamenting that people were still burning leaves in the fall instead of composting them. She was ahead of her time about this and many other environmental concerns. I certainly remember the smell of burning leaves from growing up on Anne St in Millbrook.
I think we have come a long way since the 1970’s and looking around now I see all those leaves being used for compost and mulch. The book is a useful reminder of how times have changed for the better.
by Jill Williams
