Fall is the time

Fall is the time I most want to plant. Many would suspect that it would be spring, after a long winter. But autumn I think is the ideal time, especially in New York City. In the typical Brooklyn autumn, I like to start my transplanting around Halloween and often after that date. Given my garden's southern exposure and the warm temperatures we have been having over the last few years, my asters, sunflowers, roses and some annuals are still flowering at that time. I have years when these plants are still going in December. So it is that I hate to disrupt this display by tramping all over everything and digging things up. I want to wait until the last moment, keeping my eye on the coming weather. These days I'm just thinking about moving things, but in November, I'm probably doing it.

Fall being a time to garden, transplant, and to find new plants, I like to go to nurseries. However, these days nurseries are filled with pumpkins, hay bales, and assorted autumnal decorations. Maybe they have bushels of apples for sale and hay rides in a wagon. Even my local nursery, and I am lucky to have one, brings out the decorations at this time of year.

J&L Landscaping on the corner of Caton Ave. and E7th St. in Brooklyn

We are all familiar with the Christmas trees and wreaths sold at nurseries in December. I am sure that many of you have noticed the creep of holiday sales into the fall planting season. Now I don't blame the nurseries. After all, they are businesses trying to make a buck. Most non-gardeners buy plants in late spring and summer -when it’s on their minds. Gardeners of course are a different breed altogether, it’s always on their minds. So the nurseries succumbed to a business model that offers nostalgia and sentiment over plants. Check out the Blogging Nurseryman.

Part of the issue is that many nursery plants just look like hell in their pots at this time of year. Management wants them to be out of sight of future customers. Many days seen without water, blown over in windstorms, root bound in their pots. Who'd want to buy them? I just miss the days of sales, when a good gardener could resurrect almost any plant under duress, and get a good deal or two. The industry is such that retail nurseries will only get shipments of what the wholesale growers are pushing. In fall, you know it’s the Chrysanthemums. To be fair, most nurseries are still offering their selection of trees and shrubs until frost. Those are out past the 1/2 acre of pumpkins and hay bales.

Gone are the days of mail order plants. I remember my first shipment from a catalog. Some dehydrated roots of who knows what! How disappointing to open a shipment of new plants and find three brown twigs. I was sure they were dead already, but then I was a kid and didn't know the first thing about it. The Internet changed all that. Glorious photos, all year round, of full healthy plants. Easy ordering and easy shipping.  Suddenly it was possible to get healthy, although small, plants fresh on your doorstep at the time to plant. Every plant I have ordered has survived, even thrived.

White Flower Farm was the source for my Russian Sage, my Boltonia, and my Aster "Monch". All are very healthy. I also got nice lilium bulbs from Select Seeds, but get on it early as they do sell out. The only worry we have is whether or not we can be there when the FED EX guy shows up.

If you can tear yourself away from the Internet, go on over to your local nursery this fall and buy a plant (if you can find one). While you’re there, pick up a pumpkin. Still can't get those online.

Welcome Ramblings

I was out today dusting the sidewalk. It was that kind of a day, when the high clouds semi-obscure the sun’s rays. It’s a gardening day and in New York City, that means sweeping the sidewalk. I do have a garden though, small but productive, in my Brooklyn neighborhood. It’s in the front yard, if you will. It’s not much of a yard, roughly 30 inches by 30 feet, running 1/2 the length of my apartment building. Between the soil and the sidewalk stands an iron fence, about 30 inches tall.

I water my garden about three times a year, outside of mandatory soakings after transplants. I do this with a white 5-gallon pail, filled at the spigot around the house corner, near where my landlord parks his pole setting truck. He's a telephone pole setter, not many like him.

At this time of the year I take stock of the growing season. You can, as many neighbors scratching their heads in wonder do, find me standing at the fence staring into my little plot. What I am doing here is re-organizing the plants, rethinking their placement. I do like to move the plants around. A fascination from the very first moment I had actually moved a plant. I was young; I dug up a sedum (yellow-green flowers, tiny leaves) growing in random placement around our foundation and moved it. I don't remember why. I also did this with clumps of grass in our backyard (not known for its lawn). I reclaimed sandy areas for play while agglomerating grassy ones. A gardener was born. I learned the magic of transplant, that I could also not kill something.

I killed a lot along the way. I also learned not to care. You can't let death get in the way of your learning. I do not know how many plants I have lost. But I remember why, when specific plants are in question, and do not make those errors twice. In the service of learning, do things. This year I cut back my asters one time too many. Oh, they're okay -just budding out later than normal. But I wanted to push it, because these asters so often get out of control. Now I know and nothing was lost.

Every gardener has a specific set of circumstances. It is these that ultimately tie one to the land, specific knowledge meeting general knowledge. Me, well I have a garden where the soil may never actually freeze due to its proximity to the concrete sidewalk and foundation and its southern exposure. Last winter it was so warm, the clematis I recently transplanted from another garden leafed out in January! And we so often plant given our circumstances. I've been away for summers over the last several years, so I planted for spring and fall. This summer the garden was rather barren because I was here to see it for the first time in years. Given my microclimate, now I'm thinking about upzoning my planting. I've always been a fan of pineapple sage (salvia elegans) and other mildly hardy sages. They grow as annuals here, but you know I think I might be able to get it to survive over winter.

The fact that I've been away every summer caused me to consider watering. I knew that I wanted a careless garden, a group of plants that essentially took care of themselves. So I chose based on my interests in color, form and so on, but also on whether or not they could support themselves with no water, all year. So here is a list of plants in my front yard:

Russian Sage -Perovskia atriplicifolia
Maximilian's Sunflower -Helianthus maximilianii
Yarrow -Achillea millefolium
Stonecrop -Sedum spp.
Primrose -Oenothera spp.
Hardy Ageratum -Eupatorium coelestinum
Aster spp.
Chrysanthemum "Sheffield Pink" -Dendranthema x rubellum
Spiraea
Lavender -Lavandula angustifolia
Garden Phlox -Phlox paniculata
Climbing Rose "New Dawn"
Geranium spp.
Tickseed -Coreopsis lanceolata
Cosmos sulphureus
Easy, everblooming shrub rose
Sidalcea spp.
Onion -Allium sphaerocephalon

They have all done exceptionally well, and I only water if it doesn't rain for weeks on end. This year, not at all. I do have a propensity for spreading plants. But this is a topic for another day.