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October Is The True Beginning Of Spring For Gardeners
by Joan Hinkemeyer
October’s bright blue weather ignites the gypsy blood in my spirit. I long to race across the hills flinging my arthritic arms to the sky, embracing all within sight.
Delft blue skies highlight golden trees, tinted glasses and blazing sumac. Were I a Native American in another time, I’d be gathering, gathering, gathering everything edible to sustain my family and me over the long cold months ahead.
Instead, I’m an urban gardener still propelled by the need to gather from my own garden plots, but secure in the knowledge that I need not survive on the harvest of my gathering and growing.
October affects many gardeners this way. We feel compelled to harvest that last string bean or raspberry while also carefully covering carrots and beets for later use or seeking out the few remaining intrepid flowers. Thus, while realizing the season’s end, we harvest, but we also seek to prolong the season by covering and protecting.
While we’re in the protecting mood, we can plant spring bulbs by mid-month. There is nothing more optimistic to a gardener than planting spring-blooming bulbs. Even folks most depressed by winter can plant a tiny crocus bulb and realize its cheerful, golden blossoms will appear in just three months or so.
Don’t just plant large red tulips. Include lots of mini bulbs for variety and early blooming. They are expensive but they all naturalize and increase yearly.
Q. Because there are so many trees on our block, squirrels are a real nuisance and always dig up our spring bulbs. Any ideas?
A. Find a natural predator for the squirrels? Some people advocate sprinkling corn starch or even talcum powder around newly-planted bulbs. I’ve been fairly successful covering bulb areas with floating row cover or bits of fine-mesh screening until the ground freezes. Anyone out there have any other suggestions?
Q. I like cosmos, but mine never thrive past the short spindly stage. Is there a special variety that grows tall and full like some of the impressive stands I see throughout the city?
A. Not that I know of. Cosmos are self-seeding annuals and can become nuisance plants without control. They are sun lovers that do require some regular moisture and will accept poor soil. (I had one growing out of a sidewalk crack!).
Let your first crop go to seed in early autumn. These seeds will germinate in early summer and produce robust plants for the new season. Repeating the procedure will give you ever-stronger plants. This same technique also works for bachelor buttons.
Q. Foliage for my grape hyacinths, snowdrops and Madonna lilies is already showing. Are these plants confused? What do I do to prevent them freezing and dying over the winter?
A. Nothing, except to put some leaf mulch over the Madonna lilies. The grape hyacinths and snowdrops are simply following their regular pattern and will reward you with blossoms in the spring. Both are almost indestructible with the grape hyancinths becoming nuisance plants, so some winter kill is not necessarily a bad thing.
Q. Although my winter squash bloomed during the summer, it didn’t set fruit until very late August, so my squash didn’t really mature. It grew in a sunny area and received regular watering.
A. Blame it on the weather (always a good excuse in Colorado). Remember the marathon of torrid July days? They were just too hot for squash, even though these plants are heat lovers. The rain and more moderate temperatures that followed later triggered off the fruit-setting process. Sometimes a gardener can do just so much to control a plant’s environment. The fact that squash, tomatoes and even cooler-weather vegetables such as broccoli survived our summer is a testimony to the resilience of plants.
Q. Our enthusiasm for such drought-tolerant plants as santolina and ornamental grasses seems out-of-hand. Everything thrived this year, but things now seem really overgrown. What do we cut back and when?
A. Trim the santolina to a respectable shape now (more in the spring if you like). Ornamental grasses are the stars of winter landscapes, so don’t prune them unless they really bother you until March.
October is really the beginning of spring for gardeners. Even as we revel in nature’s glorious color extravaganza, we felt twinges of sadness at the end of another growing season. Yet new growth for bulbs and perennials is germinating and swelling underground. Notice the rosettes of green growth at the base of your perennials, and even the nucleus for next year’s leaves on the bare branches of spring blooming shrubs and trees.
October’s efforts also pay dividends in the spring, so compost and mulch your leaves for planting beds, rough-spade soil for winter action and plant LOTS of bulbs for spring color.
Then join me in a midnight dance to embrace the bright Hunter’s Moon, reveling in the knowledge that all the beauties of June “cannot rival for one hour, October’s bright blue weather.”
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