Thought I would combine a late autumn garden update from The Laughing Dragon Garden with a little bit of a "Wednesday Walk" post.
The fall colors are particularly beautiful at the moment and the "walk" part is going to be relatively short, being primarily around our property and maybe a little bit out in the surrounding streets. We'll see how far I get!
This post was largely inspired by just looking out our front door and seeing the magnificent colors of our Japanese Maple.
It is a beautiful tree and although we definitely need to prune it this year, one of the amazing things about it is that at the moment it represents all stages of fall at the same time.
The colors of fall!
There are parts of the tree that are still greenish; other branches are bright yellow and then there are parts that are brilliant orange and red, with the leaves ready to fall off. It is truly one of the most eye-catching trees in our entire neighborhood.
We're enjoying it while we can, and a sunny day truly brings out its full splendor!
This time of the year, it also throws thousands of small seed pods, and more than a few of them turn into tiny saplings we'll see in spring. We actually have a couple of "rescues" in the garden — more on those, further down!
But the maple is not the only thing of colorful beauty around here!
Our aging apricot tree is now close to finished with shedding its leaves and that also serves as a reminder that we need to prune some branches on it that have died... and we must do that now, before all the leaves are done and we can't tell what is actually deadwood and what is merely dormant.
Onward, to the Garden!
Let's take a stroll through the actual Laughing Dragon Garden!
Our happy little garden mascot is still happily laughing away flanked by a couple of small Japanese maple saplings that we rescued and planted in tubs because they were trying to grow in our rutabaga bed.
Hopefully they will turn into pretty trees, in a few years!
We re-use and upcycle as much as possible. Quart sized yogurt containers make excellent pots, if you just drill a hole in the bottom for drainage!
Meanwhile, the nasturtiums continue to grow and they absolutely don't care what season it may or may not be... thereby really proving that they are worthy of the nickname we've given them of being "the cats of the plant realm!"
They are — quite literally — all over the place, now. Some of them were planted as seed back in the late spring and we thought they were duds... but they evidently think November is a good time to grow!
There's another stray!
Now we're just crossing our fingers that they won't we wiped out by a hard freeze in the next few weeks.
A Few Things to Harvest
Our leek and rutabaga bed is one of the few areas of the garden that still has some semblance of life in it, and until our first real freeze comes along both will be safer in the ground than out.
Although we don't have any experience with it — first-year crop for us — it seems the best way to store harvested rutabagas is to take them out of the ground, cut the greenery and the biggest of the roots of, and just lay them in a big box of sand in the garage where they will stay cool and dark.
The leeks we will likely have to eat faster since they are more likely to become "woody" when saved too long.
Rutabagas (front right) and leeks (more towards the back)
The arugula also seems to be doing fairly well still, although it tends to get a little more bitter/peppery this late in the year. We don't mind too much, and it's still nice to add fresh greens to store-bought lettuce!
Arugula
Seeds, and Things
Soon we will turn to the task of fully winterizing the garden. There are still a lot of things that need to be torn up and mulched, and this year's big project will be to work on some soil improvement for our raised beds.
There's also a little bit of seed harvesting that remains to be done. Most of what we grow comes from Heirloom Seeds which means that the subsequent seeds can be saved from year to year and still produce excellent crops.
This little strawberry blossom clearly doesn't know that it's about to become winter! Every year, it seems like we have a few "strays" that make no sense at all!
The last few blackberries...
Whereas we could technically speaking still pick some blackberries, we're not doing so.
At this point in the year they actually have become fairly flavorless and even slightly bitter primarily because they don't get sufficient sun anymore. They definitely look like blackberries but they don't actually taste like anything beyond seedy watery blobs with just a hint of blackberry.
We're grateful for the many bags of blackberries in the freezer, and the several gallons of blackberry wine slowly maturing in our big downstairs pantry!
So let's continue on our stroll!
Oh wait, Here's a spot of color! Looks like these particular Cosmos have decided that they were going to wait until November before finally setting bloom. Very pretty it is too!
Onwards, to the Rest of the Property!
Our second Japanese Maple got a stiff haircut early this year and it came back quite well and it now also is a mass of beautiful fall color.
Meanwhile, the hydrangeas got a similar haircut and are slowly coming back... and who knew that hydrangeas also present their own version of fall color?
Hydrangea leaves turning red...
Around the corner, our third Japanese maple is a different strain of natural dark red leaves, and this one turns incredibly vibrant bright red in the fall.
Here it's competing with our Smoke Tree which also has really beautiful fall color.
Nature is Always Working!
Our winters here tend to be cool but seldom harshly cold, so things rarely go entirely to sleep.
This Magnolia is in full fall color but you can also see the little fuzzy buds which will become white flowers in the early spring.
Magnolia
Meanwhile, these little white flowers (Candytuft) are actually winter blooming and they're just starting to set flowers now which is quite normal for them.
We try to reuse what we already have as much as possible. This includes what our many trees shed with the seasons.
We could, of course, take the droppings from the cedar trees and the redwood and haul them off to the dump and then buy mulch to spread in the outer beds towards the street... or we could simply take the droppings and spread them in the beds and let them mulch by themselves.
Home grown mulch!
The latter seems like a more natural approach and the rather dense foliage tends to combat weeds just as well as store-bought mulch.
Never been much of a fan of blackberries except for the fruit. They are incredibly invasive and the vines are vicious, thorny and sharp. That said, I have to confess that the leaves turn very pretty colors in the fall!
Speaking of pretty colors in the fall, the few shoots that have come back from a maple tree we cut down at the end of the house last year are showing off possibly the brightest fall color we have anywhere near here!
The few little shoots are truly magnificent and the most intense red I have seen in nature in a long time. Oddly enough, when the tree was fully grown it rarely had much fall color. Strange how nature works, sometimes!
Last, But Not Least...
Our yard waste composting area has pretty much reached "the end of the line" now. Meaning that a very long pile of debris has reached the fence by the street.
We started it up near our shed, and the mound has run the entire length of the fence line, about 80 feet now. At the top end (by the shed) we now have very fertile soil where we started growing potatoes this year — and go a bumper crop!
The pile gradually breaks down and we use the soil as we go. The whole process seems to take about 10 to 12 years if you just leave it to happen naturally, which is what we've done. It's basically a mixture of small branches and twigs, grass clippings, dead stuff from the garden, raked up leaves and whatever else we find.
It's not exactly Hugelkultur, but close enough!
And that's about all I've got for this update. I hope you enjoyed the little autumn stroll through the garden and around our wee urban homestead!
Thanks for visiting! Comments are always welcome!
(All images are my own; some of these are by @denmarkguy who co-gardens with me!)
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