Some September Updates

I am trying hard to find more garden time this month, knowing that I have a lot to do to get ready for autumn. There are dozens of bitter cherry tree suckers around the yard that I need to clip or saw down to try to control them. A couple of the ones in front of the orchard bed are over ten feet tall, so it is definitely time to cut them out. Yesterday, I managed to cut down all the ones in the driveway bed and some big leaf maples that have started near the driveway, too. When darkness fell, I had to give up for the night and an impressive thunderstorm came through with heavy rains. It lasted over two hours.

One thing that I’m doing differently this year is not using the yard waste container as much. Instead, I just chop up as much of the vegetation and branches as I easily can and drop them back around where they grew. This seems to make sense to me, rather than pulling all that growth and energy away from the bed and then supplementing with organic fertilizer, I can leave the energy there and let it break down and add organic matter to the soil. I can still fertilize, of course, but I’m hoping the plants will grow stronger in this system.

This weekend, I cleaned out one of the raised veggie beds and planted seeds in there–peas, spinach, and lettuce. It might be too late in the season for the peas but I wanted to give it a try.

Before I cleaned up the bed
Another view of the bed and trellis
After clean-up, from the front
After clean-up, from the side

The wet weather is expected to continue for another few days. I expect that will help the seeds get growing pretty quickly. There are other seeds waiting to grow in this bed always, including borage and calendula.

There was a brilliant surprise as I wandered the yard yesterday. Our friend Meredith gave us some Amaryllis beladonna bulbs about seven or so years ago. I have had them in the garden ever since, where they leaf out ever year and then disappear in the summer. And until now, they have never bloomed. But look what happened finally!