Category: Gardening

According to historical climate data, the average high near me in October is 62; the average low is 43. The temperature has reached the low 70s every day this week, though it’s dropping to a high of 56 on Friday. This can, without a doubt, be referred to as “unseasonably warm”, as I continue to walk outside barefoot to retrieve the mail, and had to open windows in the afternoons to keep the house from overheating.

Unlike the people on the Gulf coast of Florida who have many months of recovery from Hurricane Ian, or the east coast of Canada recovering from Hurricane Fiona, here in Illinois, at least for now, I’m able to appreciate the strange weather shift as my garden lingers into the fall. One last sunflower stalk remains with a handful of blooms, and my last okra flowers appeared within the last two weeks. I’ll need to harvest those last okra before the frost hits, probably this weekend, and the tomatoes are becoming easier to find as the plants die off. Eventually – probably in a week or so – I’ll be able to harvest my sweet potatoes.

These last strawberry flowers – in October! – are destined to disappoint; they’re not likely to become fruit as the temperature drops. We should have a few more days of harvesting raspberries and golden raspberries though. And by harvesting, I really mean standing outside and eating them straight off the brambles.

Every time I look out the bay window, I have to decide whether I should step outside to harvest something. The tomatoes – all bite-sized – are ripening faster than I can keep track of them, and I keep redirecting the sprawling sweet potato vines to keep them out of the lawn. The okra, alas, seems to be smothered by both the sweet potatoes and tomatoes; I’m not sure we’ll get any at all at this rate, as I haven’t seen a single flower yet.

One particular tomato plant – in the green bed – may need to come out; the leaves and fruit are developing brown spots. The other beds, and the yellow pear tomatoes in that bed, seem alright so far. Our squash plants (in the bed frame, so not really pictured) are spreading slowly, we’ve only picked a couple yellow squash, and there’s no sign of acorn squash forming so far.

Towering behind the keyhole bed are our mammoth sunflowers. And I do mean towering; the tallest one is almost twice my height. (Yes, I know that I’m short, but we’re still talking a ten-foot sunflower.) Over the past two days, it has evolved from a single flower peeking out to several open flowers.

As I was outside taking garden photos this afternoon, I heard something whoosh past me and land on the stalk of a sunflower… a cicada. I tried to get a good photo of it, but it insisted on moving any time I got too close. I definitely prefer it to last year’s (unphotographed) yellow jacket nest.

Sunflowers make me smile, particularly in my own garden where I can see them every day. When I grow them in the backyard, they face away from the house, so I have to go outside to really enjoy them. When I grow them in the front garden, the sunflowers face the front door in the morning, and then turn towards the street later in the day, making the Spanish translation “girasol” (literally rotate + sun) a rather accurate name.

Sunflowers surprise me at times with their resilience. The stem for this particular sunflower was split, though I’m unsure whether it was by the foxes that play in my yard or a windstorm. The roots are still in the ground and the flowers opened despite the damage.

The locations surprise me sometimes too. There are the sunflowers I planted, and then there are the ones the squirrels plant from the bird feeder.

If you aren’t growing your own sunflowers, there may be a farm near you that has a field of them. In our case, Kuipers Family Farm in Maple Park has over 7 acres of just sunflowers that can be visited starting late August.

Well, this is a long overdue post about my garden. Not to say I’ve been neglecting the garden, I just forgot to post about it. To begin with, I had a late start at planting this year – I didn’t plant any seeds until we returned from our vacation late April. Then the weather was topsy-turvy, with some excessively warm days (great for germination) followed by cool ones (poor confused plants), including some late spring weeks where I turned on the air-conditioning and the heat in the same week.

We’re solidly into summer now, a surprisingly dry one according to my somewhat brown grass. It’s been just wet enough that I’ve gotten by with minimal plant watering (and I never water the lawn). We’re already harvesting peas, strawberries, mulberries, and blackberries, and the volunteer tomatoes have started producing flowers. There may be okra hidden under the peas… I’m honestly not sure if they’ve survived, though we’ll find out soon as the peas die out in the heat. I planted a few more okra seeds in another bed, just in case.

We’re growing sweet potatoes! After resounding success with purple potatoes last year, we decided on a mixed package of sweet potato plants with three different varieties. It’ll be a while before that harvest, but the vines are sprawling nicely.

Last, but certainly not least, is our “mammoth” sunflower circle. These plants have the potential to be significantly taller than us (up to twelve feet, if I remember right), so the area is intended as a reading nook. There are two rows of sunflowers wrapping around in a circle, with just enough of an opening for someone to walk in.

Anybody who grows pumpkins knows that you can’t plant them outside until after the last chance of frost. Around here, that’s mid-May. You’re probably wondering why, in that case, I have pumpkins growing inside in January.

This story begins some time after Halloween, when I cleared our decorative (and uncarved) pumpkins from the front yard. Intent on harvesting the seeds – some to roast, and some to dry for planting – I carried the somewhat softened pumpkins to the backyard and shattered them. That is to say I picked them up and dropped them, sometimes forcefully, repeatedly until they were open enough to get to the seeds, then composted the shells.

Normally, I would have just washed the seeds and left them on a tray to dry. But when I tried that, Zuko started eating the seeds. So they ended up in a smaller container, smushed together… and some of them sprouted. When I showed Cassandra, she insisted “we” grow them.

I had small coir pots and seed starting pods left from previous years, so I set up about a dozen of the sprouted seeds in a couple trays. (Some unsprouted ones were saved for outside planting in the spring.) As they outgrew their original containers, I repurposed some of the packaging from NakedWines.com for the next phase and bought a bag of potting soil.

As they outgrew that packaging, I knew it was time to invest in a larger container that could sit in my bay window. I wanted something raised, so I wouldn’t have to bend down past the sewing desk. I bought this container (and some more dirt) with holiday money; it’s about waist high, and includes a shelf underneath for storing bits and pieces.

There are nine pumpkins plants growing in my bay window now, and all of them are clearly leaning towards the window, grabbing as much sun as they can. I’m hoping they continue growing slowly for the next few months – the window gets good sun, but is a little cooler than the rest of the room – until the entire container can be relocated outside. Pumpkin vines have a tendency to sprawl, and I want to make sure they have space to do that… outside.

After I planted in the broken bed frame, I looked across my backyard and realized I wanted that entire strip of grass to be filled with raised beds, from the bed frame over to the windmill bed. I thought it would be a gradual process, starting next spring when I prepare whatever new bed I add for the year.

My plants have a different plan.

It’s not just the squash family plants, with their tendency to run out of beds, that are looking to expand their space this year. The three tomato plants I added to the keyhole bed have experienced explosive growth with this surprisingly warm summer, stretching over the squash and dangling out the side of the bed. And I keep redirecting the squash vines back into the bed frame, to keep them out of lawnmower range.

Most of the sprawling growth is headed south, so after mulching between the keyhole bed and the bed frame, I added a line of mulch to one side of the beds. Then, since the plants were already coming out of the keyhole bed, snaking towards the grass (now mulch), I grabbed a couple support cages from the shed and moved branches and vines around to intertwine with the cages.

But it’s only July, and weather-permitting, the squash varieties and tomato plants will continue into October… I need more space! And I need it now, before a ride-on mower devours a melon or acorn squash. (I’m less concerned about the tomatoes, they’re all bite-sized.) So it’s time to order a mulch delivery, rather than hauling small bags in my Corolla, and start next spring’s preparations early.

What a difference a month makes during gardening season! When I posted my spring garden update last month, the garden tower, keyhole bed, and bed frame were freshly planted, and the star was done with the seasonal bulbs with excess amounts of mint sneaking into the center.

And look at it now! The marigolds and petunias are thriving in both spots, but more so in the garden tower. I get to look out my kitchen window at this array of colors, paired with the bits of dill and purple basil that came back from last year’s herb garden.

The star bed lost its first batch of sunflowers, and with the bulbs done for the year, I weeded out the entire center. I then relocated some mystery squash (probably acorn squash), planted milkweed seeds (a few years old, no sign of germination yet), and the last few sunflower seeds from this year’s shopping. I’ve taken to watering the sunflowers with a mix of coffee grounds and cold water, hoping the coffee scent will discourage whatever’s been devouring my sunflower seedlings.

The keyhole bed has gone from early sprouts and seedlings to explosive growth, particularly the acorn squash and tomatoes, with the volunteer (read: probably planted by a bird or squirrel) sunflower towering over them. I’m hoping they’re squished enough in there to prevent the neighborhood woodchuck from eating all the squash flowers before they bear fruit.

The marigolds and petunias in the bed frame have grown a bit, though not as much as the ones in the garden tower. There are a couple mystery squash plants there too. I really hope the mystery squash is acorn squash… I like to bake it wrapped in bacon.