Season's End

With the days now shorter than our nights, we are still trying to stretch out the time with our yard lights to get our gardens to bed for the winter.  I was out in my own yard working and could hear the swish of the rake next door.  Gardeners do not give up easily.  

I picked my tomato plants clean before the cold rains of autumn came this past week.  I lay them in garden flats lined on the bottom with newspaper and the green ones will get a layer on top as well to help them ripen indoors.  These were brought in about a week before the picture was taken and there were only some blush colored tomatoes at that time.  You can see that they will continue to ripen indoors.  That is how you get your tomatoes at the market.  They are not red, ripe beauties before they are shipped.  The newspaper helps protect the fruit from bruising and adding a sheet on top helps keep the ethylene gas around the fruit to help them ripen.  I can now can, freeze, eat, or share from my basement stores.

 I finished moving in the plants I plan on overwintering indoors and made the last of the cuttings off the plants that I will let freeze in the ground.  The time has come to bring in the canna tubers, begonia bulbs, and all other corms that you have to keep indoors until next spring.  My neighbor who was out raking, will pull out her geraniums and put them right into brown paper bags until repotting them next spring.  If you do bring plants indoors, remember to keep them isolated for at least a week to keep the rest of the indoor plants pest free.  

I also enjoy the last of the cut flowers from my garden by bringing in the best blooms in vases.  I love the combination of unusual flowers that brighten a corner of the room during our dark nights.

There are those hardier plants, such as flowering kale and mums which we can enjoy a little longer.  I grew this kale from seed from Pine Tree Gardens this year.  I kept it in pots so I could move it into the garden this fall, but couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong because it looked nothing like the flowering kale I am used to seeing.  It wasn't until I was looking at a friend's Facebook pictures of her vacation and saw kale in a farm market that looked similar that I remembered my kale is a cut-flower variety that looks similar to a rose.  I immediately went out and dumped my drooping caladium out of its urn (and took inside for winter storage).  I layered all the potted kale into the urn until all 18 plants made a living bouquet for my front entry.  I expect it to last for a good long while into the cold.
After trudging around in the cold and rain to do your last minute gardening, take a hot bath, and curl up with a hot drink and a good book...about gardening, of course!