The Vinton Youth Garden is pretty much done for the year.  We have cleaned everything up, but there is still some lettuce enjoying the cold weather.  It is covered, but I’m sure they would prefer it a few degrees warmer!

To keep the kids interested in gardening over the winter, I have planned a few events.  We will  meet once a month at the Benton County Extension office to do a project.  Next month we will be painting clay flowerpots, in January we will plant some tulip or daffodil bulbs in them (they are chilling in my fridge as you read), and in February we will meet to pick what the kids want to plant next year.  And, either in January or February, we will have a popcorn party with the popcorn the kids grew and picked.  They will get to shuck it and rub it off the cob and then pop it themselves.  It is sure to be a great time.

This month, we met to make cards.  The kids could do thank yous, Happy Thanksgiving, Christmas or whatever kind of cards they wanted.  I had a bunch of scrapbooking stuff for them to use, although it was very hard to find vegetable rubber stamps at the local hobby stores.  I’ll start looking sooner next year!

They had a great time.  I had gotten white and off-white notecards and envelopes in two different sizes and 12 in a package.  I think between the five kids they used most of two of the packages!

Lauren and Olivia….

Striking a pose….

Millie stamping away…

Nash was helping with the glitter glue…

Lauren, Olivia and Cali are working away….

Cali knows what she wants to do…

Nash getting into things with the glitter glue….

The finished products… drying since glitter glue was the main ingredient!

My mega-helper, Martha, had the kids write out what they liked and didn’t like about the Garden this year, and what they wanted more of next year.  She is going to use the “good” for a flyer to hand out to get more kids interested.  I think the “bad” is to help us to help the kids next year!

She also brought along the loufa we had grown so the kids could peel it.

She had some in water so the kids could see how it became a sponge.

It was pretty darn cool!

We had some visitors at the beginning of the “meeting” from Buchanan county.  Joe, Jess and Roxanne stopped by to see how our Garden grew.  Roxanne is the Extension Administrator for Buchanan county, Jess is the Food Service Director at one of the Elementary Schools in Independence and Joe is the “Super Volunteer Extraordinaire”.  They came down to check out the layout of the garden and see if they could steal some ideas for their gardens in Independence.

Joe had a good time peeling some of the loufa.  He took some of the seeds, too, to grow in our northern neighbor’s gardens.

A rousing success and I can’t wait to see what they do with the flowerpots!

Dig it!

Posted under Autumn, Youth Garden

Autumn is my third favorite season.  It would probably be higher, but it has that really cold season following it.  Whatever I think of the seasons, I have to get my garden ready for Winter.  This usually involves lots of mulch, at least in my case.

A couple of weeks ago when the nighttime temperatures were expected to dip into the 20s, I figured I had better try to winterize my butterfly bushes.   They are all located on the “hill” on the south side of the garden.

We have four of them and I took a couple of bags of mulch and piled them around the base of the plants.

The black dot in the middle of the picture is our neighbor’s dog, Rugger.  We have permission to let him out of their yard and play with him in ours, which we did.  However, he tried to help a little too much… he kept trying to eat the mulch and chew through the back.  We tried to wear him out and then we had to put him back.   He pretty much wore us out!  He’s still a puppy, so he has an infinite source of energy.  He wasn’t too happy to be put back in his yard.  He still wanted to help, as you can tell!

I finished piling the mulch around the base of the butterfly bushes.  Butterfly bushes are marginally hardy in Zone 4 so I try to give them all the help they can get.

Since it was going to be even colder this night than the previous night, I moved the pots.  I put the mums up next to the house, along with the boots and the hen and chicks.  Dwayne had already unhooked the hose, so I didn’t have to worry about that.

We have a few pots in the front of the house.  The one with the mum and lantana was already tucked in between the smokebush and the juniper, so I left it alone.

I tucked the snapdragons and impatiens under the junipers.

They got a little nipped, but they are still alive.  Actually, they are still tucked under the junipers.  I suppose I can move them back now!

I have some snapdragons that keep coming back in the Ash tree bed.  I don’t remember planting them there and they have come up the last three years.  Since they seem to be able to survive, I didn’t do anything with them.

The mum in the background looks even better from the front.  Especially with the asters in bloom.

The celosia, or cockscomb, did not survive the freezes, but the pink flamingo still looks pretty good!

Fall decorations are starting to show up in the garden, too.

A smooth pumpkin has now joined the garden, so it is really looking like fall.

The weather has been nice enough that my roses are still blooming.

I have not been deadheading them and will not for the rest of the year.

I let the “seeds” form.  These are called “hips” in the rose world.  Birds will eat these for energy through the Winter and early Spring.

When the hips form on the rose, it starts to put the energy into producing the seeds and this tells the plant that it needs to start storing energy in the roots for next year.

Essentially, it begins shutting down.  It will continue to grow, although slowly, until a few hard freezes occur.

Depending on how the Fall plays out temperature-wise, I will hold off winterizing the roses until it gets closer to Thanksgiving.  These roses are on the south side of my house, so will have protection from the Winter winds, but I will still mulch them.  I have had previous posts on different ways to winterize roses, but I usually only mulch.  I will take a bag of mulch and dump it on the plant to protect the roots.  I will do this on the southern roses and my Chinese miniature rose (although, it isn’t very miniature), won’t protect Sven, Ole or Sigrid….

… they were developed in Minnesota and have survived in our yard for a few years without extra help from me.  I will also not cover our Knock-out rose.  It is somewhat protected by surrounding plants in my garden, and it is generally hardy in our zone.  I have had it several years now and haven’t covered it in at least three.

While I have been getting the garden ready for Winter, I don’t think my brain has grasped the realization that it is near the end of October and Winter is right around the corner.  Maybe if I close my eyes real tight….

Dig it!

Posted under Autumn

We have been having some pretty nice weather for Fall.  I thought I had better take advantage of that and get my garlic in the ground.  Well, the raised bed, anyway.

We have four 4×8 and two 4×4 raised beds.  Last year’s garlic bed has been empty since the end of July, but I wanted to put the garlic in a different bed and save this year’s for tomatoes next year.

The near bed will be the home for the best tasting vegetable in the world!

Dwayne finally pulled up the tomatoes last week.  With the weather cooling down later this week, I figured I had better get the garlic in the ground now.

I brought out the tools and some of the garlic that we started last fall.

As with any job, in order to be done correctly, you have to have supervision.

That is one of the stray cats in the neighborhood.  I must have been doing an okay job by him, since he just sat there.  Until Dwayne came home and chased him away, anyway.   His brother and mom hang around, too, so we should have plenty of supervision when something needs done in the yard.

This summer we ended up with 84 bulbs of garlic.  Not nearly enough to get us through the year, and, of course, I am using some of those to get next year’s crop.  So, this year, I am planting as many as I can.  Without going back into the basement to raid the remaining bulbs.

I managed to get 14 rows hoed in the bed.

I separated the cloves from the bulb…

The pointy end goes up….

The light brown stuff is some bone meal.  That is the only amendment I made to the soil.  I’ll add some blood meal and maybe a little more bone meal in the spring, but that will be about it.

In the end, there were 148 cloves planted.

Before I covered up the rows, I need to mark them.  We plant stiff-necked garlic, so I use the stem as row markers.

This also tells me how many heads I used.  There were 21 “necks”.  Yep.  Dwayne’s not happy that I have depleted our winter supply of garlic.  Honey, it is a sacrifice for the good of the next crop!  And, anyway, I’m the one who should be upset…. I at least triple every recipe’s amount of garlic.

I mark both sides of the rows, so for the ends that didn’t get a garlic “neck”, I used some bamboo sticks.  Then the rows get covered up.

The next step is to cover everything with straw.

This will help retain moisture and provide a layer of protection from the coming winter.  But first, I need an assistant…. and he comes abounding….

This is Rugger, the neighbor’s puppy.  He is about 13 weeks old, a lab/water spaniel mix, chews on everything and only stops moving when he is crashed out after a hard day’s playing.  The neighbors allow us to let him off of his lead and then we play.  This time, we had some work to do.  Lesson learned…. letting the puppy help just slows you down.  He got into the bed, chewed on the straw, ran around and chewed on everything else.  And then one of our other neighbors got to talking to us over the fence.  And her 3rd grade daughter came over to play with Rugger.  The two of them wore each other out.  It was pretty fun to watch.  But I didn’t get much done for awhile.  It was pretty nice taking a break to have some friendly conversation.  After the “kids” were all worn out, we took Rugger back to his yard and I got back to work.  The little gnats were all over the place, busy biting everyone.  Dwayne wimped out and went inside.  I finished putting the straw on the bed.

I gave the bed a good soaking.  And before the winds pick up later this week, I will put our garlic drying rack on top of the straw to weigh it down.

Garlic is usually planted in the fall in late September to early October.  It should be covered for winter with straw, mulch or anything to protect it from the winter winds.  Take the cover off in Spring, cut off the flowers (or scapes) before they bloom and when the plants die back, dig everything up.  Clean the heads off, dry them for two weeks and then hang them in a cool dry place to enjoy through the winter.  The scapes can be used as a seasoning when cooking or just add them to a salad.

Now the hard part.  Waiting for that garlicky goodness to be ready for harvest!

Dig it!

Posted under Autumn

Normally I wait until Thanksgiving to winterize my roses but the weather was too good a couple of weeks ago to pass up.  I didn’t freeze my hands off getting the plants ready for winter.

I am doing an experiment with four rose bushes.  They were not developed in Iowa, Minnesota or Canada, as far as I know, so they are not absolutely winter hardy here.  One of them is the Firefighter red rose.  My mother-in-law got me one last year and it did not make it through last winter.  Vi got one for my mom, too, and hers is fine, but it is right up next to the house.  Mine was in the middle of the yard.  This year, I planted the Firefighter along with three others on the south side of the house, right next to the house.  They loved it during the summer, so I am hoping they love, or at least tolerate, it during the winter. 

There are several ways to prep your roses for winter.  You can use the Styrofoam cones, but you have to be careful to remove them on warm days and put them back on when it gets cold again.  You can put three or four posts around the plant, put chicken wire around it and fill it with leaves, straw or pine needles.  You can pile a foot of dirt around the base of the plant and tie the stems together to keep them from whipping in the winter winds.

I did a different version of the last one.  I piled a half a bag to a bag of mulch around the base of each rose on the south side of the house and the miniature Chinese rose bush in the main garden. 

-The red Firefighter rose bush is preparing itself for winter. The old flowerheads are still on and the leaves are falling off.

-Firefighter with about half a bag of mulch.

-Miniature Chinese Rose uncovered.

 -Miniature Chinese rose winterized!

-I leave the rose hips (the seed heads) on the rose bushes. This is a good indicator to the plant to stop growing and it provides food for the birds through the winter. Cardinals love them.

In the past, I have just mulched the Chinese rose and it turned out fine the next spring, but we shall see about the floribunda and the grandifloras next to the house.  They should be helped out by the snow that usually piles up there.  That will add another layer of insulation for the roots. 

The stems that are not buried will likely die, but as long as the bottom of the plant is alive, it will put out new shoots in the springtime.  And I don’t have to worry about remembering to put on or take off the Styrofoam thing.

If this works, I am getting another Strike it Rich rose bush, if I can find it!  It is an orange rose with a red blush and a beautiful fragrance… and I haven’t been able to keep it alive in two different spots in the open.

I don’t cover my Sven, Ole and Sigrid roses since they were developed in Minnesota and haven’t had a lick of trouble since I got them a few years ago. 

-Sven shutting down.

My knock-out rose has, so far, not had any trouble coming back.  And Bill’s roses we have never covered, buried or done anything with in the winter.  They keep coming back and blooming profusely.  The only thing that we need to do it prune out the oldest canes… something that we will be doing in the spring.

 Dig it!

Posted under Autumn, Fall Prep

In September and October we showed fall photos on the air that viewers had sent into us. Most were sent to the entire weather staff, but I managed to get a few extra (excellent) ones in my own mailbox.  They were from the Wapsi Warriors, a 4H group from Independence.  I met the group last spring when they asked me to help them with their bucket o-flowers project. They planted different flowers in five gallon buckets and then submitted them to the Buchanan County Fair.  I understand they did very well and were sold at auction at very nice levels.  Not only are they good at planting buckets o-flowers, they are excellent photographers, as well.  They take pictures in the fall and put them on display in the entry at Drs. Kegler and Arend’s DDS office through the month of November.  I was happy to share the ones I received with our viewers.

Madi Arend, age 14, took this picture in Independence.

Ryan Arend, age 16, took this from his duck blind on the Wapsipinicon River in Independence.

From Alex Marzen, age 14

The Wapsi Mill in Independence on a calm day. Aunna Marzen took the photo. She is 13.

Ben Kelly took this photo of a burning bush from down his street.

This is Ben's sister Courtney. I was hoping she got out of the pile safely when....

I got this photo from Courtney of her 5-month-old mini-doxie, Milo. He appears to be in the same pile of leaves. That pile sure got its workout! Courtney says she is a mini-member of the Wapsi Warriors.

Makenzie Homan, age 9, took this photo at Black Hawk State Park in Lake View, IA.

Makenzie Homan took this photo, too, but this one was a little closer to home in Independence.

 Next up: the display board in the entry at the office. There are a couple of photos that I haven’t seen, so swing by and check it out.

Here is the scrapbook:

Posted under Autumn, Photos

While having four city lots for a garden is wonderful in June and July, it is a lot of work when it comes to fall cleanup.  Especially when the kids are all in school with after school events… or stuck at home recovering from a virus.  And, in order to get some sleep before my alarm goes off at 12:30 (yes, that is A.M.), I try to leave at 4:30.  That means there is only so much that can get done. Although, we managed to get quite a bit pulled up.

The picnic table area had some of those volunteer trees growing, so I chopped them down and threw them in the back of the truck.  I also threw in some of the stuff we had pulled previously.  It filled up the truck bed pretty quickly.

This was just a small section of the Garden's detritus.

Martha and Kaitlyn started picking the gourds and pulling up the vines. When I filled the truck up, I headed over to help.

This is only half the gourds that had been found before I left.

We managed to get quite a bit done, but there is still plenty to do.  Of course, there is always something to do in the garden!

And there is always something to look at, too.

The mums were donated the first year we set up the garden. They weren't this big. They weren't even this big last year. The sedum in between was donated this year by a Garden neighbor.

Hopefully, next time we will get even more done!

Dig it!

Posted under Autumn, Youth Garden

The tomatoes have had it.  They are done. Kaput. Finished.

Okay... they aren't completely done in, but none of the red tomatoes are worth eating and I don't want to wait for the green ones to ripen. Especially since Louie, Number 2 "son", would eat them before we could.

So I yanked ‘em!

This needs something....

After I raked the soil around a bit, it looked pretty good.  And I had these bulbs of garlic just hanging around our basement…

…so I planted a bunch of them.

I used the hoe to make rows about two inches deep. I managed to get nine rows in our eight foot bed.  I took the cloves off of the garlic head and pressed them in with the flat root side down.

Pointy end up....

I placed them about five inches apart.  There are now 78 cloves of garlic planted in one of our raised beds. 

Yummy!

They will grow a little this fall and when it gets colder we will put straw on it and let it sit through the winter. When it gets warm in the spring and the plants green up again, we will take the straw off and let it go.  We cut off the flowers when they form and will dig up the new heads of delicious garlic when the leaves die back, which was in July this year.  I cleaned off the dirt and tied them together and hung them in our basement in the utility room.  They are the stiff-necked variety so I had to use twine to tie them together, but it still worked!  

We got them from one of Dwayne’s co-worker’s mom, so I don’t know exactly what variety they are, but they are delicious!  They have a nice bite to them and they are huge, so I don’t have to use quite so many in my cooking.  I usually double (at least) whatever a recipe calls for.  Still, we’ve already managed to go through half of what we grew. We didn’t count what we had this past year, so hopefully this next year we will have enough to get us through winter. 

Dig it!

Posted under Autumn, General

Hartman Reserve Nature Center in Cedar Falls is offering a Fall Family Phenology Hike on Friday, September 23 from 6:30 to 7:30.  Even if you don’t know what phenology is, you are welcome to join a naturalist to learn what changes are happening in the forest as the season transitions from Summer into Autumn.

Phenology is the study of plant and animal life cycles and how they vary from season to season.  The changing colors of the leaves would be an example.  Ground hogs fattening up getting ready for their winter hibernation, or hummingbirds drinking all the sugar water in your feeders before they head to Mexico and Central America are other examples.  You may, or may not see these on the walk at the Reserve, but I’m sure you will have a great time.

The cost is $5.00 per family and hot chocolate and snacks by a fire are a draw after the hike.

Family Phenology Hikes will become a permanent program series so if you miss this one, there will be another one on, or near the seasonal equinox and solstices.

If you have any questions, contact Chris Anderson, Program Coordinator at Harman Reserve Nature Center at chris.hrnc@gmail.com or call 319-277-2187.  You can pre-register online at BlackHawkCountyParks.com and click on the Events link and choose the Hike program.

I hope you have a great time.

Dig it!

Posted under Autumn, Event

As much as I want to get everything covered in October, I have to wait until around Thanksgiving to finish up. That is when I usually winterize my roses.  Well, most of them.  Some I leave to the whim of Mother Nature.

Different types of roses require different techniques for winterizing. 

My Sven and Ole roses were developed in Minnesota and are supposed to take the harsh winters we have.  Sven has survived a couple of winters although I think he gets some shelter from the spruce tree. 

Sven gets a little help from his friends.

Ole will be open to the elements, so we will test his stamina, ya-der-hay. 

It's not that I don't like you, Sven. I'm just making sure that the University of Minnesota did make you hardy.

The Knock Out rose should be pretty hardy, too.  I put some mulch on it last year and it came through fine.  I will probably do the same, but with straw this year, since I have some extra from the garlic-covering activity.  I do not trim the roses back in the fall.  You can wrap the rose with burlap and tie it securely with some rope.  I haven’t done that, but I might with my non-hardy ones.  I haven’t decided yet.

The Knock Out rose grew quite a bit at the end of summer.

Hybrid teas, grandiflora and floribunda roses are barely hardy here so they need a lot of protection.  The best way to do that is to start by removing all fallen foliage and debris.  This removes any diseases that may be harbored in the debris.  Next mound soil over the base of each plant, loosely tie the canes together with twine.

Image from homedepot.ca... only because I haven't done mine yet!

That keeps them from being whipped by strong winds.  Although, I did this last year with my Strike it Rick rose and the twine had been cut by one of the thorns in a couple of weeks.  This year I will use more twine… or use the burlap trick from the previous paragraph.  When the stems are under control, pile about 10 to 12 inches of soil at the base of the rose bush.  Don’t just dig around the existing plant…that will just uncover some of the roots which will then freeze.  Use soil from another area of the garden (like my vegetable bed) or use bagged dirt.  Then add a layer of mulch such as straw or leaves. 

Image from Better Homes and Gardens website

You can end it with another layer of soil to keep the mulch in place or cover with burlap held down by something heavy.  We have a bunch of bricks that we are using.  You can also use a chicken wire fence around each rose bush to help keep the soil and mulch in place.  The best time to do all of this is after the plants have been hardened off by several nights of temperatures in the low to mid-twenties.  That tends to be around Thanksgiving.

The Strike it Rich rose is on the left and the Firefighter one is on the right. I will definitely mound dirt on these.

This is a nice red rose that I got from a nursery that went out of business when a mini-mall bought the land. It is a World War II rose, but I don't remember the exact name. I've never covered this one and it comes back, but it is also sheltered by the spruce.

Now, climbing roses are harder to deal with because they are much larger.  If the rose is tied to a wall, trellis or fence, untie the canes and wrap them in insulating material, like you would wrap pipes to keep them from freezing.  Burlap would be fine.  Retie the canes to the wall, trellis or fence.  If the canes need to be cut back, go ahead and do it, but you want to limit trimming before winter.  Add soil and mulch to the base of the plant like you would for the floribunda.  If you don’t want to do this method, you can detach the canes from the trellis and lay the whole plant down on its side on the ground. 

This is called trenching. I've never tried it because I am basically too lazy to dig the trench and then part of the rose up to lay it down. (the photo came from HGTV)

Stake it in place and cover the whole thing with a foot or so of soil and mulch.  Then when the weather warms up in the spring, you can gently remove the soil and mulch and retie the rose to the structure it came off of. 

We got these from a friend of ours. By the process of elimination, I am assuming that these are climbing roses. Our friend, Bill, had them on an arbor and they aren't really a bush. And I've never covered them and they come back every year.

Our miniature rose will be covered with soil and mulch.

My one dollar miniature Chinese rose.

I don’t have any tree roses and it is pretty much for one reason only.  Winterizing.  Once I plant a rose, I don’t want to do anything more than to cover them up for the winter.  Tree roses need to be dug up and stored for the winter in a cool garage or basement.  You can also bury it similar to the canes of the climbing rose, but I would be afraid of hurting the roots.  Although, my local nursery’s rose lady tells me that she buries hers every year and they come back.  Maybe one of these years, I’ll try it.  A tree rose would certainly look good in the middle of my “rose bed”. 

Dig it!

Posted under Autumn

I stopped counting how many times someone asks me “What’s the winter going to be like?”  Well, I can tell you for sure that it will be a lot colder than the summer was, there will be snow and probably some ice and the nights will be really long.

Predicting the weather only a few days out is hard enough.  I don’t even try to go beyond that.  I’m just a Meteorologist.  If you want to go farther out than a week, ask a Climatologist.  They are the ones that look at the weather months at a time.  Or you could ask the woolly bear caterpillar.

The saying is that if the black bands are larger than the brown band then the winter will be harsh and if the brown band is larger, then the winter will be mild. 

Okay, Woolly Bear…. what do you have to say for yourself?

A little biology lesson:

The woolly bear caterpillar (or worm if you are in North Carolina) is the larval stage of the Isabella tiger moth. 

Isabella Tiger Moth

The caterpillar is actually one of eight or more species in the US that can be legitimately called woolly bears because of the dense, bristly hair that covers them.  But the black and brown one is the most common and well-known of the bunch.  It can be found through the US, Mexico and southern Canada but is not found in the rest of the world.  There are apparently two generations of the worm, one in May and one in August, but it is the fall one that we notice mostly because they are going across the road.  They are on their way to find shelter in dead plant debris where they will spend the winter as the larva.  They survive the winter freezes by producing a cryoprotectantin its tissues.  That is a substance that is used to keep biological tissue from freezing.  Click on the word to go to the Wikipedia definition.  Once the caterpillar emerges from its hibernation, it eats as much as it can, pupates (the stage where it actively changes form) and emerges as an adult. 

I don’t recall anyone ever looking at the moth and figuring out what the winter holds, so we will concentrate on the caterpillar stage. 

I know this will come as a shock to you, but the caterpillar doesn’t really care what the winter will be like.  It will be sleeping.  Most of the one’s I have seen have looked pretty even on the colors.  And someone showed me a caterpillar this fall that was completely brown.  (I’ll pick that one).  Mainly, though, the length of the bands is only an indication of the age of the caterpillar and the moisture levels in the area where it developed.

So what do the so-called “experts” say about the upcoming winter?

Well, that is a really good question.  According to an article in the middle of October from the Iowa City Press Citizen, Harry Hillaker (our State Climatologist) and Mike McClure ( a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the Quad Cities) imply that we will be cooler than average for the winter and may have a wetter than average year, too.  Part of their reasoning is that we will be in a La Nina event.  This is a cooling of the Pacific waters off of South America, unlike El Nino which is a warming of the same waters.

The Climate Prediction Center issues outlooks all the time.  Their outlook for November, December and January is warmer than average or about average with precipitation at equal chances of above average, below average or normal for Iowa.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac says “Winter will be slightly colder than normal, on average, with below-normal precipitation and near- to below-normal snowfall.”

So, in other words, nobody agrees on what the winter will hold.  I think no matter what happens, we will still need our coats, hats and mittens.  And the snow shovels!

Let’s sit back and see what Mother Nature throws at us.

Dig it!

Posted under Autumn