The End of Summer Garden

The end of summer and beginning of fall always seems like a busy time for me garden-wise. Usually I'm combining watering every day with some amount of harvesting stuff almost every day in prep for fall. Some plants die off about this time, allowing me to tear out half-dead things and put in new cooler-weather plants.

Getting ready for fall

 This year Barbara was kind enough to take some of my not-half-dead flowers so I could put lettuces in. Actually, I think more accurately I texted her and stated "I'm foisting some flowers off on you" and she said "Well ok." I just hate throwing out flowers that are still at peak bloom. But the lettuce must go in! So she got a forced donation of some lightly-used plants. lol.

Gotta have dat lettuce

The rose plant has really blossomed (hehe) in the past few weeks, and now has three flowers on it! This is the most it's had since I crispified it back at the beginning of summer, so I'm glad it's made a full recovery and will be ready to go next spring. I haven't researched yet whether I should cut it back in fall or in spring, so I'll need to find that out in the next month or two.

Pretty red mini roses

The venus fly trap is either slowing down for winter dormancy or dying. I can't figure out which. It could probably use some more sunlight during the day, but since I'm not allowed to put things out on the front of my porch I can't really do anything about it. I thought about putting it under grow lights in the evening to supplement the light, but I'm afraid that'll mess with the dormancy cycle. We'll see I suppose.

Not fantastic venus fly trap

Ticky got a new batch of oat grass. He's enjoying it. He eats the seedlings before they can grow so I caved and bought him grown stuff from the pet store. It looks like troll hair right now. Pretty soon he'll have buzzed it to the ground though. This guy is a voracious grass eater- I think he's part bunny.

Omnomnomnom

Rosemary didn't grow as much as I expected it to this year, which was a little disappointing. It didn't NOT grow, it has just been really slow. I'm hoping it makes it through the winter so I can re-pot it in maybe a plastic container again. They like dry soil, but maybe the clay pot is too dry or too small for its roots.



The zinnias, however, have been taking over the front of the porch. I love the colors in this wild zinnia variety, I just wish I'd known they're long-stemmed and wispy instead of bushy like the cultivated kind. I kept thinking they weren't getting enough sun, but they were in constant sunlight out on the front of my porch for awhile and still turned into these 2 ft long stems. Well, now I know. They need to be grouped together and staked.

Crazy long zinnia stems

Pretty sunburst-like zinnia flowers

New lettuces have taken over the front sunny area of the porch. I wanted them to be somewhat decorative, so I mixed them with some trailing white mini petunias and bought both red and green baby lettuces. Lots of buttercrunch in the buckets! I also mixed in something called Raspberry Dressing Rumex. It turns out it's sorrel. I didn't know I'd like sorrel, but as the name implies these legit taste like Raspberry Vinaigrette. I am not lying. The leaves are gorgeous too, so they fit well in my decorative lettuce containers.

Some of the bucket containers with a variety of buttercrunch, sorrel, and petunias for contrast

That's it for now! Hoping to harvest my first salad in a few weeks. :)