Fall Chores

Fall has arrived with warm days and cooler nights. If you moved your houseplants outside over the summer, now is the time to begin moving plants back inside your house.

Inspect plants for insects and wash off the foliage before moving inside. You may also want to re pot plants into new potting mix to make sure you are not carrying any insects from the soil into your home. Plants may have outgrown their pots over the summer and may need to be replanted in a pot one size larger than the previous pot.

Many of my plants have grown over the summer and I am pondering where I am going to keep these larger specimens. One of my favorite pots I planted this summer was of a group of succulents I was not familiar with or had not grown before. It was so exciting to see how well the plants have performed through the season. I'm planning on wintering these in our patio room. Hope you enjoy the photos of the "before" planted in May and the "after" view of the summer growth.

Happy Gardening

Until Later

BAS

Another Beautiful Fall Day

The weather was beautiful again today. The recent rains have kept the weeds growing and I spent time ridding my flower beds of an abundance of weeds.

Now is a great time for over seeding your turf and preparing it for the winter.

I will leave that chore to my husband.

I am posting a photo of my paw paw tree. It has been in the ground 2 years and I saw several inches of growth on the tree this year, in addition to much larger leaves than last year. I was amazed to see the flowers this year and captured this photo when the tree was in flower earlier in the season. If you want a closer look at the paw paw tree, visit the Missouri Botanical Gardens and walk through the children's garden.

I did encounter an insect problem on my paw paw tree this year - I looked out one day and saw the leaves turning brown and curled up and upon closer inspection saw insects and webbing. From my research it was a leaf crumpler or leaf roller. I pruned off the damaged areas and I have not seen any more problems.

Happy Gardening,

Until next time

BAS

Back to Blogging

It has been quite some time since I have posted to my blog. I have gotten some photos loaded to my computer from summer events and hope to post at a more regular schedule.

The fall weather has been great in our area, except for the fallout from Ike. Sunday, September 14, we received over 3 inches of rain and heavy winds. A group of ducks visited our backyard yesterday afternoon - I think they thought we had a lake in our yard with all the rain that saturated our lawn. At the nursery, it totaled 4 inches of rain in the gauge. Many locations in the St. Louis area had heavy flooding.

On the bright side, this rain is great for fall planting and things should be ahead of schedule.

The temperatures were in the sixties today. I love sweatshirt weather!

Tomatoes are still growing in the garden, but the fall lettuce is slow to get going with all the overcast days recently. We have a great patch of pumpkins! And we didn't even plant pumpkins! I always deposit my pumpkins in the compost pile after Thanksgiving and the seeds sprouted up this summer. My husband let the vines go and they traveled over the compost bin, around the wood pile and into the garden. At this time, we have about 10-12 nice size pumpkins for Halloween and Thanksgiving. What a pleasant surprise. I will try to post photos at a later time.

For now I am including a picture of a bird that showed up in our landscape this summer, actually 2 of them appeared for a day or two. I think they are indigo buntings - I see these birds along wooded areas and fields on my way to work, but we usually don't see them show up in our yard in town. Hope you enjoy my photo - the birds were a delight to watch in the landscape; only wish they would have stayed longer.

Happy gardening! That's all for now.

BAS