Twilight Time

In May, more than a hundred
varieties of annuals awaited containers.
Double-click on any image to see
the slideshow at full-screen size.

From the middle of May through the end of August they are the ambulatory roving ambassadors of the garden.  Our containers filled with mixed annuals line the driveway, get massed and un-massed depending upon what is in bloom, fill in holes in beds where perennials have passed, and bring bright splashes of color to our deck where only containers can thrive.

At the height of the season, a
grouping of more than a dozen
containers are massed

The containers are inexpensive, single-season experiments for plants trying out for a permanent place in the garden scheme.  This year we welcomed back coleus ‘Big Red Judy’ for a triumphant return while deciding that a lobelia Laguna Sky Blue bloomed and passed far too quickly to be put on the ‘repeat’ list.  We discovered Kangaroo Paw (anigozanthos) and it immediately earned a gold star for its bloom-till-it-hurts attitude while fragrant nemesia (nemesia aromatic) became a staple in half a dozen containers.

More than a hundred different cultivars of annuals went into the creation of roughly thirty large container gardens.  Another twenty containers have fixed specimens – a loropetalum, a cape plumbago, a crape myrtle and an acuba, for example – that we overwinter in the garage because the shrubs (some now seven or eight years old) are not hardy to zones 5 or 6.  Our water garden plants, too, are overwintered; trimmed severely and placed in a bank of basement windows where they will hang on for seven long months.

By the end of September, the
annuals are fairly well shot

But come the beginning of September, the annuals are spent.  They have spent the summer on steroids; continuing doses of plant food to force blooms and heavy trimming to encourage branching.  By the middle of September, the sun no longer climbs directly overhead and, after the autumnal equinox, daylight shrinks at an alarming rate.

In each of the past five or six years, a September frost has provided a final answer to the question of ‘when should we take apart the containers’.  This year, while temperatures dipped into the upper thirties several times and frost nipped at our vegetable garden, our containers emerged in the morning unscathed.

Ballast that made pots lighter
is removed and cleaned for
use next year

Today was the day we chose to bring the container season to a close.  In a several-hours-long marathon, I placed containers in a cart and brought them, assembly fine fashion, to our ‘potting’ area.  There, Betty ruthlessly yanked out entire plants or broke off tops.  Depending on the size of the pot, either she or I dumped the pot into one of our transplant beds where she methodically tore apart roots, salvaged ‘ballast’ material for reuse next year, and spread the spent potting mix over the bed’s base of topsoil, where I then dug the two planting mediums together.  By next spring, the bed will feature well-aerated soil enriched with peat and vermiculite.

Containers await cleaning

Tomorrow, we begin the second part of the process: cleaning the containers with a mild solution of bleach to ensure that no insects overwinter with the pots that will hibernate in the basement until next May. Those that are destined for the garage will be inspected for both tiny hitchhikers and insufficient room for root growth.  By the end of the week, only a handful of the 50+ containers that were in the garden at the peak of the season will remain on view.

This container will
stay in place for the winter

Two of those will be a pair of cast iron urns that, at present, contain a vigorous coleus ‘Alabama Sunrise’, perennial strawberry (with fruit), and a calibrochoa ‘Lemon Slice’ that has been in continuous bloom since the second week of May.  When that hard frost hits, the coleus and calibrochoa will be taken out and evergreens will take their place.

If this sounds like a lot of work, it is.  But the time elapsed in taking down this part of the garden is a fraction of the weeks that are spent finding and assembling the right plants each year that make this a special part of our garden. 

Aye, There's the Rub

There’s a drawback to having a two-acre garden, as well as to having 62 containers arrayed around that garden in eye-pleasing groupings: come October, it all has to be cleaned up.

After the frost:  two containers that
need a lot of tender loving care

Eastern Massachusetts had its first frost last Friday evening.  Temperatures dipped into the upper twenties for about seven hours overnight.  They recovered to the mid-60s by Sunday, but the damage was done.  The frost was the ‘period’ to the growing season that began in April, peaked in June and July, and lingered through a warmer-than-usual September.

When we awakened Saturday morning, the damage was everywhere.  I firmly believe that annuals are nothing but water held in interesting shapes by a thin coating of chlorophyll.  When the air temperature hits 32 degrees, annuals collapse with a speed and finality that is stunning.  Forty of our 62 containers were filled with annuals.  On Saturday morning, we had 40 pots of mush.

This container...

Each pot needed to be emptied but, in our garden, that is not an easy thing to do.  First of all, some pots also held perennials.  Each container was inspected and salvageable perennials were taken out separately, re-potted into plastic containers, and sunk into the transplant bed.  If they survive the winter, they’ll be re-used next year. 

...yielded these two perennials that
will be over-wintered for 2013

Each container also holds ‘ballast’.  We use large pots: some with 20-inch-plus diameters and heights of up to two feet.  Many weigh more than 20 pounds.  If they were filled entirely with potting mix, the combined weight could be half again as much as the container alone.  To keep the containers ‘portable’, Betty fills their bottoms with plastic water bottles, chunks of Styrofoam, packing ‘peanuts’ in plastic bags, and even corks.  Come October, all of this ballast is removed, cleaned and stored.

The overflowing compost bins

Even the potting mix gets recycled, after a fashion. The truism in gardening is that container mix should never be re-used because it potentially carries diseases.  But there’s no prohibition against combining container mix with garden soil, mixing it well, then using it for planting in future years.  We have a special raised bed just for our ‘used’ container mix.

Finally, each pot is scrubbed clean and then rubbed with a bleach solution, allowed to dry, and stored in the basement for use in 2013. 

So, for containers, the litany is a) put the annuals in the compost pile, b) pot up the perennials and place in the transplant bed, c) remove and clean the ‘ballast’, d) place the used container mix in a special bed, e) clean and bleach the container, f) carry to the basement, and g) repeat steps ‘a’ through ‘f’ 40 times.  Because a container filled with dead annuals is something of an eyesore, we try to get through that process in three or four days.

Same bed, after cleanup

The wisteria bed after the
frost.  That's "Kossa Regal"
collapsed in a heap

The frost also did in the hostas, which were already starting to yellow.  With the hostas lying in a heap on the ground, it was clear that all the other perennials were ready to be cut down.  We have 15 principal ‘gardens’ within our property.  While all are maintained throughout the season, the October clean-up means all perennials are cut to the ground, though not all at the same time.  As they are cut, seed heads are removed and anything that looks as though it may have either disease (usually mildew) or insect damage is bagged separately and taken to our town’s transfer station. Everything else goes into the compost bins which, by now, are filled to overflowing.  We also take out several hundred feet of drip-watering hoses each autumn so that they don't go through a long series of freeze-thaw cycles that will shorten their useful lives.

In the bottom of each container:
reusable 'ballast' that makes the
container lighter

There are also relatively minor tasks: three rain barrels are emptied, cleaned and stored in the basement; and 25 water jugs are emptied and sorted to see which are worth saving over the winter (new containers are constantly being ‘created’ because they hold our cat’s litter).  Garden ornaments are located, cleaned, and stored away. 

It is a very physical time of year; a lot of stooping and hunching over.  But the weather outside is nigh on perfect.  A brisk wind, pleasant temperatures and low humidity.  And, all around us is the color: the reds and yellows and rusts of autumn in New England.

We take it one bed at a time.  The process will take about two weeks but, once it is done, it is done for the season. 

The Autumn Garden Clean-Up

Autumn has come to Medfield in stealth fashion this year. Usually, some time between mid-September and early October, there’s a cold snap, the temperatures drop into the upper twenties, and fall begins with a vengeance. This year, thermometers across eastern Massachusetts have registered some six degrees above normal all month and we’ve not yet seen a frost.

The result is that the leaves on the trees hereabouts know the days are getting shorter, but there hasn’t been the catalyst for a brilliant autumn. So, despite ample rain, it’s been dull, color-wise. It’s a rare year when annuals are still green but the trees are becoming bare.

Before and after

Still, we’re putting the garden to bed because the calendar dictates our schedule. The vegetable garden fence is down and all that remains are some late autumn staples – lettuce, leeks and carrots. The gardens around out home are being cut down: the ‘before and after’ photos at left of the upper and lower shade beds tells the story.

We’re also using the clean-up of beds to ‘re-think’ the garden. One of Betty’s popular lecture is on making gardens easier to maintain as owners age. I was 49 when we moved to our home on Wild Holly Lane. Twelve-plus years later, I feel the difference in my ability to do ‘heavy’ gardening. And so low-maintenance shrubs are slowly displacing high-maintenance perennials. Last week, the last of the bearded iris were pulled out of the inner and outer sidewalk bed. The iris put on a great show for about ten days a year, but at a cost: iris borers are endemic in this area and every plant needed to be inspected every year. This year, as I pulled them out, I found that 90%-plus of the tubers had tell-tale holes indicating borer damage.

The most time-consuming part of the winterizing process is the emptying of containers. We had more than 50 this year and they made their appearance over a six- or eight-week period that started in early May and continued through much of June. They all went away in a single week.

These pots represent about
half of the ones to be cleaned
and stored for the winter

About 20 of them will over-winter in the garage once the temperatures drop. Those are the ones with shrubs like our loropetalum, cape plumbago, crape myrtle and acuba.

It’s the ones with annuals and ‘tender’ perennials that are the subject of a furious cleaning process. The containers are taken apart. Most of the plants go straight into the compost. Perennials that might overwinter with some care go into individual pots and then either into the nursery bed or into a cold frame. The remaining potting mix is dumped in with other compostables. In a few years, it will return to the garden as soil but will never be re-used in a container. From the bottom of the containers come the ‘ballast’ that Betty uses to keep the weight of the pots down – things like bags filled with stryrofoam ‘packing peanuts’ and plastic water bottles. Those will be washed and re-used in 2012 just as most had an earlier incarnation in 2010.

The last steps are to wash all the containers with a bleach solution to kill off any pathogens that might lurk. When they’ve thoroughly dried, everything goes into the basement; stacked three and four pots high.

Ready and waiting for 2012.