"In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and care and toil. And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as from August to November." - Rose G. Kingsley, The Autumn Garden, 1905 From Darlene Nicholson: This photo was taken on the last day of the garden on October 25, 2015. Weather was somewhat colder and maple was in full fall color. Last day of the garden this year October 25, 2016, not quite as cold as last year but maple next to the garden is just beginning to color. Garden Reports: We had a few visitors again this work day. A husband/wife team that loves to come visit us. We tried to encourage that they sign up for the Master Gardener courses. Hope we’ll have them as new interns next year. A mother/son team was also enjoying the last the garden has to offer. Tom Maxwell had another active day repairing and maintaining our defense against-deer: Although important to keep deer out, got to make it easy for gardeners to get in. Thus Tom repositioned the gate-latch on the compost gate and tightened the door on the back gate after mowing the weeds off the fence line. Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Thank you Tom for your constant vigil on the full-time job of maintaining the deer-fence. Shade Garden: Susan Schick- October 13, 2016 Today we finished up our paths and planted ajuga and ferns in some bare areas. I am SO proud of how the garden looks. A real shout-out goes to the whole crew! Compost Central: Susan Eisendrath It was a bittersweet and beautiful morning for the last day of Compost Central. Marlow turned the compost in bin #1 into bin #2 and Susan turned compost in bin #4 to #3 and we added the compost that still needed more decomposing into bin #3, sprinkling it in the layers of the compost...and we watered all the layers as we built the piles. Almost all the compost we made this season has been used up for top dressing and making the beds for next season! We missed Kristy and Larry, thanks so much for all your work! Hope to see y'all at Maria's for the last Potluck for Derwood Volunteers this year! Also, thank you to Denny, Ephraim, Tammy, and Denise for working on the composting this season and we hope to see you at Compost Central sometime next year! Photo by Julie Mangin: Thank you for the beautiful compost. Used by all- Irma loading up Conservation Garden: Maria Wortman The Conservation Garden is quiet these days and we didn’t have much to do today, other than tidying up a bit and pulling some errant weeds, mostly lemon balm babies that keep showing up. It is a lovely herb, but hard to keep in check. It shows up everywhere in the Demo Garden. The Autumn Joy sedum is beautiful, but it has splayed itself out so that it is smothering other plants. Note to self – cut it back by half in mid-summer. Hopefully, that will encourage more branching and bushier plants that don’t flop. Yea! The climbing hydrangea, Schizophragma hydrangeoides, has finally reached the top of the entrance arbor. This lovely vine takes a while to get established. We hope it will bloom some day, although the maple trees and cherry tree are providing more and more shade each year. We wish we could thin them out a bit. We are looking forward to next season to see how all the many new plants we have installed this year will fare. Herb and Fragrance Garden: Kathy Tsai On this last official work day of the season, the Herb and Fragrance team spent time doing some last-day cleanup by weeding along the fence line, and deadheading the last few annuals -- the African blue basil is still going strong -- but even the bumblebees were sleeping on the job this morning. Guess they were waiting for the sun to warm them up! Most of the annuals will be left in the garden until we have our first freeze and then we'll go back to remove them. The bay leaf and the gardenia will winter over in Marty's basement and hopefully we can replant them next spring. The purple martin house was lowered again to replace some of the entrance plugs and to add duct tape to the pole to keep water from getting into the base. We were all saddened to see another season come to an end, but, like true gardeners everywhere, we are already thinking ahead and making tentative plans for next spring. Photo by Julie Mangin: Kathy and Dar by herb garden Butterfly Garden: Peggy Stanford Our last but not the least team day of the year. We continued our weed battle by moving 10+ loads of bark chips to several areas seriously compromised by weeds. Our last day of year was chilly, but believe it or not we had a Fritillary floating and landing in the garden. A lonely Black -eyed Susan decided to bloom late in the season. Photos by Julie Mangin Photo by Peggy Stanford: Black eyed Susan blooming Photo by Peggy Stanford: Fritillary Small Fruits: Patti Oseroff Today we renovated the blueberry area. First we weeded and then forked in a little less than a cup of aluminum sulfate to a 30sq. ft area. The clover ground cover is up around the pawpaws and the fig still needs to be protected for the winter. We'll do this in a month or so once the tree has lost its leaves. We also spread compost around the plants and mulched the paths with wood chips. Edibles: Erica Smith Our last workday was a lazy one (for once!). We did a little weeding, covered a few beds with newspapers and compost (will likely add leaves later when they're delivered), cleaned up and put compost on the asparagus bed (thanks, Irma!), and folded up the drip lines out of the way (thanks, Darlene!). We still potentially have some lettuce, radicchio, kale, cabbage and other greens to harvest, so will make a stop back sometime in November, weather permitting. The work's never completely over (thoughts on next year's plan will begin soon) but that's the nature of gardening, and it's good to have an official endpoint to the weekly visits. Thanks everyone for a fun and productive season! Photo by Bill Newman: Irma cutting down asparagus Photo by Julie Mangin: Garden put to bed. Photo by Darlene Nicholson: Radish cover crop on tomato beds POND REPORT: Darlene Nicholson The ponds had a very good year. We greatly increased the amount of frogs, toads and fish naturally. I guess they like it here. We cut back all plants and removed the floaters. We leave them in the pond and they all seem to make it even through the worst winters. We netted the front garden pond last week but Joe came midweek and noticed that some of the frogs were getting caught in the netting, so off came all the netting and we will forgo it this year. We netted last year and didn't have this problem but it was colder when we did and the frogs weren't as active. One of my favorite images from the pond this year was of this goldfish coming up to eat a bug. Photo by Julie Mangin: Ponds cleaned out and ready for winter. Closing Comments: Lily Bruch and Bill Newman A huge thanks to Joslyn, Edith and Marlow for helping out with the outdoor storage area. We removed layers of bricks, cleaned out the area, took out all the weeds that were starting to grow and layered landscape cloth over everything. We will be ordering some gravel to cover this and then next year place the bricks that Patty has generously donated to our cause. Photo by Joslyn Reed. Lily, Marlow and Edith hard at work Photo by Julie Mangin: Ellen and Sandy Photo by Darlene Nicholson: The whole team on the last day of work!
Thank you everyone for making this year such a fantastic one. We appreciate each and every one. It takes a team to make it all happen.
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AuthorOur weekly reports are a joint effort of all garden leads
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