Just before the ‘Big Weather Change’ several weeks ago, I brought my green tomatoes in the house. They have been ripening nicely in their cardboard boxes.
I am concerned though, that my grandchildren think red tomatoes grow in boxes on the kitchen floor.
I am hoping there will be a few red ones left for Thanksgiving and maybe even some green ones for ‘Green Tomato Pie’. I haven’t seen a recipe for this but with the price of apples I’m thinking, why not?
Stacks of firewood and full barrels of oil grace our homes on these cold mornings, but you can still plant hardy perennials before the ground freezes. Trees and shrubs that have lost their foliage are also good candidates for pre-winter planting. It is delightful to see buds emerging on these new additions to your garden in the spring.
Some of my favorites to consider planting or transplanting: the rest of the daffodils in the bag, hostas, peonies, iris, dianthus, lavender(Munstead), garden phlox, salvia, and Guara.
One year I took cuttings of spirea, forsythia, and roses. I planted the sticks in pots of sandy-soil and watered them thoroughly. Then I tied white plastic bags around the rims of the pots and put them in my shop (you could use your garage) until the warm days of spring. It wasn’t long before there were darling little green buds on the sticks. I gave them a slight tug and indeed roots had grown so I carefully removed them from their pots and planted my new babies.
The spirea and forsythia are now well stablished plants. The roses however eventually succumbed to the greedy deer in my neighborhood. Which reminds me, Deer can’t read! Matter of fact I wonder if those tags that say, ‘deer resistant’ are only signals for the four-legged Bambis to try them.
There are products to use on trees and shrubs that discourage the ruminants. But the deer seem to have short memories in this regard and after heavy rains the nibbling begins once again.
I don’t know if I have touted the merits of the Cotinus, smoke bush, but the lovely fall foliage of this shrub reminds me to at least mention it. The Cotinus keeps its foliage until long after other shrubs in the landscape are bare. There are several hardy varieties including Golden Spirit. Its lime-green spring foliage changes to golden-yellow the rest of the summer with the addition of orange coloring in the fall. Royal Purple is indeed just that. Its crown of soft plumy pink inflorescence appear as mist on the plant. Other varieties include the soft jade-green foliage of the Cotinus, Grace.
Cotinus is drought tolerant, likes full sun, isn’t fussy about soil but likes good drainage, and doesn’t seem to have enemies. It is a multi-stemmed shrub that can be trained into a small tree. The underside of the cotinus leaves are a slightly different color and in the wind or a storm they are exciting to see.
The Cotinus is a lovely zone hardy addition to most landscapes.
November, definitely is a time of transition in the garden.
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