Looking Ahead | A Note from Rick Bogusch

Even though it’s colder, the days are shorter and there’s been a frost, there is still much to do in any garden. Each season has its own routine and set of tasks and fall is no exception. At Bridge Gardens, the Vegetable Garden and Community Gardens are still going strong. We’re still harvesting cauliflower, cabbages, kale, collards, arugula, radishes, chicories, turnips and lettuce. And with our winter gardening experiments, we may be able to continue harvesting into December and maybe beyond, weather-depending.

Just as we’re enjoying crops seeded last July and August now, we’re also enjoying how thick and lush lawn areas we seeded last September are right now. They’ve been mowed once or twice, watered during the drought and kept leaf-free, so they should be well-prepared for winter and to accept foot-traffic again next spring.

Fall is a great time for planting as well as harvesting. Besides bulbs, it’s an especially good time to plant trees and shrubs. We’ve added several native and near-native trees here and there, including 6 new American hollies in the woodland garden, along with ferns, hardy geranium, pink shell azalea and maple-leaved viburnum.

Besides planting, we’ve been watering. All those new plantings need watering at least twice per week during a drought like the one we’re having now. We’re even watering established plantings installed 2-3 years ago, it has been so dry, and we’ll continue watering until our system is turned off at the end of the month.

Fallen leaves and cutting back herbaceous plantings also occupy a lot of our time now. We cut back gradually, leaving just about anything still vertical and removing the fallen. None of what we cut back is removed from the property, so any insects overwintering in dead stems remain here. We let some leaves be where they’ve fallen. We blow others into the woodland garden and onto certain beds and use them as winter mulch and as soil amendment after they decay. On lawn areas, we chop leaves into pieces with a mulching mower and let gradually decay into free lawn fertilizer for next season. Often, we blow leaves from adjacent beds onto lawns to increase the benefits of these chopped up leaves.

We also collect leaves and fill the compost bins 2-3 feet deep with them. Over time, the leaves compress into a 6-inch layer that attracts earthworms and adds texture and nutrients to decomposing kitchen scraps and garden waste.

After planting, cutting back and dispatching most of the leaves one way or another, we’ll turn our attention to pruning. Our recent workshop with Jacksons Dodds, local certified arborist and owner of Jackson Dodds Inc., made us look at many of our deciduous trees and shrubs and decide to give them some attention by removing dead wood (which can be done anytime), thinning branches and in some cases, reducing their sizes. After leaves fall, it’s a perfect time to look at deciduous plants, see their structure and decide what to remove. It’s also a great time to prune evergreens like holly to shape.

So, a gardener’s work is never done, thank goodness. But that’s no reason not to take some time off to visit Bridge Gardens and enjoy the seasonal beauty of its gardens and landscapes.

See you soon, and Happy Gardening!