Memories

October 2020

Pickaway to Garden

 

Memories

By Paul Hang

 

Does anyone not remember the song Mem’ries, as sung by Barbara Streisand? I apologize if I have caused you to remember something you had tried hard to forget. Memories are funny things. I’ll be out in the garden and suddenly think of a stretch of highway in another state that I drove down twenty years ago. Or a person I met 30years ago. I may remember their name. I may not remember the name of someone I met two minutes ago. They say, as we grow older, we have more trouble remembering proper names and nouns. I am proof of that. Who said that? I don’t remember.

 

They say the sense of smell is a powerful trigger to memories. I know every time I prune tomato plants or bruise their leaves the smell takes me back to the house on W. Mill St. that we moved into just before I started first grade. Near an old dilapidated chicken house in the backyard was a badly neglected garden with lots of weeds and volunteer tomato plants and the smell of the vines was new and distinctive to me and, evidently, unforgettable.

 

If you garden one of your motivators is probably a memory or two of plants, gardens, or gardeners. For a lot of people it is a grandparent and their gardens that served as motivation. For me it was a pair of great aunts one of whom was a WWI nurse. Most of their backyard was taken up with tidy rows of vegetables most of which I didn’t know. It was the fact that they were growing things you could eat right there in their yard that made an impression. My father at one time grew a lot of roses.

 

It’s possible that we garden as an attempt to regain emotional states that we experienced long ago that our memory connects to gardens. We might also garden as a way to make memories. This is true particularly when we entice grandkids into our gardens. Perhaps they will someday think of us as fondly as we remember our grandparents.

 

I remember gardens in my past, some fondly, some not so much. I remember crop failures and years of bountiful harvests of certain crops. The year of giant sunflowers, the year of giant dahlias, the year of giant pepper plants with hundreds of small peppers that were killed by the frost, are just some of the things I remember. I do not remember where I planted tomatoes last year. That is why we must remember to, WRITE IT DOWN.

 

Things to do in the garden:

 

Hot caps and covers should be made handy in case a frost or freeze is forecast. Remember that the coldest temperature usually comes a little after sunrise. The earth radiates heat away and the sun hasn’t climbed high enough to begin heating us. If you can protect your plants now, a couple more weeks of warmth is likely to follow, with more vegetables and flowers to harvest. Average first frost for south central Ohio is October 23.

 

Consider bringing in the houseplants. Make sure you don’t bring in any bugs with them; a good blast of water from your hose can wash most of them off. Bring the pots into a sheltered spot for a week or so to help the plants acclimate before shocking them with the warmer temperatures of your home.

 

In October, and even into early November, YOU CAN plant garlic and shallots. Cloves from store-bought garlic may not work as some are treated to delay sprouting. You can also order favorite varieties from seed catalogs. Separate the cloves and plant 4 inches apart.

 

Dahlias, glads, tuberous begonias and cannas should be dug and stored in a cool dry place. Most basements are too warm. Caladiums, on the other hand, should be stored at 65 - 70 degrees. Go to ohioline.osu.edu and bring up Factsheet HYG-1244-92 to get specific information on storing Summer Flowering Bulbs.

 

You can still divide day lilies and iris. Cut back the iris leaves to four-inch fans. Stop feeding your roses but don’t stop giving them water. Consider cutting back your roses halfway if they stop blooming. If you have dormant roses you can still plant them. Spring bulbs can be planted as soon as you get them. Plant them at a depth three times their length; place some bulb food in the hole with them. For a better display plant them in groups, not single file.

 

If you planted trees this year (it is still a good time, until the ground freezes) protect the trunks from gnawing rabbits and other varmints with hardware cloth or the plastic wrap made for this purpose. Even older trees can benefit from this if you’ve experienced this damage in the past.

 

It is still the best time to fertilize your lawn. Use a high nitrogen soluble product. You can still sow grass seed.

 

Leave seed heads of native coneflowers and Black-eyed Susans for the birds. Also leave stems for overwintering insects. You can put off most cleanups (but not in the vegetable garden) until next spring! Add mulch around perennials after the ground freezes, assuming it will.