ypsi~dixit

You have so inspired me. I better get my fichus in. I am worried as it is so very happy out on my back deck. And I cannot forget my overgrown spike, on its 5th year, and flourishing. My indoor rubber plants, two of them and two smaller house plants have bugs! This is always a risk outdoors and apparently indoors as well. I need a ladder to reach it and would prefer top debug outdoors and don't want my newly indoor plants to catch it, clearly a dilemma. Now I could use your energy!

Maryd: are the bugs red spider mites, common to indoor gardeners? Or maybe pesky aphids? A good outdoor rinse with an organic soap solution should wash them away, hopefully.

Ah, ficus. I've found them to be very temperamental and picky. Is yours doing OK? Or pettishly dropping its leaves?

I just brought my 10 pots of marigolds in and they're crowding my kitchen. I'm cooking some chicken and I have to keep moving pots. This weekend I'll sort it all out.

yes indeed, had to call my husband this evening to tell him to bring in my cherished bay plant (I consider it my little bonsai~ have had it 6 years!) and my rosemary. everything else, perennials. just came in at 11pm, saw my breath for the first time in months!

Sitting near my drafty bedroom window (project for next weekend perhaps?), I'm noting that there's a CHILLY breeze out there.

Luckily I huffed in my plants while it was still light out. a bit of a pain b/c I had to huff them up a 3 step ladder and into a smallish window. They're all veggies, so I don't know how much more I'll get out of them, but I have heard reports that someone around here got tomatoes on her plant until Feb indoors. It was a 4th of July variety, just like my two scraggly tomater plants, so here's hoping.

Amanda: time to circle the wagons! I envy you for having a bay plant, to provide bay leaves for all the winter roasts and stews...yum.

Katy: Like you, I have indoor veggies this year; I just sowed beans, radishes, peas, and carrots a week ago, so we'll see how that'll go. The radishes are sprouting!--the others are till now moribind. We'll see.

Brought in our ficus ("Bruce") last night from the front porch. He will spend the winter in front of a south-facing window, pining for his freedom. (Or ficusing for his freedom, perhaps?)

Bruce is our most loyal houseplant. We rescued him from Wal-Mart (yes, I admit, I've gone into one before), where he was on clearance for $4, not even at the entrance to the garden department, but the entrance to the store. He was scraggly, rootbound, and nearly leafless. But now, 4 years later, he is a hale, hearty specimen of a ficus. He even survived a December drive back from New Jersey to Michigan with only the most minor of complaints.

(Now that he's indoors, maybe he can give all the other houseplants lessons in how to avoid being tipped over by the cat...)

Bruce the ficus? :) Ficuses are akin to my lemon trees in that they tend to shed some leaves when brought inside, which is normal.

amanda, where did you get the bay? I've bought them several times and they all died. Altho I'm ready to take complete responsibility for previous bay deaths, I'd love to try again with a tree from a place that spawned long-lived plants... But first, have you ever kept alive a gardenia? If so, I'll just forget the entire idea.

I lazily did nothing last night for my plants. My clivia, euphorbia and lipstick plants spent the night on the porch and all seemed fine this morning. I did reduce my hive entrances, tho, to the bees' annoyance.

There wasn't a trace of frost anywhere this morning. The weekend will be fine for plant-indoorsing, I figure.

Lipstick plant? Hmm..is that what some call the Caterpillar Plant? Or Chenille Plant? With the red caterpillars? Love those, had one but it went to that big compost pile in the sky.

Mine looks like this:

Lipstick plant

It's the hanging Lipstick, about halfway down the page. I've also grown the Nematanthus, the goldfish plant, also shown. The euphorbia is also known as "Crown of Thorns." Crown of Thorns

Note that all the houseplants I like are impossible to kill, unlike the notorious gardenia.

Ah, thanks. Little bit difference.

I lean towards the "easies," as well--you couldn't kill a rudbeckia with a bulldozer. That's for me!

Lisele:
believe it or not, i bought my hardy bay plant from one of the organic farmer/plant sellers one spring years ago. everything else that i bought from them promptly died.

There was frost on the roof shingles this morning, but not the ground.
My husband rototilled the garden today. My dreggy tomatoes and peppers and mustard-gone-wild are at rest for the season.
its a good feeling.

Lisele:
believe it or not, i bought my hardy bay plant from one of the organic farmer/plant sellers one spring years ago. everything else that i bought from them promptly died.

There was frost on the roof shingles this morning, but not the ground.
My husband rototilled the garden today. My dreggy tomatoes and peppers and mustard-gone-wild are at rest for the season.
its a good feeling.

Amanda: I'll have to keep my eyes peeled. I'd love a bay plant of my own, so as to put the savory leaves on my autumn and winter pot roasts...yum!

It is a bit of a relief, isn't it, that the gardens are in decline? Phew. No more effort. No more weeding, watering, corn smut (eeuw, yes, my corn was corn-smutted this summer, ugh! Gross! No more corn!)

This weekend I also plan to spade under my spring gardens. Tear up the turf. Ready the ground for next spring's gardens.

I'd be interested to know how progress on your rototilling goes this weekend...my aim is to get next spring's garden prepared before the snows, so I'd like to know if other gardeners can achieve this goal before the cold.

Lots of corn smut this summer, had it on all three corn varieties I grew. Seemed unusually prevalent. I suppose you know they actually eat it as a delicate fungus in Mexico. No thank you! It was viewed as a plague in the sunny Garden State. (OK, NJ is not sunny, but it is called the Garden State.)

So, did you spade &/or rototill? I have next week reserved for harvesting my self-drying wonder natives: two kinds of lima beans, one Lenni Lenape dried bean, and some more "cheese pumpkins," currently popular with the Amish, but originating amongst the Long Island Native Americans. The latter was the loveliest winter squash I've ever eaten.

I had a good deal of corn smut. Bleagh! Why is it I can look at a poisonous mushroom without qualm, yet the sight of greyish ballooning corn smut gives me the quimblies? Ick-O.

Yes, another kind reader mentioned it's a Mexican dish. I guess it's what you're used to. If you grow up eating it, it may seem perfectly fine. We eat all sorts of fungus, after all, and porcini are pricey (and delicious). I ate snails not too long ago, so I guess it's a matter of perspective.

Well, I have to hand my head to say that my Four Sisters garden was a washout. Why? Because the immense, towering sunflowers with their gigantic leaves shaded out the cornies. Bad choice. Then, when I went to harvest my sunflowers to dry 'em for the birdies, I found them picked clean. Not one blessed seed. I sighed. At least some forager got a meal.

p.s. those "cheese pumpkins" sound great. I did do a bit of digging, but I have to wait for the Jerusalem Artichoke colony to die off before spading over that space. Boy, did they spread like wildfire. Took over a lot of the backyard. So pretty I let 'em do so. They make edible tubers, and I'm tempted to dig some up and bake them as you would potato.

My climbing beans in the Three Sisters Garden were a washout, too, also shaded out. This thing takes skill! The shoepeg corn leapt into growth much quicker than I expected, so heeding the advice about waiting to plant the beans til the corn was six inches tall was a mistake. I should have planted them at the same time. However, the corn & squash did fabulously well.

Hey, trade ya a cheese pumpkin for some "sunchokes." Deal?

I know the struggle to beat the goldfinches to the sunflower seeds. Another area where skill is demanded! Can't get 'em too early or they are too small & unripe. Can't wait too long or they have been absconded with.