My Half Acre of Paradise

Wow, I really have some cool photos now as fall continues to change my garden. We even had a valley snowstorm last week. I think it was Thursday. We only got about a half inch, and it melted the next morning. Anyway, here are some nice photos:

These aren’t pumpkins we grew. We bought these at Wal-Mart, but they did look cool on our front porch. Just carved them yesterday and set them out as Jack-o-lanterns. By the way, Halloween was fun tonight. Seems like families on my block were competing for giving away the biggest candy bars!

This is my red Japanese Maple by the front porch. It’s a nice mixture of yellow, orange and red this time of year. I love that tree! It’s the best Japanese Maple I’ve ever had, and it’s just a plain Acer palmatum ‘atropurpuream’. At least that’s what the nursery told me. Maybe it’s a different variety — if anyone out there has an idea what it is, post a comment on this message.

My Chrysanthemums are blooming pretty well, but I think they’d be more prolific if they weren’t getting a little shade from the row of Meidiland roses that is starting to arch over them a bit.

The ‘Wood’s Blue’ aster also is shaded some by the roses, and I think it’s not blooming as well as past years.

These are my Alpine Currant bushes down in back by the fruit trees. I like these bushes. Nice, solid landscape elements. Easy to care for, too.

The photo on the left is one of my Golden Rain trees — the one that first dropped its new leaves in May and then they came back. It has held these leaves longer than the other one that never lost the leaves last spring (I think it was a sudden freeze and cold wind that caused the leaf loss). The shot on the right is of my water birches in the front yard.

I have thought that my Quaking Aspens didn’t get much fall color, but this year I’m seeing more yellow in them than I remember in past years.

I was in Logan, Utah a few weeks ago and the LDS temple was looking good with the fall maples around it. Also got a nice shot of “Old Main” on the USU campus — notice the big “A” on the roof for the Aggies. It lights up on special occasions. I was too late to see color in Sardine Canyon on the way there, but there were other nice scenes in town with landscape trees.

And I did finally harvest my Granny Smith apples on Saturday the 28th. I think I waited perhaps a week too long. A few of them had weird flesh when I cut them up — it was dark and sort of transparent. Not sure how to describe it best. Anyway, I made a new dessert with them: Danish pastry apple bars (click for the recipe).

After not being in the garden for a week or so, I decided to see if maybe some tomatoes made it through the recent freezing mornings. To my happy surprise, I harvested a big bowl full of cherry tomatoes. The bigger tomatoes are goners, but these little ones were good. Ate some in a salad today.

I’m going to pick those Granny Smith apples tomorrow. Then, I’ll probably make a pie or cobbler. I’ve thought about making some apple muffins or cookies, too. I love the pie, but I have to eat the whole thing myself, since my silly family doesn’t “like cooked fruit!” Weirdos!

We’ve had some light frosts off and on for the past few weeks, but this morning was the first serious freeze. My outside thermometer said 30 degrees this morning, and it’s usually a little high, because it gets some heat radiation from the house. The news guy said this was the first freeze of the year at the SLC airport weather monitoring station.

I just learned about a great publication on selecting landscape trees for Utah. It’s available from the USU Extension at: http://extension.usu.edu/files/natrpubs/nr460.pdf. It’s called “Selecting and Planting Landscape Trees”.

I’ve had some trouble sprouting maple seeds (I tried some Rocky Mountain Maples last winter and one grew), but I realize I haven’t been very methodic about it. I just put them in little pots outside for the winter so they’d get the necessary chill to “stratify” them. I’ve been gathering some seeds this year from maples in different place, including some Amur Maples and some large trees downtown. Anyway, I found this great decription of how to sprout Japanese Maple seeds, and I’d bet it applies to other maples as well. I got this from a web forum at UBC Botanical Garden in Vancouver Canada:

Japanese Maple seed is ripe when the tip of the samara is slightly dry, usually indicated by a brown necrotic look. They typically reach this stage sometime in October. Seed can be immediately sown in prepared beds or stored and then stratified for sowing in spring. I usually place mine in large, flat box tops, evenly distributing into one layer. I do this to dry the seed out. This occurs in my garage. When dry I place the seed in bags and keep in the cool, unheated garage until the stratification process begins. Stratification is a pre-germination treatment to break dormancy in seed and to promote rapid, uniform germination. The seeds are exposed to moisture at a temperature just above the freezing point (1-5 deg. C) for a specified time. Some seed require a warm stratification period followed by a cold period. Most simply require a cold stratification. Generally Acer palmatum seed require about 90 days, cold. I usually wait until Dec. 20th or so to begin stratification of my seed so that spring is just around the corner when my seed are ready to plant out.

When the time comes to stratify, I place the seed in large plastic cups, about 1/3 full. I then fill the cup with hot water, 110 degrees Fahrenheit, no more than 120 degrees. My hot water heater is set at about that temp so I simply run tap water until hot and go from there. After filling the cups with hot water I set them aside and let them cool for 48 hrs. When cool I pour the water off, through a screen so as not to lose the seed. I then take plastic baggies, the ones that seal real well, and I place the seed in the bag, about 1/3 full. I then add an equal amount of a roughly half and half mix of sphagnum peat moss and vermiculite to the bag of seed. Seal the bag and shake it up thoroughly. Once it is thoroughly mixed I add about 1/4 teaspoon of a fungicide, Captan (wear gloves and a dust mask, Captan, bad stuff). Other fungicides may work as well. I then mix it up again, thoroughly blending the contents. I next add just enough water to the bag of seed and mix to moisten, taking care not to make it wet. Just moist. No standing water in the bottom of the baggie. I then seal the bag and place it in the coolest drawer in the fridge. Ideally at about 38 - 41 degrees Fahrenheit. It sits there for about 90 days and I check it on occasion, making sure that it hasn’t dried out. Within that 90 day period some of the seed should have pushed out a root radicle (the tip of a newly formed root). When a good proportion of seed have produced “radicles”, I place the seed in a large bowl and individually plant each one in a 4″ cup, 18 per flat. They are planted in, primarily pine bark fines, shallowly, just covering the nutlet. An ideal flat would have 18 little samaras, held upright, like little flags. Any seed not yet showing germination go back into the bag and back under refrigeration. I sometimes keep a bag refrigerated for two years. After that I sow the seed in a bed. Seed may germinate, sporadically for three years. Acer japonicum seed seems to germinate better in the second year of stratification. You could also, at this point, sow them in bulk in a prepared planting bed but I prefer planting them into flats. I have a friend in TN who produces thousands of seedlings and he basically takes large quantities of moist seed and places them in large black garbage bags in a cooler. There is no “one and only” way but this method works well for me.

For the past two days, my Autumn Blaze Maples have been at their peak color. I have three of these trees, which have been in the ground five years now. One has been sick — it’s been chlorotic, which isn’t supposed to happen to these. It lost its leaves in August, and some new ones grew back. I hope it survives the winter and recovers next year with some help.

Anyway, these two are wonderful trees. This is why I insisted on having some kind of red maple in my yard. These trees are so beautiful all summer and then they finish the year with a bang!

In addition to the maples turning color, I’m starting to see yellow in my Swedish Aspens, birches, nectarine, and some others that I mentioned before.

I got a chance to do some more yard work yesterday. I mowed the lawn and gave it the winterizer fertilizer. I did some pruning of the birches to let the pretty copper trunks show a little on the lower parts. I’ve had some question about whether they are water birches or river birches, but after looking at some online photos, the river birch has very flaky bark. These have fairly smooth bark, although there are few spots of minor peeling. I believe they are water birches.

Anyway, I also did some chopping up of old twigs and leaves with the lawnmower to make compost. I placed alternating layers of fresh grass clippings with the dry brown plant waste in a large plastic garbage can with 1″ holes cut all over the sides of it. I’ve tried this before but didn’t turn the mixture and it didn’t really heat up and do much composting. I’m trying again, and I’ll turn it over now and then to keep it aerated.

Many leaves are changing in my yard now. I should mention the plants that are turning and when they started. I wonder if it will be the same week in future years or if temperature affects these things much? Here’s a little rundown:

Peking Cotoneasters were probably the first to change. They got very bright last week, and then some rain and wind blew most of the leaves off this week. I think their peak was about Oct 1st, which is when this photo was taken.

The Yellow-Twig Dogwood shrubs also turned colors rapidly. Perhaps just as fast as the Cotoneasters. After the recent rain and wind, these have lost most of their leaves, too. This photo was one week ago. They had a nice glow.

This Golden Rain Tree is still just starting to reach its peak yellow color. This photo was taken one week ago, and it’s still changing slowly. Interestingly, there’s another Golden Rain just on the other side of that fence, and it’s barely even starting to change. It had a weird leaf drop back in the late spring, and then the leaves grew back quickly, but I wonder if the reason for the later fall change is that its leaves are a few weeks younger than the other specimen.

The Viburnum trilobums (American Cranberrybush) get great color in the fall, and they’re at their peak right now. The ones in the front yard are actually past peak and getting a little pale. I took this photo of my sweet little Emma today in the backyard.

Some notes on other trees and shrubs:

• My big red maples (Autumn Blaze) are starting to turn red but they’ve got a lot of green still in them. The one that has been chorotic dropped all its leaves in August, and some have been growing back. I hope it doesn’t damage any wood when the winter freezes that new growth.
• The hibiscus shrubs are getting yellow leaves, and the flowers have stopped blooming, but they aren’t particularly impressive.
• My cherry trees are getting orange-yellow leaves in the center of the trees, but they’re just beginning.
• The Japanese Maples are starting to blush, but not much yet.
• The Crabapple trees are getting some yellow-orange edges, too.