Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Celebrate the Fall Equinox

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Sunday, September 17, 2017

Leonard Moorehead, GoLocalWorcester Gardening Expert

Long ago our ancestors worshipped natural phenomena. Twice a year the Earth’s orbit around the sun hinges upon a day of equal sunshine and darkness. Urban life separates people from the dictates of sunshine and light. Our gardens however continue to worship the profound effects of photoperiods. Wildlife migrate, squirrels dig into our gardens and hide acorns or if you have a butternut tree nearby like I do, and hundreds of nuts are buried for the short days and months ahead. Birds fly southwards over our cities, many goldfinches, chickadees, cardinals and wood peckers crowd around sunflowers. Geese honk overhead, some like the Canada Goose, have become year round residents on waterside grasslands. Their poise lends dignity to median strips sidelined by speeding traffic. Farmer’s markets offer the long season fall crops, apples, pumpkins, Indian corn and gourds. Scare crows emerge as the new talismans, once they were burned to mark the equinox. The equinox is a handy gardener’s guide. We embark upon a season of fun and productive gardening. 

Annuals pump their energy into seed making blooms. Many come into their own at the equinox. Save seeds. I no longer deadhead the marigolds, zinnias, or cosmos. Pricy perennials often form viable seeds despite their reputation of longevity. I often thicken a trio of transplants such as coneflowers into thick beds by planting their seeds. This method works for me and will for you: enjoy the transition from bloom to seed pods. Each plant forms distinctive seeds, coneflowers are visual geometric marvels. Finches will harvest many. Birds are important to gardeners, they are allies who consume insects and cultivate the soil as they hunt and peck their way across the garden’s keyboard. For me, they are joyful totems full of life and song. 

Stakes are useful to gardeners. My oak stakes are affordable and renewable, repurposed metal rods are old favorites. My father staked his tomatoes for many years with ski poles thrown out for blemishes on their colorful finishes. Made of lightweight metal and pointed, his tomatoes sank beneath heavy crops and revealed a thicket of neon blue, astounding eye catching lime, red and purple, all made to contrast with snow and easy to retrieve on ski slopes. His thrift denied the kaleidoscope colors and saw only lightweight supports impervious to the passage of time and hard use. 

I stake out the margins of best sunlight and soil for the coneflowers, usually for these sun lovers, where expensive new colors have flourished from transplants. The stakes remind me not to pile on the mulch during the pending leaf harvest or seaweed gathered along the seashore. Rather, I pull back the remnants of the summer mulch, now mostly humus. Weeds form seeds too, a vigilant eye at this time will remove crabgrass, lamb’s quarters, or others from the garden.  Not strictly bound to rigid forms, the stakes prompt memory, sometimes I write names on the stakes as a guide. 

Likewise, I plant the seeds in gentle furrows in alignment. Coneflower seed heads are easy to snip off and gather in paper bags, thresh, shake, and keep dry. The seeds will shift out from the chafe. A short distance from the mother plants I draw simple hex patterns and plant the seeds. Next spring, the longitudinal seedlings are easy to distinguish from volunteers. Lazy gardeners or simply like all of us, those pressed for time, tuck seed heads under the mulch and trust to luck. The odds are on your side many will be viable. A few seasons of replanting coneflowers creates a dense thicket of attractive blooms and medicinal herbs. The surplus saves money and helps along our bird friends and are always an appropriate gift. 

Verbena, Datura, poppies, butterfly weed, lunaria, and many other garden favorites do best when allowed to self sow. Stakes marked “Delphinium” or “Foxglove” identify not only the longer lived parent plants but also prevent seedlings from being weeded out, unless of course you have the gardener’s curse of too many. Whimsy can be delightful, Datura pops up in the most unlikely places from their huge thorny seed pods. Thin as needed, a complex mixture of plants is hostile to massive insect infestation and contains disease to acceptable outbreaks without insecticides. 

The ever present pruning shears are very useful during the equinox. I snip many plants into small pieces right on the spot, especially wide ranging tomatoes unlikely to fruit. Long grape vines are woven into wreaths and hung from arbors as ancestral memory inspires memorials to fruitful crops. A constant mulches have great merit, I rarely cultivate soil after a couple seasons of heavy mulches, the humus beneath becomes soft and full of healthy populations of worms and larvae, all attract birds and remind us that gardeners guide rather than rule. 

Open space in the garden for cool weather plants. Many salad plants thrive in cool weather, fall planted spinach, beets, chard, kale, and broccoli and garlic not only yield in autumn and into cold weather but often emerge earlier and in robust condition as winter gives way to spring. Search out sunny spaces for the seasonal cold frame, old windows are often free for the taking off sidewalks or dumpsters. A board or two, a few nails and you have a nearly free small unheated low greenhouse. 

Home gardeners enjoy expensive foods for pennies. Space conscious urban gardeners do well to consider dwarf fruits. Although the dwarf fruit trees are small, they produce full sized fruit in abundance. Korean or other Asian pears are relatively new to American gardeners. Sweet, full flavored and a pleasure to eat, Asian pears resemble brown apples more than their European relatives. I look up from reducing summer growth into mulch and bite into an Asian pear for the unqualified taste test. Ripe? A savory bite tells all. Disease free and attractive, I prune back new growth measured mostly by my height, a gardener’s privileged. Like all fruits, pears thrive in sunshine and have modest demands upon well drained soils. Thin the pears, mine have a tendency to form triplets or twins on the same branch. All are edible, remove runts, damaged or odd fruit gently. Those remaining will grow much larger and form premier food. My pears paid for themselves the first season, now 5 years old their branches bend and break from the heavenly loads of delicious pears each equinox. 

Breath deep gardeners. Look up at the sun, moon, planets and stars. Sense the earth beneath our feet. Listen to finches chirp to one another, geese honk in V formations above. We orbit the sun in relentless progression to pause twice a year for equal lengths of night and day. Enjoy the fruits of your labors, look towards the future with clear eyes. Bite into delicately flavored white fleshed Asian pears and grin. There are many troubles in this world, best forgotten in the peaceful realm of the urban garden. 

{image_3}Leonard Moorehead is a life-long gardener. He practices organic-bio/dynamic gardening techniques in a side lot surrounded by city neighborhoods in Providence, Rhode Island. His adventures in composting, wood chips, manure, seaweed, hay and enormous amounts of leaves are minor distractions to the joy of cultivating the soil with flowers, herbs, vegetables, berries, and dwarf fruit trees.

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