Fall is in the air...

Temps are dropping, the sun rises later and sets earlier, and the mum's are blooming...


They actually would've bloomed sooner if I'd let them! Sometime back in July I believe, they were starting to bud, so I whacked off all the buds, prompting them to get a bit more bushy - so more flowers - yay! I seem to only have any luck with this golden-yellow colored variety coming back each year, but that's ok because it's my favorite color of the mums. I'll probably pick up some more this fall (mixed colors), will tuck 'em in, and see if we get any returns next spring... I figure sooner or later they'll decide they're happy as my beds improve, and maybe I'll get more volunteers.

Ok, so this post isn't really about the mums... It's more about what's growing in the backyard - things with a fall theme, and things that I HOPE hurry up and finish ripening/curing in the next month!! Tuesday is September 1st, which means fall is REAL close - and that includes our huge annual Halloween party, and trick-or-treaters. Gotta have stuff to put out for decoration, and it looks like this year I won't be buying a single pumpkin or gourd!

I've never grown gourds before. On a whim I tucked some seeds in the raised bed where I had just planted my cucumber seedlings this spring...and WOW have they taken off. This might actually be a good way to plan to do them in the future - if I ever need more gourds. By the time the cucumbers were fizzling out, the gourds were really spreading into their territory. I planted seeds from a few "mixed varieties" packs (including some with wings, some without), plus I tried birdhouse gourds. Here you can see a bird house (light green) gourd and one of the other varieties. They're hanging behind the bluebird house.


These guys are cute - they were some of the first I noticed this summer. They're REALLY tiny...hard to tell from the picture.


Another birdhouse gourd. Neither of them are very big...but maybe I'll try turning them into birdhouses anyhow.


While the other picture made a gourd look bigger than it actually is, this next one is just the opposite. There's a few of these on the vine, and they're MUCH bigger than the pears they sort of look like. I'd say one would just fit inside of a football?


The gourd vines have actually spinned over into the grass - there's no controlling them! Luckily that doesn't seem to be causing any of them to rot!


Here's a new gourd just starting to form - I wonder which variety it'll be.


This bumpy one here is one of my favorites.


Whereas this ones much more simple, but with attractive coloring.


Here's the end of the bed that has the cuke/gourd trellis. You can see how the vines are just growing out of control. I've decided they've gotten about as far as I'm going to let them, and have started "trimming" them with the lawnmower...


As I mentioned above, gourds are the only thing growing for fall and Halloween! This has been my most successful year with pumpkins! While I haven't yet spotted a single Rumbo (my favorite, which has me really disappointed), these Howden Biggies are just that - I'm straddling this one here, and it's going to be quite hefty when it comes time to move it up to the front porch. I'm guessing 40-50lbs? I'll probably just use the garden cart to move 'em from the garden...


This Howden biggie had the vine grow through the tomato cages, and since the tomatoes were dying off I gave up on trying to control the vines. What's cool is that the pumpkin was clearly getting longer/taller as it grew - it was still "soft", and it's weight was stretching it down to the ground. It just hovered there for weeks as it grew, and then one day I went out and it had pulled the vines through the cages and it's sitting on the ground now. Check out how thick that stalk it - I wonder if that's because it was supporting the weight of the pumpkin for so long?


I'm also growing Lumina pumpkins this year. This one seems to have gotten scarred up a bit....not sure what happened to it.


And this little Lumina is pristine... These guys are small little pumpkins....nowhere near the size or weight of the Howden Biggies.


I don't remember what this variety is - I'll have to wait til I can get in there and find the tag where I planted the pumpkins. There's at least three that are what I'm assuming is "full size" (maybe 1.5-2 ft across?), and more are setting every week! This one looks to have a fairly smooth skin, while the first two that set have incredibly warty skins....scarred lumps all over them. I don't know what the final color of these guys will be - I'm thinking they might be one of the ones that turns a deep red-orange? I guess we'll just have to wait and find out, right?