Backyard Wisdom

Bagging Leaves?

Folks who read Backyard Wisdom regularly know that I am a truly lazy gardener. That’s why I just can’t conceive of bagging your fall leaves. That is just far too much work. But these days you can find news stories about bagging and other ways to dispose of your fall leaves.
Photo by Amanda Oliver
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Now, here’s the question. Why would you want to get rid of your fall leaves? Maybe these folks are gardening novices who don’t realize the bounty to be had in leaves. Here in the Deep South, organic matter in our soils decays in a weeks and months—not in more than a year as it takes in colder parts of the country. It just doesn’t make sense to bag a free source of organic material and send it off to the landfill.

Some of my leaves get shredded and added to my compost pile. But a lot of mine get raked straight into my flower and shrub beds for free mulch. Dr. Charlie Mitchell, a regular on Backyard Wisdom, made a believer out of me. The leaves provide good mulch, and those in contact with the soil slowly decompose adding valuable organic matter. Check out this information from Texas A&M on how to manage your leaf bounty.

I admit that I haven’t yet begun taking my husband’s truck out on nightly raids to snatch up some of the leaf bounty piled along streets in my town. But the thought has crossed my mind.

Take Time to Soil Test Now

Just last week, I wrote a blog post on the importance of planning your vegetable garden. Doing planning now will allow you to get off to a good start when planting time rolls around. One task that you should also do around this time of year is soil test. Most experts like Dr. Charlie Mitchell, who is a soil scientist with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, suggest that home gardeners should have a soil test done every three to four years.

Now is a great time to soil test here in Alabama. While most of us have had our first hard frosts, the ground is still easy enough to dig and get a sample. If you have never taken a soil sample, this Extension publication is a great how-to article.

In Alabama, you can get soil sample boxes and forms from your county Extension office. The folks at the Auburn University Soil Testing Laboratory also say that you can find the form here and send your sample in a plastic zipper bag to them. There is a $7 charge for each sample. A sample should contain about a pint of soil.

Another good reason to test now is that the lab is not as busy this time of year with samples from farmers and other agricultural producers. That means you can get your results back quickly—usually in about a week. This Extension publication will help you understand your report and what you need to do to improve your garden’s fertility.

Vegetable Gardens—Hot Topic

Planting a vegetable garden is a hot topic right now, it seems. I have heard lots of talk about planting vegetable gardens—in person, on Twitter, on other people’s blogs, in newspaper stories and even on radio and television. It seems that between food recalls and the economy more people than ever are interested in raising their own produce.

I have always said that we have too many deer to tackle a vegetable garden, but I am seriously considering what my options are. As busy as our family is, limiting a vegetable garden to several raised beds and some containers may be the best choice for us.

But successful vegetable gardens require some advanced planning, especially if you have never tackled one before. For some excellent tips on planning, check out this story at the Alabama Cooperative Extension System’s new blog, Thriving in Challenging Times.

Sweet Smells of Autumn

A friend stuck his head in my office the other day and wanted to know if I could identify the “big evergreen shrub blooming and smelling wonderful” near a building on campus. I looked at the branch he offered me, and I knew that I was supposed to know what it was.

But I will freely admit that shrub identification is not my long suit. If it had been an herb or a flower, I would have stood a much better chance of making a successful identification.

Imagine my embarrassment later that week when my friend told me that one of our horticulture professors at Auburn had identified it as tea olive (Osmanthus fragrans).

This is a shrub that had a prominent spot next to my grandmother’s side porch and her dining room windows so we could enjoy its sweet scent on mild fall days.
Tea olives have glossy green foliage reminiscent of hollies. The literature that I have read indicate the shrub, while considered a somewhat slow grower, can be very long-lived and almost pest free.

Tony Glover, an Extension colleague who writes the Heart of Dixie Gardener blog, had this to say about tea olives recently.

Many thanks to Amy Little, a Georgia photographer, for the use of her photo of the bee on a tea olive bloom. Click the photo and you will be taken to the photo on www.flickr.com. She has some other excellent close up images of flowers.