Around the Yard
Things to do this week:
* Buy mums for temporary color. If the garden looks a little colorless, it can quickly be made quite bright with chrysanthemums that are coming into bloom. Many public gardens do this each fall. The Huntington Library & Botanical Garden in San Marino uses short bedding kinds under trees, and the San Diego Zoo fills its gardens with cascading mums and other fanciful chrysanthemum creations.
Look for plants with buds that are freshly opened or about to open. Put them in beds or pots that are partially shaded and the flowers will last for weeks. After they fade, there is really no point in trying to keep them, since they will be flowerless until next fall.
For Halloween, mix mums with orange calendulas that are already in bloom at nurseries and put them around the pumpkins on the porch. For Thanksgiving use mums colored like autumn leaves--shades of gold, amber, apricot and mahogany.
* Plant garlic and onions. While you’re out buying bulbs for the garden, be sure to get a few garlic cloves to plant 4 to 5 inches apart. The garlic will be ready to harvest around June, after the tops begin to brown. You can even plant them among the flowers if you haven’t a dedicated vegetable garden.
According to the Los Angeles Common Ground program, onions are better, bigger and take longer to bolt if they are planted from seed in the fall, rather than bulblets.
* Leave room for lettuce. Lettuce and other salad greens grow best in winter, so save room for them somewhere in the garden. Some varieties are so colorful that they could pass for flowers, and even be mixed with them, but don’t plant them where you might be spraying insecticides, as in the rose garden.
Start seeds of lettuces and endive in nursery six-packs, then transplant into the garden, or sow seed directly. Don’t sow too thickly or too deeply. Seeds should be an inch apart and be barely covered.
Mesclun, which are mixes of various near-wild salad greens, can be sown just like wildflowers--scattered over the ground and lightly raked in.
