Agriculture

There are two categories of garlic to consider: Allium sativum, or softneck garlic and Allium ophioscordon, or hardneck garlic. The majority of garlic purchased in the grocery and grown in Kentuckiana gardens is the softneck variety.

How about this weather? I am anticipating a very good orchid season coming up because our temperatures have been so mild, especially with night time temperatures dipping into the fifties already. These cool nights are a piece of the puzzle in order to get some plants to bloom indoors in the winter.

When attempting to grow tropical plants, we are met with the challenge of mimicking their native habitats, which is difficult inside our homes. We can allow Mother Nature to take care of some of this, outside, for now.

There are some perennials that I can’t live without because of their fabulous late-summer and fall performance. Plant them in your garden now because you will overlook them at garden centers come spring.

My mixed-perennial beds look the best this time of the year (barring any unpleasant summer drought). The Black-Eyed Susan’s, Russian sage and various species of Aster, Salvia and Nepeta are prolific but they are only mediocre anchor plants compared to some of the other species that come on this time of the year.

The other evening I was sitting outside under a tree babysitting our hens. We have only been letting them out in the evening under supervision until we can get a handle on some fox problems (we are working on it).

As I sat and read, a sense of calm came over me, and I was surprised to realize that it was triggered by a little flock of nasty starlings.

Starlings start to flock up this time of the year, and I guess there was just some sort of Pavlovian response that said, yes, fall is just around the corner. The starlings say so.