The petunias had been leggy since Labor Day, long bare stems with a few purple flowers at the tips, like a drawing someone abandoned halfway through. On Saturday morning they finally came out of the rail boxes.
I do a fall swap on the porch every October, and this year I tried to do it for as little as possible. The whole refresh cost $21.95: two mums at $8.98 each and one ornamental kale at $3.99. It went into the garden budget, which is already over for the year (thank you, Gus), so I kept it small on purpose.
What came out and what stayed
Out came the petunias and the basil, which was mostly flower spikes by now anyway. I stripped the last good basil leaves for one more batch of pesto and froze it in an ice cube tray.
What stayed is most of the porch. The geraniums in the rail boxes are still blooming coral, and the trailing white alyssum got a second wind once the nights cooled off. Both will keep going until a hard frost, so there's no reason to pull them early. The rosemary, thyme and parsley on the bench are fine where they are until it gets properly cold, when the rosemary comes inside to its spot by the coolest window. The four tomato buckets at the sunny end are still putting out cherries, slowly, and the Sungold in particular doesn't seem to know it's October.
Mums, kale and a lesson from last year
Last fall I bought four big mums in full bloom, and within two weeks they were brown. A mum that's completely open at the store has already used up most of its show. This year I picked two that were mostly tight buds with just a hint of color: one rust orange, the same color as my garden shirt, and one pale butter yellow. They'll open over the next couple of weeks and should still look good into November.
I'm not going to pretend these are perennials. Mums are sold that way, but potted ones almost never make it through a winter on our porch, and I've stopped trying. When they're done in late November they'll go to the compost, and the pots get knocked clean and stacked in the basement. Eighteen dollars for six or seven weeks of color by the front door is a trade I'm happy to make.
The ornamental kale went into the middle of one rail box, where the petunias had been, with the alyssum spilling around it. Kale is the one fall plant that gets better as it gets colder. The centers deepen from cream to pink and purple after a few frosts, and it will probably still look decent at Thanksgiving.
The mums sit on the top step on either side of the screen door, as close to the house as I can get them, and I slid the strawberry grow bags over to the edge of the steps to make room. Deer cross our front yard most nights, and after they ate every tulip on the front walk in April, I don't trust them with anything at ground level. I gave the mums a spray of Bobbex too, just in case, and the steps smelled like a bait shop for a day.
Pumpkins, which are groceries
We also came home from Hilltop Hanover Farm with three pumpkins: a big one for Mateo to carve and two small pie pumpkins for the steps. Those go in the grocery column, not the garden budget, because the two small ones will be roasted and pureed in November. This is either honest bookkeeping or a loophole, and I've decided it's honest.
Porch math in the fall is so much easier than in summer. There are fewer pots, nothing needs water twice a day, and the low October sun reaches all the way to the back wall of the porch by late afternoon, lighting the mums up like they're plugged in. I sat out there with coffee this afternoon and didn't water a single thing.
