the new spring
Autumn: It’s the new spring.
At least that’s seemingly the case for those of us in Mediterranean climates. With our dry summers and moist winters, the plants best adapted to our climate come close to taking the summer summer off, and then use the onset of cooler, wetter weather to start thinking about getting growing again. Some of the shrubs in the local canyons drop some or all of their leaves in response to drought stress, and most of the wildland annuals disappear not long after the last rains. Our long brown season of summer could almost be confused with the depths of winter in other areas.
Leafless Coreopsis gigantea
Left: Coreopsis gigantea in its defensive, leafless summer mode.
Reading the recent blogs from those other climates, I’m noticing that people are starting to withdraw from their gardens, holing up with some favorite plants transplanted into pots to overwinter indoors. These gardeners are thinking about sitting down with plant catalogs and looking ahead to the holidays, and then to warmer days and the reemergence of their gardens.
Garden before transplanting and thinning
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Here in San Diego, however, I started off September by transplanting plants around the garden, readjusting plant spacing and color relationships.
Left: Some of the garden before and after autumn thinning and transplanting.
Autumn seedlings
Autumn weeds
Fortunately, a layer of mulch makes a world of difference in keeping down weed seedlings. Unfortunately, areas where you want to sow wildflower seed can’t be mulched at all if you want the little seeds to germinate on their own. To keep down my workload, this year I’m isolating the wildflower patches to just a couple spots, around a couple little trees that will drop their leaves for the winter. We’ll see how well that works out…
A few spots in my garden don’t have to abide by strictly Mediterranean water requirements. There’s a small herb and vegetable garden that gets moderate doses of water year-round. A new raised bed harbors some tropicals that get to stay moist, as well as some other selections that need a little help with the water. This is the part of the garden that gets to experience summer along with the rest of the world. So the task of weeding never completely comes to an end, although it’s greatly localized to these spots that get watered one to three times a week.
All in all, this 2% of the Earth’s land mass that experiences this Mediterranean climate (the region around the Mediterranean Sea, western South Africa, parts of the Chilean coast, western Australia, and much of California) has its own seasonal cycles that don’t sync up easily with the rest of the world. Gardeners in other areas might not understand us. Forgive us if we have this glaze of anticipation coating our moods these days. Even as we worry about weeds and increased garden chores, fall is here, and it’s the emergence of a whole new season in the garden.
November 16 2008 03:24 pm | Categories: gardening • my garden • rambles | Tags: fall • Mediterranean climate • seasons • spring • transplanting • weeding • weeds
Lona on 16 Nov 2008 at 5:57 pm #
We in the Northern cold climate areas are jealous about now.When we are hating to say goodbye to our beautiful gardens and flowers your is just starting again.I think we do not realize that your hot dry gardens go into an almost dormant time.
Midwest Mom on 17 Nov 2008 at 6:49 am #
It is amazing to me to see your coreopsis leafless in the summer. Here in Illinois, summer is characterized by profuse blooming; it is our most colorful season.
I am interested in your small-plot gardening methods. I have limited space and am exploring ways to plant more efficiently — both for ornamentals and produce gardening.
I will certainly be back to learn more. Thanks for the good work.
Best, MM
lostlandscape on 17 Nov 2008 at 7:49 pm #
Lona and MM,
Welcome to San Diego! Of course not everything here was brown all summer—just add water and you can believe that you’re sharing a climate with most of the rest of the world. And our cool winter growing season is now suddenly on pause as we get hot winds stirring up fires everywhere. But every place has the good with the bad, don’t they?
Jenny on 19 Nov 2008 at 3:47 pm #
It was 75F here on Saturday and then ZAP!, 25F last night. Not much blooming here any more.
Although, on the bright side, we don’t have to mow for 6 months.
lostlandscape on 19 Nov 2008 at 10:14 pm #
Eek! 25 degrees in San Diego would do away with all life forms as we know them!
Now Jenny, don’t you go gloating over the fact that at least you don’t have to mow. I don’t mow either! John does that—as long as he wants to have his little patch of grass, he’ll have to maintain it!
tina on 20 Nov 2008 at 6:14 am #
Hello there and good morning! All the garden pictures caught my eye and it is for sure we here in Tennessee are getting ready to put our gardens to bed. You get to start on where you live in Southern California? How cool is that. I have never ever been to California, though my son lived in San Diego for two years. He said it is warm for sure. Good luck with all your seeds. You have a lovely blog.
I REALLY love the ‘forest’ of rebar. It does look like bamboo and at first that was what I thought it was.