My Fall Perennial Garden and Final Fall Vegetable Harvest

I know this post is a little late as we have had our first killing frost a few weeks ago and my garden no longer looks like this, but I thought you'd rather see it late than not at all.  

Let's begin the fall garden tour shall we?

Black-Eyed Susans and Hydrangeas are the stars of the fall perennial garden.

My Polka Dotted plant did so well this year!  I always save a bit of this plant and bring it indoors for the winter, and in the spring I set it inside a planter.  It always performs so much better outdoors than indoors.  I also tried Strawflower for the first time this year (that's the yellow plant in the photo below).  Wow! What an amazing plant that turned out to be.  The leaves are like paper, so the deer leave it alone.  It grew so huge and beautiful for me too!

I always plant a Black-Eyed Susan vine by my front porch as it does really well there.  This one is a purple/pink variety.  I love the way it naturally wraps itself around the post.

This coleus amazed me this year.  I took cuttings of it before the frost so I could grow it again next year. Taking cuttings save me big $$$ in the spring because I don't have to buy new plants.  If you've never done cuttings before it's super easy!  Just cut a stem below a leaf node and put it in a glass of water in a sunny windowsill.  In a few weeks, it will develop roots and you can plant the cutting in a pot!

I also really love the silver foliage plant and took cuttings of that one as well.  I never tried the silver plant before.  I loved how it performed!

I was blown away by the vibrancy of this single Purple Coneflower.

Sedum Autumn Joy, a must have in any fall perennial garden.

Another variety of sedum.  This one has a purplish leaf.

This year I grew sunflowers in my vegetable garden to feed the birds.  The fence kept the animals out so the squirrels and deer wouldn't eat them before they went to seed;  although I did catch one sneaky squirrel inside my garden a few times!

At my feet is a a planter of the new Tri-Colored Mum.  You will have to watch the short video below to hear and see more about this mum.  On the other side of my feet is a new Rudebekia I tried this year.  The nursery said it's a perennial, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Just look at all the sunflower seeds inside one sunflower head!  Amazing!

When the sunflower heads were ready, I chopped them off leaving enough stem so I could tie it to the bird feeder.

Last year I had a huge problem with Japanese Beetles coming into my vegetable garden because they were attracted by the Marigolds and Petunias.  So I googled what annuals Japanese Beetles don't eat, and lantana was one of them.  I tried it, and they were right!  The beetles were not interested in this flower at all.  And the added benefit to me was that these turned out to be great plants!  They're drought tolerant, maintenance free, and absolutely GORGEOUS!

We had a bumper crop of potatoes this year.  This one large table doesn't even show all the potatoes we harvested, I filled up two more tables with potatoes.  Of course, when I laid the paper down over the potatoes to cure, Jackson had to sit right on top of them. 😂

We also had a bumper crop of squash.  This is what the vines looked like when the squash is ready to harvest.  Be sure to watch the short video below to see more squash!

Growing tomatoes in a short growing season like Wisconsin is always tough because most of them don't have the time to ripen before frost.  But this year, nothing went to waste, for I even picked my green tomatoes!  I made Fried Green Tomatoes for the first time and I couldn't believe how delicious they were.  I followed this recipe HERE.

I also canned them to use in recipes which use Salsa Verde.  This was a lot more work than canning regular tomatoes for the skins of green tomatoes don't come off easily, but I'm glad I did it because it felt to know that nothing went to waste in my garden.  I followed this recipe HERE.

Finally, I have to share my new Amazon purchase that I just love:  a decorative, yet practical kitchen compost bin!  I can't tell you how much I love this!  Prior to owning this, I kept my compost inside a coffee tin in the refrigerator.  It was such a pain to pull it out every time I had to dump food scrapes in it.  This Amazon compost bin sits attractively in my kitchen and it includes a charcoal filter so it never smells.  It's pretty, easy to use, and so much more practical than a coffee tin.  You can find it HERE.

And now, be sure to watch these short videos of the Tri-Colored Mum, how I dry my oregano, and see all the squash I had growing on my fence!

 Have A Great Day!  Amy

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