There is no other word for this beautiful fall weather besides "glorious"! It's a good chance for us to finish cleaning our gardens, put away flower pots, and generally prepare for winter.
Last week, a good, kind friend brought us a bag of beautiful ornamental gourds. What a delight they were! I love making displays with objects from nature, and these had a place of honor in our Thanksgiving decorations. Have you ever tried growing them? They are easy to grow, just like their cousins, pumpkins and other squash varieties. Beyond knowing that they come in beautiful colors, and interesting shapes, I didn't really know much more about them, so it was research time!
I found out that there are two types of gourds: the cucurbita, or soft-skinned types, which are the pretty little green and yellow and unusually-shaped gourds. These are the gourds that look so pretty in a bowl on the harvest table. Then there are the Lagenaria gourds, which are the hard-skinned types, like the dipper gourds or the beautiful gourds that are used for birdhouses. (You might recall that the horticultural society had a presentation on this interesting project a while ago).
How do we know when our gourds are ready to pick? When the stems turn turn dry and brown, they are ready to go. Leave a bit of the stem on the gourds when you pick them, and be sure that you harvest them before we have a hard frost. The soft-skinned gourds will stay for a while, sometimes two weeks or more, so you can enjoy them for a good long time!
So next spring, when we are selecting our seeds, let's try ornamental gourds. (I think by the time we make a list of all the plants we want to try, you and I might need an acre or two!)
The next meeting of the Yorkton and District Horticultural Society will be on Wednesday, October 20 at 7 p.m. at Yorkdale Central School. Be prepared to be inspired, because our special guest will be Maira Waechli, owner of Florissima, and a gifted floral designer. Maira will be demonstrating Christmas Flower Arrangements, and I don't know about you, but I love watching people make flower arrangements. It's always so interesting how a pile of raw materials can be transformed into something so lovely!So I know we'll get lots of good ideas from Maira.
And Hort Club members, please bring your garden photo or photos for our garden photo album. This was a tough year for gardens, so it will be an interesting historical project for us to save pictures of our plants this year. Years from now we'll look at that photo album and say "Remember 2010? That was the year of the big flood! Look at the gardens we had that year!" So please remember to bring the photos along!
Once again, I'll remind you that you don't have to be a member of the club to come to the meetings. We often have guests who want to come and hear our fascinating speakers, and they are more than welcome to join us. And if you decide that you would like to join the club, even better! The Horticultural Society is made up of gardeners at every stage of expertise, from novices to seasoned green thumbs, so you don' t have to be shy or intimidated. We are all there to share our love of gardening and to learn, so you are more than welcome to join us!
That's it for this time - make plans to join us next week! Have a good week!
