I dug up the whole row expecting straight, golden roots, and found every one of them sprouting legs. Something under the soil had been blocking them the entire summer.
The yellow leaves started at the bottom of my bay tree, and the new growth at the tips looked wrong too. I thought I knew what was happening. I was wrong, and the pot had been telling me so the whole time.
I lifted a good crop in October and thought the hard part was over. Three weeks later, a forgotten sack by the kitchen window had turned a sickly green.
I nearly threw mine out in July. The leaves had gone yellow, the flowers were drooping, and every instinct told me to water it more.
I sowed my first batch in late September and watched the seedlings sit quietly through the frost. Here is what I learned about timing, pots and keeping them alive until spring.
I planted my first row of autumn sets too early and watched them race ahead, only to be knocked flat by the first hard frost. The soil thermometer I bought afterwards changed everything.
I pulled up my stalk expecting tight green buttons and found floppy little cabbages instead. Every sprout was ragged, half empty and bitter, and I had no idea what I had done wrong.
My fig tree was loaded in mid-October, with walnut-sized fruit hanging from every branch, and the frost warning had already arrived on my phone. I had to decide in minutes which ones to save.
My parcel of bare root roses landed on the doorstep while the ground was still frozen. I had only a few days to decide where they would go, and I was not sure I had the window right.
Your camellia buds looked perfect all summer, plump and tightly scaled, but now they’re browning and dropping by October. The culprit isn’t disease—it’s a watering mistake that happens to almost every gardener during late summer’s heat.