Lessons of Summer
Puddock Hill Journal #78: Fall is a great time to assess the landscape.
As the lushness of the summer landscape recedes, mistakes, opportunities, and the serendipity of the growing season reveal themselves. It’s a good time to walk around and assess, as well as to put in some work.
When undergrowth begins to flop over or die back, young trees look taller, and one can better appreciate how far they’ve come since spring. Sadly, at the same time, I see others with withered leaves that don’t look like normal autumn foliage. The unusually dry late summer and early fall—interrupted only by a single rainy week in the past two months around here—may have caused them to wither.
I had begun to mark volunteer trees for fall transplanting, but have decided to reduce my efforts due to dryness. For example, there are some saplings we carefully mowed around in the lawn that appear to have dried out to the point of death. Others look all right, and I’ll have to see what the next six weeks bring. For many of the smallest ones—such as some tiny hollies growing in the beds by the house and about twenty tuliptrees that sprung up in the bridge beds this summer—I have decided to wait for transplanting in spring, when I hope conditions will improve.
My battle against invasives showed mixed results this year. While I seemed to prevent all multiflora rose from flowering and thus setting seed, some porcelainberry escaped my notice until it was too late, and I’ve observed considerable spread of creeping invasives Japanese honeysuckle, Asiatic bittersweet, English ivy, and winter creeper (Euonymus fortunei). Japanese stiltgrass continued to present a problem, despite vigorous and expensive efforts to fight it off.
In the woods and wilding edges, my hope is that increased shade from growing trees will reduce many invasives over time, and I will concentrate next year only on string trimming around individual trees to keep vines off. That shouldn’t require too much in the way of resources.
The meadows are a different story, and I have come to realize that I need to adjust our methods to keep invaders in check while promoting native meadow plants. My new plan is to deploy the mower with more vigor, but on a rotational basis. First, I will change the location of paths through the meadows, suppressing growth under new paths while allowing the seed bank in old paths to flourish.
On a broader scale, we will endeavor to mow at field height one third of meadow areas in future, starting with places where invasives—especially porcelainberry and multiflora rose—have started to come on too strong, forming large roots (I know from selective digging) and even, in the case of porcelainberry, establishing woody runners along the ground. Depending upon progress, this rotation may be annual or biannual.
Here are some other fall observations and planned changes:
Big Pond Banks
The invasives got so bad on half the big pond embankment this summer that we started cutting it back to field height. We’ll continue to do that next year and perhaps switch sides the year following. Meanwhile, while the north-facing edge of the pond has a few new volunteer trees popping up (specifically sour gum, which I expect will lean in search of light, thus helping to shade a small portion of the pond), there’s also too much Japanese honeysuckle and a small area of persistent common reed (Phragmites australis). I’m thinking of string trimming the worst third of the pond banks bi-monthly this summer to address these problems.
Wet Meadow
Multiflora rose, mile-a-minute vine, and Canada thistle have grown too successful in parts of the wet meadow despite selective string trimming. If we could string trim them every week, this wouldn’t happen, but we can’t. Next year, we’ll mow the back third of the wet meadow monthly to field height. About half that section is in the process of reforestation, and those trees will assist our efforts at suppressing invasives as they grow taller and wider and deposit leaf litter.
Wet Woods
I planted a few trees in the wet woods this summer, in particular three river birches. In addition, some volunteers are cropping up. The main invasive in that area is multiflora rose, which I will continue to attack selectively to keep from flowering. At the edge of the wet woods, the last three mature burning bushes are slated to meet my chainsaw. In the barn meadow nearby, I have a crew coming to remove a stand of invasive privet. We’ll seed, then mow that area at field height for at least a year.
Upper Big Pond Woods
While I’ve lost plenty of small trees that we planted on the challenging slope above the big pond, others are showing signs of getting well established, in particular some dogwoods and oaks. In addition to a plethora of sassafras, volunteers include tuliptree, ash, hackberry, and black walnut. (The hackberry in particular got me excited, as I recently read a New York Times column by Margaret Renkl about its benefits to wildlife.) Last weekend, I cut down most of the Amur honeysuckle that continues to plague that area, and I plan to get the rest later this month. I also got down on hands and knees to pull up patches of porcelainberry and Asiatic bittersweet, but I probably didn’t make much of a dent.
Other Woody Areas
We will add some trees this fall and next spring, a few that I purchased but mostly volunteers from lawn and planting beds. While they’re still showing leaves I continue to mark younger saplings that volunteered in the woods with stakes so we don’t inadvertently knock them over, and outside the deer fence I will of course cage any young transplants. Last weekend, I cut down some mature Amur honeysuckle shrubs outside the fence, as well as a few thick invasive vines that we had either missed when we cleaned up that area years ago or that had fought their way back.
Before we know it, first frost will come, and while the lay of the land will be clearer after the inevitable die-back, the behavior of most plants can be easily forgotten. That’s what makes this time so crucial for learning the lessons of summer.
Amazingly, this part of the patio beds (native Coreopsis, Viburnum, Penstemon spp. cultivars) still looks lush:
Native goldenrod in the barn meadow has begun going to seed:
Some native asters continue strong:
Of the five native Atlantic white cedars we planted by the big pond embankment a few years ago, only two survived, but those ones came into their own this summer. The bigger one is about 12 feet tall now:
Native coral bells (Heuchera spp. cultivar) earn their name in a bed by the house:
These mature non-native Atlas cedars on the big pond never fail to impress:
