Farewell to my 1st summer garden on Long Island!

Wow that went fast! Tomorrow is the autumn equinox -the moment when the sun's rays shine equally on both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. This weekend will be the first one that days are shorter than nights, and it won't be long before temperatures start to get cold too! 

It's a bitter-sweet time of year ... bitter cold on the way, but sweet blooms to enjoy. Actually, late summer and early fall are my favorite parts of the year to enjoy the garden. The tropical plants are at their fullest and the weather is gorgeous! 

This year the plants grew especially fast. Long Island saw its hottest August on record and much of the first half of September has been in the 80s. Although most of the island was hit hard by drought, my neighborhood was one of the lucky few that saw persistent pop-up storms. 

Here's how it all started! I was still living in South Carolina when I took this photo and had automatically timed sprinklers on to keep the plants watered while I was gone.

All the plants were as happy as can be! 

The KING of the summer was my Viente Cohol banana plant. I've tried growing the hardy musa basjoo bananas for many years and have never had impressive growth on them, but the tropical bananas shoot up like magic. It's against the south side of my house where it receives a ton of water and blazing hot sunshine. This particular variety is quick to produce fruit. I'm hoping to get a lot of banana fruit next year!

 

Angel trumpets aka Brugmansia are one of my favorite summer blooms. The fragrance is out of this world! The pink Brugmansia in the photo above was a $5 plant on clearance last March. It was just a pot with soil. The entire plant above the ground was dead so everything you see in the photo has grown since spring. An incredible feat! Literally from 0 feet to 8 feet tall in just a few months! 

This yellow potted Brugmansia started off much larger but is actually shorter than the pink brugmansia I planted in the ground.

In late summer, I started a raised garden bed. The fall crops were all destroyed by caterpillars sadly, but I did get a huge crop of tomatoes and eggplant! 

You'll usually find Philodendron gloriosum (left) & Philodendron cordatum (right) as a tiny expensive house plant, but they're anything but small when you set them outside! Philodendron cordatum is usually sold as a tiny trailing houseplant, but it's true form is quite large 

I grow many palm trees, but one of my favorites is Hydriastele Beguinii. It's having a bit of an awkward year, but next year it will look much nicer. The frond leaflets are fused together which is a really unique feature you don't see in most palms! 

I prefer foliage over flowers, but some tropical blooms are too iconic not to grow! Night-blooming cereus only blooms a few times a summer. Usually, I will get a flush of about 3-6 gigantic blooms all in one night once a month through the summer. The flowers open up after the sun sets and reach their peak around midnight. By dawn, they're gone! I'm not exaggerating. 

Speaking of beautiful blooms. My garden wouldn't be complete without Plumeria! Plumeria Melody has the nicest shape of all the plumerias I'm growing.

Plumeria divine is a must for northern gardeners. It's a frequent bloomer and stays nice and small! 

Oddly this plumeria divine doesn't have it's usual shape and flower form. I love it regardless! 

If you're looking even smaller, give Desert Rose a try. A ridiculously generous bloomer that is PERFECT for a sunny tabletop where most flowers would wilt. These love the heat and humidity and don't mind drying out from time to time.

As far as vines go, Allamanda does the trick! They take on a more shrubby habit than mandevilla and have larger flowers. I can't think of a more pure yellow flower for pots and planters. It blooms NONSTOP!

Thunbergia grandiflora is a gorgeous plant that I have been enjoying a lot. It's a late bloomer and not as prolific as Mandevilla. I love them for their uniqueness. Literally, no one else has them on Long Island. But if you're looking for bang for your buck, stick to Mandevilla! 

Of course a Long Island garden wouldn't be complete without hydrangeas. I don't make the rules!

I can't say no to a rose plant on end-of-the-year clearance either! 

Thanks for looking and happy Autumn!

A few blooms in Mid November in my NYC yard

It might be mid November and it might be NYC but that doesn't mean there aren't some tropical plants still blooming. We will be getting our first frost tonight so everything that is tender will be melted in the morning. First off here's a cool map. How often is it that you see the southeast getting their first frost advisories the same time as NYC!? There are no other freeze warnings outside of the city since all the surrounding area has already seen a killing freeze. The urban heat island effect has a lot of downsides but the one positive to it is a noticeably longer growing season.

One plant that will not be melted are my hardy palms. They are hidden during the growing season by tropical plants that outgrow them, but they really start to shine this year when all the other greenery is just about gone. Here is my Trachycarpus.

My Sabal minor has 100s of seeds on it this year despite seeing some very low temperatures last winter (3F unprotected). It made a full recovery over the summer though and is almost as full as this time last year.

This is my first year growing Washingtonia Palms. If you aren't familiar with these palms, they are those extremely tall palms you see lining the streets in California and are very popular in any subtropical climate in the US including Florida (although the ones in Florida usually die from lightening long before the get as tall as the Washingtonias in California). Mine will never be that tall, but I am looking forward to testing their limits here in New York. They will start to suffer below 20F so I will be protecting mine once night temperatures start to threaten to go into the low 20s. More on protection later!

Last Ginger blooms of the season

My front yard does look empty without the banana tree, but if it overwinters well it will be back in that spot in just a few months.

The Cassias in the front and the back are both still blooming great. I got these as pretty small plants back in April and they are now taller than me!

 Mandevilla vines are very tropical. A touch of frost will usually knock them out for good and they will not start producing buds until the weather starts getting hot (late June or so around here). However, they will not terminate buds in cold weather so the flower buds they made from summer so they look great well into the Fall. It probably will not be alive tomorrow morning but it looks perfect today.

When it comes to blooming I can't think of a much better plant than knock out roses. They are low maintenance and bloom heavily in the spring and in the fall and sporadically all summer long. The bloom season is basically early April to late November which is incredible in this climate.

Here's a look at my kitchen now that the plants are inside for the season. 

The ginger smells amazing!

Thanks for looking! Unfortunately this will probably be my last post for the growing season, but definitely not my last post of the year! There will still be a lot going on outside as I begin to protect my palm trees for winter and lots going on inside too with all the tropical plants.

Some greenery around the yard today.

The weather was a little chilly today, but nice enough to get a lot of digging done. The bananas are all snug for the winter and most of the potted plants are indoors. I still have a lot of things in the ground in the backyard still around but I will attempt to take those in before our first frost which on average is in mid November.

The last nice pictures of my large Ensete banana. This plant weighed at least 200 pounds even after the leaves were cut off. Very very heavy for its size. The trunk is about as tall as me.

It was painful to cut off all these beautiful leaves,  but that's the only way for such a big plant to fit in my small garage for storage during the winter

Cassia blooms are still very nice.

My dog was very curious (and also enjoying the breeze)

The cut leaves on the Ensete banana trunk made for a pretty cool look

Wider view

A nice shot of some Virga. The sun was starting to set so it looked really cool. I kept looking for a rainbow but I couldn't find one. I must have just missed it behind the trees or houses because the conditions couldn't have been better for a rainbow.

Pictures around the yard today!

Mid October is about the time of the year when all the plants in the yard begin to get tired looking. They definitely aren't in their prime anymore, but they are still pretty close to it! Here are some pics from this weekend.

Colocasia "Mayan Mask" bloom

Spanish moss on a still green tree

My Cassia is blooming nicely!

My largest plumeria is about to go inside. This was definitely not as easy plant to take in. It's something I dread doing every Fall, but it is worth it!

Here's a look from the front yard!

When I got this ginger as a tourist plant from Hawaii in 2010 I would have never thought it would be a repeat bloomer in my yard every year and get as tall as me by October!

Thanks for looking!