This past week we packed up the car and drove to Iowa to visit my husband’s family. Driving 900 miles across the country with two kids gave me lots of time to look out the window and appreciate the changing season.
      The leaves had not yet started to turn here when we left, but were already coloring up in the Midwest. The red and yellow fall colors we appreciate so much are there all year long, just hidden by green of the chlorophyll. These green pigments are the chief factories for photosynthesis or sugar production, in the plants. Falls cool temperatures, and shortening days signal the plant to stop making new chlorophyll. These pigments break down at a constant rate, so if no more is being made, the green color fades quickly. This exposes the red/purple anthocyanins and the yellow/orange xanthophylls. The balance of colors is primarily weather dependant. When it is cool, sunny and dry, there are a lot of the sugary anthocyanins exposed in the leaves. This gives the wonderful reds and purples. When it is warm, overcast or wet, less anthocyanins are made, and the yellow xanthophylls show. Other waste products like tannins, (think tea-brown) show up, like in oak leaves.
      This fall has been warm, wet, and overcast. We may still have great color, I would not expect bright reds and purple, but more of the yellows and browns. If they don’t all fall off in the rainstorms!
     I also love the colorful berries of the fall fruiting shrubs. Viburnums, winterberry hollies and outrageous purple beauty berries put on quite a show.
     A standout in our yard is the Viburnum dilatatum ‘Cardinal Candy’. Huge clusters of bright red fruit completely cover this shrub after the 2nd year in the ground. Unlike many viburnums, this one does not require a pollinator. The cranberry viburnum, Viburnum trilobum, is used more heavily in Iowa than I see nearby. It is hardy to USDA Zone 3, so in that colder climate it’s a great choice.
     I also observed countless orange fields of ripe pumpkins. The kids each picked a pumpkin to take to the Solanco Fair this year. No blue ribbons, but they enjoyed visiting their entries. Unfortunately, the stink bugs seem to have swarmed recently, and I’m afraid I better pick my neck and baking pumpkins before the stink bugs beat me too it. Mom is happy to see the dogs back, as she also has been plagued by groundhogs.
     Another great group of plants for fall gardening is the ornamental cabbages and kales. These large leaved, waxy plants color up under short days and cool night temperatures and are frost resistant. Either the crinkled leaves of the kales, or the wider leaves of the cabbage come in shades of white, red and purple and are a wonderful accent to mums, or stand alone in flower beds. Farther south where there is little or no snow, they hold up in beds until spring, here, they look good usually until Christmas or the first heavy snowfall.
     The kids are in school, the days are shortening, take some time to look around and enjoy the beautiful palette Mother Nature has to draw from in the autumn.