Our frosts have begun at least in early morning and as I write this, the frost is just leaving with the oncoming sun.  There is still time for some gardening.  Mainly, it’s time between now and mid-November for us to plant garlic.
Every year I plant several different types of garlic.  There is Elephant garlic, Soft-neck and Hard-neck varieties of garlic.  Garlic grows best in deep, rich soil and full sun and I always raise the bed slightly and compost heavily as I do for onions to obtain optimal root growth.  Now is the time to plant because the bulbs will get a bit of growth on them and will not heave out of the ground as easily with winter freezing.  It is best of plant now as spring planted garlic never does as well.  I also mulch six to eight inches for over winter to prevent heaving, as well.  The benefit of raising the bed slightly is also so that water will not stand on the garlic, which is very bad for any allium or onion family plant.
Elephant garlic has huge very mild cloves.  It’s almost sweet and you can freely use it in salads and cooked with other vegetables or roasted by itself.  Stiffneck garlic is the most cold-hardy, mild and very easy to peel.  I have grown the German Extra Hardy, which does wonderfully well and Russian Red, which is a great storage garlic.  Next year I will try the variety Music, which is supposed to be very sweet and pungent.  The variety Ajo Rojo is more for California and the southwest.  The Softneck variety is the best garlic for braiding, the strongest flavored garlic and stores great.  I grow the New York White variety, which has a slightly purplish hue and braids beautifully.  I have seen people make wreaths of this garlic for storage and it’s quite beautiful.  I’m so bad at braiding, it’s shameful, so I don’t even attempt it anymore. 
It’s also time to plant many flower seeds to over winter I usually wait until November, after a hard frost, before I plant, although some seeds can best be planted in January or February, such as the giant rose mallow, ‘Southern Belle.’ You wait to plant after a hard frost because before that you may get germination of the seeds, which will freeze out in the winter.  It’s a sure bet to wait till after the first hard frosts.  When I first did these plantings I felt like a moron, planting seeds in the cold!  But it worked beautifully and in the spring I had great early flowers that withstood the frosts of late spring.  Of course, with many of these seeds, such as poppies, they drop their seeds in time to benefit from the winter cold which they need for best germination in the spring.  Scatter the seeds, rather than put them in the earth, your mulch over winter will give them the cold and protect them at the same time.
Some of the varieties of flowers we can plant next month are the  corn poppies, California poppy, coreopsis, cornflower, larkspur, Queen of the Prairie, euphorbia griffithi, ‘Fireglow,’blanket flower, cardinal flower, loosestrife, Maltese Cross, Catchfly, Blue Pimpernel, Crown daisy, Clarkia, Chinese forget-me-not, toadflax;  the list does go on, but I thought that might be enough for now!
If you are going to be putting in a meadow of wild-flowers or just a small planting, fall is the best time, because all those flowers need the cold of winter to germinate best in the spring.  Also, you will be taking advantage of the winter moisture to help with germination.  Spring plantings of wild-flowers can be a lot more work to get going because of the uneven moisture in spring.
I have two hydrangeas that I brought with me from North Carolinas, which bloomed beautifully there and have never bloomed here, but I haven’t had the heart to pull them out because they leaf out so bright and healthy every year.  I’ve even threatened them, but to no avail.  I finally realized that our late spring frosts are killing the buds.  I received a phone call from a gentleman (I should’ve gotten his name, so if you are reading this, please contact me, because you’re a wealth of information) who called me about phlox and how to deal with that plant and we talked about hydrangeas and I told him my problem.  He told me he had the same problem so every year he builds protection for them with plywood and fencing and they bloom!  He said if he forgets to do that, they wouldn’t bloom.  Thank you so much because I will do that this winter and hope for blooms.
I received a catalog yesterday from the Kinsman Company, who specialize in all gardening “this and that” and they advertise a fleece protective cover  against cold winds and moderate frost, but I think I’ll go with the more solid barrier this year.  The fleece could be great for patio plants in spring and they can be 71” tall  and 47” wide for large plantings.  I will also be ordering labels from them this year, since I’m tired of being asked what a plant is and replying, “uh, I can’t remember”, very embarrassing!  There is a wonderful book for our area.  If you can, get a hold of Derek Fell’s ‘Encyclopedia of Hardy Plants’.  He covers both annuals and perennial plant, as well as  shrubs, trees and vegetables that do well here in our area.  I find it a wonderful reference book.  Watch out for the photos, though, they’re irresistible and give me an inferiority complex.
A word about planting tulips.  If you plan to buy tulips, it would be good to get the late flowering varieties, especially in our colder areas.  Otherwise you are taking a chance of having those late spring frosts kill the buds.  Yes, it’s the same frosts that kill the buds on our fruit trees and last year, even killed my flame azalea!  A word about gladiolus:  if you don’t already know, we don’t have to lift them for storage over the winter.  Just heavily mulch them and they will be back for you every year.   I took a bouquet of them to my neighbor Rosie Fisher and her husband Bill asked, “who died?” Very disconcerting about glads!
Seriously, though, the season is winding down and the trees are doing their wonderful show as a backdrop to what’s left in our gardens.  Horseradish and Brussel Sprouts like a frost and taste much better for it.  The frosts are our signal that summer is over and we need to get ready for winter.  After these last plantings, there will be pruning in winter and other chores, but pretty much we’re shut down and I think I will seriously take up knitting this winter, because it’s hard to come down after all the work and have no outdoor work to do.  Is knitting like weeding?  I guess I’ll find out. Hope we have a milder winter and let’s take this time to relax and enjoy the food we have stored to help get us through this season.  Any questions, please contact me at arol@zendik.org or 304/799-7281