I’m a big fan of gladiolus. Always walk out of our TJ’s with a bunch of CA-grown gladioli. 
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Just curious, for those of you with flower beds…what’s your style/timeline for cleaning out at the end of summer and do you do an obvious switch over to fall decor in your yard?
I guess I didn’t get the memo…walked out to my car this morning and noticed that all of my immediate neighbors seem to have done a fall yard makeover overnight. Mums and pumpkins and hay bales everywhere. Piles of fading summer blooms and yard waste at the curb. Meanwhile, my yard is still showing late summer style - zinnias and vinca still going strong alongside the dregs of yellowing tomato plants and spent hydrangea blooms. Eventually I will put a couple of potted mums on the front steps, but other than that…no real fall decor for me.
I tend to gradually clean out as things start to die/fade, but never do a quick switch over. How about you?
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Same here. No overnight makeovers. No fall decorations either other than yanking semi-dead annuals out of the big pots by the front door and replacing them with smallish colorful mums.
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I am not a fan of traditional fall colors (orange, rust, yellows). So I’m not crazy about orange pumpkins and hay bales and corn stalks. (I’m sure many on the forum love those—that’s great!). So I just try to continuously remove foliage that is getting ratty, and I keep my zinnias, dahlias, etc going strong! Also, earlier in the summer, I cut a lot of perennials way back so they rebound with fresh basal foliage and look nice in the fall. If I don’t do this, they will just start going downhill and look awful this time of year (daylilies, campanula, achemilla, astilbe, others). I do buy lots of potted mums in colors such as white/cream, lavenders, purples and also purple asters. I might buy a few white pumpkins to go with. I’m so happy to have montauk daisies, obedient plant, asters, plectranthus, chelone and other fall perennials kick in to join the annuals/bulbs/tubers that are going strong at this time of year. When I dig up the dahlias, I put tulip bulbs in those spots. I don’t know how anyone could ever sacrifice gorgeous fall zinnias for a pumpkin display!! 
My summer annuals and perennials are going strong. The neighbor’s landscaper just did their fall change over. I wait until the summer stuff is naturally done and over.
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I’m a hold out. I play “summer” as long as my plants will allow. I don’t put out any fall decor (think pumpkins or mums) until fall is officially on the calendar (and after my bday which is next week - a benchmark for me that “after my bday, it’s fall”.)
But what I also do is incorporate some of my summer pots and all into a fall display. I’ll take a bench from the yard, put it on the front porch and then layer some fall purchases (pumpkins, mums, large gourds with some of my potted annuals that are good fall colors - orange, pinks, green foliage). That takes away from having so many pots and such on the deck but I hate spending a whole pot of $$ on fall flowers (and I don’t really love mums) for only a month or so.
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While I am okay with the fall color palette, your choices sound lovely. Would love to see pictures.
I largely agree with this! Not a fan of the mum yellow or the rust colored flowers. ORANGE is fine but not rust or the dark maroon. I agree that white/cream looks great with fall gourds and I’ll incorporate some branch trimmings (put in a bucket of water that can’t be seen) of green or turned fall colors (red).
I too have oodles of zinnias that I am picking for different purposes a couple times a week!
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I’m not set up yet for this year (I’m still calling it summer!), but here are some of my inspiration photos from the internet:
These are my colors!! 
PS I usually add in purple asters, too, which are more of a true purple/a bit more blue-ish purple and I think look great with these colors of mums!
PPS. I do love a bright orange sometimes, but mustard, maroon, rust, pumpkin orange–blech. 
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Nice! Thanks for taking time to share these pictures.
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I’m a summer holdout too. But I did get a beautiful sale $5 purple potted mum a few weeks ago and plunked it in an empty mulched area of the front yard. It’s at the left edge of this photo. Alas the blooms are now gone, not sure if deadheading will result in a 2nd blooming.
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Just took a bag of heirloom tomatoes to big kid’s. Also made eggplant lasagna for dinner using the tonight”s harvest. I now know what sort of eggplant grows best on my deck! And it looks like we will be eating my deck tomatoes in some form for a looong time. So glad my Mr. likes them.
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I like to combine purple mums with some yellow ones… because… purple and gold - go Huskies! 
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Last year I did find sort of a golden mum that I didn’t mind. It wasn’t that bright yellow - more of a deep sunflower yellow/gold. I thought it looked not heavy but not so bright against the other colors on my porch for fall. Also the flower on it wasn’t quite so mum-like - but it was a mum!
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Love seeing everybody’s fall garden colors. Here in AZ, monsoon season finally ended and the highs are in the upper 90s with lows in the low 70s. Combined with humidity dropping like a stone, it’s simply lovely weather every single day and my garden is breathing a big sigh of relief. And I can go to bed now finally with the windows open.
Here’s a recent picture looking down our street late in the day about a week ago.
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@momofboiler1 Love the pictures. My neighbor gave me a pot of sedum and I turned it into three pots and the butterflies are all over it now. I really love them. Such a lovely shade of pink.
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After tasting every variety I’ve planted, Mr. B and I agreed: Altai Orange is the winner! (Kahuku Gold won the grape tomato category)
Altai fruit did not split and looked absolutely gorgeous in addition to being sweet and flavorful. I will be buying more seeds from this place to experiment with other varieties. Moldovan Green, anyone? I’m curious. Never grew green tomatoes.
ETA: here is an example of Altai Orange that grew in my garden. 
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Thanks for the tomato tips. To this point, I’ve only used tomato plants. Possibly next season I’ll try growing some by seed.
Has anybody done anything with trench composting?
We put most of our food scraps into our city compost can for biweekly pickup. But this summer I have been throwing coffee grounds (and torn filters) into a pile with assorted other yard waste (mostly cut down iris and daylilly leaves). It’s something I do as I head out daily to check the tomatoes. In the winter, not sure if I’ll continue. I gave a thought about a small composting bin close the house, with of subset of our compost items plus some ground up fall leaves. During the research about best scrap items for home composting, I stumbled across the trench compost idea.
Note - I have zero interest in an open compost pile with edible food scraps. Now that we have local compost collection, I’d be ok with just that. Today’s question is based on idea to possibly keep some of the compost value in my own yard this fall without much fuss.
Don’t have garden space to do trenching, but our neighbor back in my childhood used to do something like that. Pests still found their way to the buried scraps. Our only raised garden bed has a well for “keyhole composting,” but I scratched that idea. So many pests roam our yard… I prefer to leave no incentives for them to visit our garden.
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