Early Fall ?

[bobm]

Yesterday afternoon, the wind picked up to 5-10 mph and the Cottonwood trees, just behind our back fence, started to shed their yellowing leaves. Lots and lots of them just before the thunder started to clap and CLAP with loud BOOMS then a light rain for over 2 hours. The wild rose among the cottonwoods has the rose hips turning yellow and red. Just a few minutes ago, I noticed that our River Birch tree has a few yellowing leaves and the Blueberry bushes' leaves are starting to have a red tinge to them. Are any of you starting to see the first signs of FALL ?

 

[Smart Red]

Beautiful temperatures and cooler nights are good signs, but next week we may be in for 90s. There are the early maples starting to tinge and the last to leaf first to drop walnut trees are starting to drop their leaves.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I believe we may get early fall weather here, and frankly, it TERRIFIES me. One of my major ongoing projects is an attempt to select/breed a strain of Rice Bean (Vigna unbellata) that is significantly less day length sensitive than the norm (and hence, more usable for people in this country who want to grow this legume and don't live at the very bottom). At this point I'm still very much at the "find seeds that flower a little earlier, and then see if crossing them makes for earlier yet" phase. So early onset of fall weather (and hence, early onset of killing frosts) is always a big concern. Particularly this year, since things are going so slow. I'm used to the plants flowering really late, so that even for the earliest, I still only maybe get the first three or four flushes of pods before frost destroys the rest (once rice beans start reproducing, they never stop, so some pods at some point will freeze no matter what I do.) I'm also used to the vast majority not flowering or podding at all, since the mix is still mostly bought stuff, and therefore still mostly long season. But the weather this year has made a nightmare of it. I currently have a grand total of ONE rice bean plant flowering (with one other possibly starting) and it has ONE flower panicle. Rice beans are self fertilizing so I already have some pod development on that one. But while rice bean pods take almost no time to swell to their maximum size (which would make them great if you wanted to use them as teeny tiny snap beans) They take FOREVER to mature inside. And some of the weather people thing the polar vortices could mean frost showing up as early as the beginning of September, and that October here could see us with several WEEKS of subzero temps (it's suppose to warm up again in December, but that does me little good if the plants have all already been frost killed by the temps before. At best I'm probably looking at only ten or twenty seeds back before the plants are cold killed, and there is a real chance I will get NOTHING. And usable start material is getting harder and harder to find.

 

[baymule]

Even down here in HOT TEXAS
it was 68 degrees last night!!

 

[Smart Red]

@Pulsegleaner, you can always pull your bean plants out by the roots and hang them upside down where it won't freeze. The pods should continue to develop if harvested this way. Not the best way, but it should be doable.

 

[journey11]

I've been seeing some type of maple tree that is starting to turn already, which I'm pretty sure is early.

The cooler temps and plentiful rain have kept my garden from being brown and fried as it usually is this time of year. In some ways it has been good, but for other things not so much. I have some beans that need to hurry up too. I don't expect to get much out of my sweet potatoes as we've not seen many days even come near to the 90's. And it has been too cold to get in the pool most of the summer.

However, I guess the prediction is that it should be an above average warm fall on both coasts. And cooler than average for the midsection of the country. I hope it will warm up for a bit, because I am going to the beach on the second week of September!

 

[Pulsegleaner]

@Pulsegleaner, you can always pull your bean plants out by the roots and hang them upside down where it won't freeze. The pods should continue to develop if harvested this way. Not the best way, but it should be doable.

That actually depends on how far they have gotten by then. It MAY work if they are like 4/5 of the way there but if the bean pods are still little more than tiny blebs of tissue they usually just fall off. Not to mention that actually getting at the plants will be hard. Like most years, the producers are hopelessly entangled with the non producers on the poles in a massive snarl. In fact, if you put a gun to my head I probably STILL wouldn't be able to tell you which plant in the mass is the one that has the flowers! And attempts to untangle usually result in massive damage (another reason why my harvest are so low, the first time I try and pick any pods, or even check on how they are doing usually results in damaging all the pod stalks (it doesn't help that in rice beans, the actual FLOWER STALKS can twine and cling) and cutting the life of the rest of the pods off. Once I get the season lower, I'll have to try and see what I can do about that, like select for the bush type (rice beans can behave like a bush a semi runner or a full runner, depending on genes and environment).
Last year, near the end, I found one tiny plant (if it fells like it I have seen flowers on plants so small I would classify them still as "seedlings" )that was flowering and actually tried digging the whole thing up (with generous room to keep the roots intact) and mowing it insode in a pot to let the flowers finish what they were doing. No soap, the moment you move them, the first thing they do is to abort all flowers and pods (and the second is to abort all leaves and die)

 

[bobm]

This morning ... the Cottenwood trees have more than doubled the yellow leaf count as well as the Riverbirch. My cherry tree just started the leaf turning with 6. The blueberry leaves have more and deeper red color. I haven't seen a Bluejay all year and about an hour ago, 6 show up. I also saw 3 flocks of Canada geese fly by overhead.

 

[Elbesta]

I'm in zone 4/5 it hit 100 two days ago. No trees or bushes even close to turning. I still have blueberries on the bush. We did have a late start to spring this year.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Rice beans have caught up a bit, were now up to about 2-3 dozen flower clusters