Gardening season far from over

Last weekend’s freezing temperatures may have nipped many outdoor plants, but it didn’t end the gardening season. There is still lots to do — cleaning up, transplanting, clipping back frost-killed foliage and raking leaves, Fall is the very best time for planting bulbs for color next spring.
“Gardening season is never over and I’m happy it isn’t,” Janell Mead said. “It’s a lot of work. You don’t do this unless you love it, unless you have a passion for it.”
Mead’s interest in gardening began early. She recalls her father plowing up a small square of ground at the farmstead northeast of Sawyer where she and husband Steve now live, and fencing it off with old window screens. She grew four o-clocks and other flowers in her own garden before she was 10 years old. A love of gardening was nurtured by her Grandmother McFall, who also taught her to can the produce.
Just ahead of the predicted freeze, Mead picked buckets of peppers to make jalapeno relish, something her family can never get enough of. She also picked tomatoes, ripe ones as well as green. The green tomatoes will ripen, she said, and she has friends who would enjoy them green.
Houseplants have been brought into a large addition to the old farmhouse. It isn’t quite a sunroom, being on the north, but plants like the light and the Meads enjoy the view of the yard.
Flowers are laid out in a room concept in the yard, she said. One bed is for iris, another for ornamental grasses. Tall phlox in another room were transplanted from the garden of Fannie Rhea, a longtime Sawyer resident who died more than 20 years ago.
Geraniums and other flowers have been dug, carefully labeled and moved to a greenhouse, where over the next months Mead will root cuttings to put back outside in the summer and also for the Pratt Garden Club’s annual plant sale.
Mead joined the club five years ago, and enjoys the camaraderie of like-minded women, as well as the field trips and opportunities to learn from each other.
“Part of my philosophy is to always keep learning,” Mead said.
Last February she enrolled in a 40-hour course and was certified as a Master Gardener by Kansas State Research and Extension. The Master Gardener program offers another resource for the Extension Service to educate local people about growing things.
A retired science teacher, she enjoys experimenting and planting some novelty crops.
Yard-long beans were a hit with the grandchildren this summer. They almost met advertising claims — the longest bean, now mounted on a yardstick and dried, measured 32.5 inches. Instead of snapping them, she held the beans up and snipped them into serving lengths with scissors. She has tried purple potatoes, purple okra, black radishes and pink tomatoes. They didn’t do really well, she admitted, but it was fun.
“I love to see things grow and play a part in the growing,” perhaps sums up the reason behind a project — several projects, in fact — that consume much of her time and energy.