October 23 | Work in Autumn Part I

Planting season in the Schatzalp Gardens

Since a little snowfall in September it has been clear:

we are rapidly approaching the end of the season. So what do we do to prepare the garden and its inhabitants for winter? Clear away? Is that even true? The Schatzalp garden team reports.
“Not quite, because first we have to enjoy the wonderful autumn. The many colors and spicy smells, the new plant catalogs and flower bulb markets. It’s not for nothing that the golden months are harvest time. Harvest time, another tidying, final expression. It’s partly true, because we botanical gardeners are also harvesting now. However, primarily seeds of some plants that are important to us so that we can exchange them with other gardens or sow them again ourselves. This is how we protect stocks and preserve species that are important to us. A nice task. Here you can observe completely different plant wonders. There’s no thought of finishing yet anyway. It’s high season again for us and for the work in the garden. Autumn is not only harvest time, but above all, planting time. The next, the next few years of these temporary works of art need to be created. Preferred before hibernation.
Many plants love autumn as a planting time. They are now developing the root system again in preparation for their resting period. Candidates that should only be planted in autumn are, of course, the onions/bulbs that bloom in spring: tulips, daffodils, checkerboard flowers or the many types of ornamental allium. Bulbs are planted in abundance in the ground approximately twice as deep as they are tall. Many perennials and deciduous trees also prefer to be planted in autumn. Peonies, for example. If they are planted in spring, they will take almost twice as long to grow or will not bloom. Here the autumn buds, the small, red, pointed-conical shoots on the tubers, determine the planting depth. These should only be visible at the highest horizon of the earth. Many irises, also prefer autumn. When it comes to planting depth, it depends on which species we are dealing with. The representatives of the Iris Germanica hybrids, for example, would like their rhizomes to be placed above ground, i.e. on the ground, whereas the Iris Spuria hybrids would like to have their rhizomes planted deeper into the ground.

Cheating in autumn – Autumn is also a particularly good time to plant short-lived, biannual species such as mullein. These plants form a rosette of leaves in the first year and overwinter in this state. If they do well, they will bloom the following year. It is therefore possible to cheat a bit with autumn planting and be able to marvel at the flowers in the first year.
Protect the beds – But as always, there are of course also plants that don’t like autumn as a planting time. These include, for example, specialists from the Alpine zone. These experts are no longer able to dig their roots deep enough into the earth in time and prepare sufficiently for winter. What is certain, however, is that a newly created bed with residents preparing for winter should be disturbed as little as possible. So it’s better that we move the ski slope and curling track to another location, because a meter of loosely fallen snow insulates down to minus 20 degrees. One meter of accumulated or compressed snow only insulates to minus 5 degrees. In addition, the new shoots, although very strong, find it much more difficult to grow through packed ice. If you are not sure of the borders of the bed, a small ‘fence’ with a string helps to remember the plants you have planted even in winter and to wait with anticipation for their shoots in spring.
Believe us, every spring it’s more exciting than any ‘action thriller’ to take a look at the beds again and again and watch what’s happening there.”