This is an old photo of a dahlia called Daydreamer that I grew this summer. Today we had our first snow and it's cold and grey and crazy to think a month ago it was sunshine and flowers. It finally got cold enough I couldn't dawdle any longer with dahlia storage and the remainder is now stored in the crawlspace for next year. It is still supposed to warm up next week- good thing as some late peony roots are arriving and I ordered clearance bareroot roses that I need to process and store.

Day Dreamer

Seed collecting continues- I think I have found any remaining dahlia seed that was usable. The pink cosmos is still making seeds somehow- it makes so many more seeds than the Rubinato cosmos that it's a bit ridiculous. Unfortuantely, I don't remember if these are supposed to be Fizzy Rose Picotee cosmos or Apricotta cosmos as I bought both and thought I would magically just remember which was which. I was hoping to have enough of all of my cosmos varieties to be able to trade with other people for more colors, but, only the pink really made enough seeds for that. The other varieties I bought just made enough seeds to replace themselves next year and a smidge more.

I ran around like crazy before the snow taking cuttings of all of my chrysanthemums- I really should have taken cuttings a few weeks ago, these have been hit with frost so many times that they look a bit bleak. I skipped matchsticks as it looked like it was having some kind of issue and it would be just my luck to bring some loathsome virus into the house. Granted, it could just be wind/frost damage, but, we'll see what it looks like in the spring.

The final season wrap up has been a lot

 Haven't had time for a post- been just struggling to dig/process/deal with dahlias. Have around 10 odd clumps that could be nematodes or just bad lenticels from being too wet for too long- but, doesn't seem to be a good way to determine which is which. Apparently testing for nematodes isn't as reliable after a freeze. So, I'm trying to decide whether or not to keep a couple of each of the bad ones and just sprout them and grow them from cuttings as the nematodes are just in the roots. I need to go back through and figure out how much I liked these varieties. In the meantime, they are hanging out in the garage awaiting a decision. Have about 10 left to divide, otherwise the keepers are all divided already.

Started fall cleanup in the veggie garden- found a few last cabbages and leeks. Got the garlic planted.

I've started to receive my fall planted bulbs/perennials. Planted out 22 peonies today and 65 various kinds of daffodils. I'm still expecting a couple more boxes of peonies- think just 10 more and around 300 tulips. I have no idea why I ordered that many tulips. I keep hoping a lot of my order gets canceled. I've had very little luck with tulips in the past, but, apparently earlier this year I decided to 'go big or go home' with tulips.

I've decided to overwinter two dahlia cuttings indoors that just don't have big enough tubers yet. I also need to up pot 4 band roses into 1 gallon pots to overwinter indoors as they just aren't rooted well enough to plant in ground for winter. Have a pot of seed started hardy hibiscus that I either need to overwinter indoors or just bury- haven't decided. Have three fig cuttings- 2 very well established and one struggling a bit, trying to decide whether I'm letting them go dormant and then just insulating them in the garage or if I'm bringing them in the house.

I ordered a grow tent for my bedroom because I'm tired of winter rose losses, so I'm hoping to take a bunch of cuttings from all my grafted roses to replace the dead with in the spring. Additionally, just waiting for a couple more chrysanthemum to open the rest of the way so I can verify they were correct and then I'll take a bunch of cuttings off of those for the same reason. Really need to go through and gather more seeds as well- cosmos seeds are almost ready, milkweed was half ready last week.

I will be doing more winter sowing I think- I see so many plants out there that are absolutely frost tolerant that I will start outdoors instead next year. Speaking of, I need to hurry up and get my trays prepped before the dirt freezes. I did get all my seed starting soil though- not easy to find this time of year.

Some pretty roses

I got the rest of the sod removed from the beds I cut edges for last weekend. I thought I would have so much room, but, my extra irises are still going to take up most of the space. No matter how many beds I cut, I'm still out of space. My math definitely failed me- realistic math got thrown out the window and optimistic math happened instead and now I simply need miracle math to get everything in the ground in time. 

The following roses did so much better this year. Pomponella especially was such a wimpy rose last year and now this year it was pretty much problem free. I don't know if Charles Darwin even bloomed last year and I think Moonstone only bloomed once last year. I definitely planted some roses too shallow last year, this year the bareroots got planted a lot deeper and you can tell they like it as they are close to catching up with these ones already in their first year. 

I didn't really think Moonstone would overwinter and was a bit surprised to see it in the spring. I will take cuttings of it this year though as grafted roses struggle a bit here generally. If I'm lucky, I'll have a replacement in the event surviving last winter was just a fluke. 

Charles Darwin

Pomponella

Moonstone

Natives and Nativars

One of the first plants that I planted in my new yard back in 2023 was common milkweed. I started the seeds but they didn't do very well in pots and then I decided I should just plant them in the ground and hope for the best. They did much better the following year and this year they looked great. This was also the first year that the Monarchs actually found them- which, honestly worked out pretty well as by this point I had 10+ large plants in 3 separate clumps. Even though I really wanted to see the caterpillers in year one, this probably worked out a lot better as I didn't have to panic and try to find more plants while the caterpillers ate them down to nothing. I don't know how many actually made it to butterflies as they did seem to attract a lot of bird attention- but it felt like nice progress anyways.  

 A monarch caterpiller, photo from a couple weeks ago.

The below variety took a bit longer to get started- which was probably my own fault as I was waiting for the plant to look more vigorous before planting it in the ground while the plant was waiting for me to plant it in the ground before it would grow. It was such a good learning experience though - from now on I'll just get the native seedlings in the ground in early spring because they are more likely to thrive like that than if I wait for them to look like real plants. This was a pretty variety- makes me want to collect more different varieties.

A swamp milkweed variety called Soulmate.

I bought several quart sized elderberry plants last year when proven winners direct had them on sale. They were very tiny and definitely took some time to get their bearings. The Lemony Lace really did well as soon as it started to warm up. My black lace ones did not do as well- but I'm thinking I may have had them too close to the driveway and more than likely the previous owner of our home salted the driveway in winter. I just moved them to another bed, so hopefully next year will be their year to shine. I had planned to make a goth garden with them as that sounded like such a fun idea- but, they are taking their sweet time turning into anything large enough to build a themed garden around. 

Lemony Lace elderberry

It's almost time to start seed shopping for next year- whenever things calm down I need to figure out what I will be prioritizing in terms of natives for next years. I would really like to add a lot of butterfly/moth host plants but it is really challenging to make a list of host plants, make sure those insects are in my area, then find a place to buy the right locality seeds. Hopefully I will get time this winter to really put together a useful pile of seeds to get me more pollinator variety. 

September dahlias

 A few dahlias from this morning's garden walk - GG"s Ruby Tuesday, Wyn's New Pastel, Foxy Lady. These were all new for me this year and I can't help but think they would have done better in the ground. Ruby Tuesday seems best suited to the pot I have it in, but the others all seem like they would like to be in larger spaces. I'm still not entirely sure I'm sold on Dahlias- I do like the wide variety of the blooms, they just seem so disease prone.

New flower bed finally cut in

I cut the edge for the new flower bed over the weekend. Started cutting out the sod today after work- worked until the mosquitoes came out. I wish I had purchased this sodkicker back in 2024 when I started seriously gardening. It's such a game changer I wish I could rewind and do everything this way. I made it so much harder on myself tarping things and trying to solarize these large sections of grass.

I'm still playing around with design- I did not want all formal- so this was an attempt to lighten it up a bit. Fortunately, it is easy to trench again to change it all- the square beds may not stay square. I did have some people remark that I should have cut something more formal like a rectangle here instead of something asymmetrical. For what it's worth though, I really like this irregular bed a lot more than all my square beds. I should probably add that I'm more of a plant collector than a decorator with plants. I have one of each plant- I'm not planting in clumps of 3 either. It's more like, 'hey, I like this plant, where can I stick this plant', rather than a planned landscaping effort.

Here are my garden helpers- more like garden saboteurs most days. Panda is on the left, Poppy is on the right. They mostly get along, but, they were both adults when they ended up with me and Poppy was accustomed to being an only dog. They do a great job though of keeping the deer out of the fenced yard- almost good enough where I'm tempted to expand the fence to give them access to more of the garden. However, then they do something awful like dig a tunnel under a rose and I change my mind again. They are cute though and good natured so it's hard to be too upset that they wanted a lair under the roses. 

Joining Mastodon

Flowers from my garden- from a couple of weeks ago when alliums were at their peak. #gardening #flowers

First is the unique rose Rainy Blue. This one has limited information available to me as it was never officially released in the US market. I obtained mine from https://www.myblackthumb.com/ where they carry a variety of unusual imported roses. This rose was bred by Hans Jürgen Evers of Germany and introduced in 2012. For me in zone 5a, it is a low sprawling rose, something like a miniature rambler sort of thing. It's very likable and healthy for me despite its significant winter dieback last year. 

 

Second we have a "Millenium" Allium. This one is likely a hybrid of a couple species of allium however I couldn't find anything more detailed than that. This one was purchased back before I was keeping track of where my plants came from- so no information beyond that I planted it in July 2024. It was not impressive in the first year, I'm assuming it was a clearance plant as I cannot remember going out of my way to obtain it. However, I will say it redeemed itself this year and was absolutely covered in bees. This motivated me to try to find some native versions for next year- I have seeds picked out and we'll see how it goes. 

Third is an Echinacea called "Berry Powwow". This was another clearance plant in 2024 with no note as to where I got it. It was also unremarkable in year 1 and a lot more fun this summer. This is another that motivated me to seek out more similar and I planted a few new echinacea from seed this summer and got more seed packets for next summer.