Storing Dahlias

 I got all of my Dahlia tubers stored.  I worked on them yesterday and today.  I'm whooped.  That is a lot of hard work.  I've done more detailed blogs about my methods in the past.  Digging and Storing Dahlias  and Dividing Dahlias.   This year I made some improvements to my system that saved a lot of work.  Instead of washing them into the wheelbarrow and then dumping the mud out each time, I set my compost sifter up on sawhorses so the mud washes away.

I also got these neat tags that can stay with the tuber all year.  You can wash them and plant them.  I no longer have to write on the tubers.  When you plant them you can either leave them on the tuber or pull them off and put them on the garden stake for identification.

Those two improvements made a huge difference.   Also, I have culled over two dozen plants this year.  Some of them I pulled during the summer when I lost patience with them and some I pulled recently because I didn't want to waste time and energy storing them.  This was either because they just don't bloom well, or they were not a color that I liked.  A couple of them died on their own.  

I cleaned up each clump, removing damaged or old tubers, and a few of them divided up on their own.  Some of the clumps are massive.  This poses a storage problem but it ensures that the plant will be large and productive next year.  I've stopped worrying as much about dividing them.  I just remove what I need to and get them cleaned up. I managed to get everything into the same amount of tubs as I did last year, even though many of the clumps were quite large. 

This is most of the ones from yesterday drying in the breeze.

I have decided that I enjoy getting new varieties each year, looking forward to seeing the new bloom in person.  I will probably keep storing Dahlias for a few more years, but the more I store, the fewer new ones I can plant so I am not going overboard.  Last winter I stored 97 tubers.  I did not have room to plant them all this spring, and between that culling and culling throughout the year, I am down to 59 in storage.  And that is plenty!

Frost and Fire 2026

 This morning we had a hard freeze.  29F  And the Dahlias and Zinnias are showing it.  Which is good.  Dahlia cutting and digging may commence.  I am ready for it.  This coming week will be beautiful weather, perfect for dealing with this chore.

The Dahlia flowers are burned so all of the bees are wandering around looking for food and being annoying.

I have been leaving my ornamental peppers out.  One of them is succumbing to the frosts we have had.

There are two that I am considering overwintering.  I moved them against the wall of the house and they have not yet been touched by frost.

It is amazing how the routine of our lives repeats itself year after year.  It is time for the autumn brush fire.  Two years ago we burned on this weekend as well.   Every year we tell ourselves that surely this is the last year we will have enough volume of brush and tree limbs to require burning.   Then the saplings start growing in the brushy areas, and lawn trees need limbing up, or something falls in the lawn.  The next thing we know, we have accumulated a whole lot of brush and the pile begins to grow.

This pile had been growing since July.  It has chunks of punky Ash that was not suitable for firewood, the neighbor's Linden limbs that were lying on the roof, our spruce branches.  We took some time cutting brush and goldenrods away from the wild edges, and then set fire to everything.  It went up in an inferno.  Once the July pile had gotten so big it was going to topple, we began piling brush in other areas so the neighbor could use the forks on his loader to add it to the pile once it began to burn down.  There were a lot of dry leaves in the pile and we had to rake them up out of the lawn.  My husband had mowed around the pile this morning to clear any dead grass or leaves away.

We had almost an inch of rain this past week, but we prefer to burn on a day when the rain is just clearing out so that everything is still wet.  We had large fire extinguishers from the garage on hand, but just to be on the safe side my husband filled the tractor loader full of water and we used watering cans to water down the grass around the fire.  

The grass was drying fast and we didn't want to have to worry about it.

Our high today was 61F (16C) which was vey pleasant weather for sitting around a huge fire.  Winter will be here soon.  I saw this prediction on Facebook this week which says that our winter here in NY should be mild.  That would be fine with me.  The past two winters we have had significant snows which left us shoveling the roofs to be on the safe side.

NOAA released their winter outlook today, highlighted by an exceptionally strong El Nino. The end result favors a general pattern that will likely leave snow-lovers across the Great Lakes & New England disappointed. There is a strong lean toward a relatively warm winter, which theoretically throttles the ability for lake effect snow to contribute.

The View Out My Window - Gloomy Day Edition

 The thing about fall color is that it even looks good on a gloomy day.  We have a rainy day and our warm 68F (20C) temperature right now is our high for today.  It is a good day to stay inside and look out the window.

Talk about saturated color.

That's probably as pretty as it is going to get today.  Wind and rain will bring down the leaves and we will be right back to garden cleanup.  We are hoping to get our summer brush pile burned this weekend.  It is a lot more pleasant burning brush on a cold day than it is in the heat of summer.

Two years ago we had a brilliant autumn, but I think this year is even better.

Leaf Season Has Begun

 As the weather changes and the lawn stops growing we turn our attention to dealing with the leaves.  Most of them get mulched with the mower and then blown towards the woods.  Some of them I save for mulching the vegetable garden.  This is the first autumn with my battery operated push mower.  It bags them up nicely, but I have to empty the bag at the end of each circuit.  

I have been putting grass clippings in my compost, and it has been nice to have some dried leaves to add to the green material.  But today it was 99.9% leaves which will not break down as fast as it would if it had green grass mixed in.  So I refilled my leaf tube which was half empty.  I have to say that mowing them beats sucking them up with the leaf sucker.  I am quickly going to be overstocked with leaves.  We will take the extra to the woods.  

The other day I said we were at peak leaf color but them I did not take any pictures.

Hickory Tree

This deep magenta Dahlia is easily seen from our window.  I have been enjoying it very much.  It has 16 blooms on it today.

It is one of the Bee's Choice Dahlias that I grew out from my own seed last year and overwintered.  I believe it is a cross between Junkyard Dog and Hootenany.

The View Out My Window

 We are at about peak fall color here this week.  Teetering on the point between the most trees turning and the least leaves falling off because of wind and rain.  I have really been enjoying the morning view out my window as I do my computering each day.

In fact, all summer I have noticed that this specific view into the woods was so peaceful.  I started to wonder why I was appreciating this view more.  What changed?  Then I remembered.

For most of the 23 years I have lived here there has been this Ash tree full of Poison Ivy smack in the middle of the view.  In the summer the Ivy leaves would be green and lush, and in the fall they would be brilliant yellow, but under it all was that dying tree trunk looking worse and worse each year.  No one wanted to deal with it because of the Poison Ivy.

Finally, two years ago, we asked the neighbor, who is not allergic to Poison Ivy (although he attracts deer ticks like a magnet so there is a trade-off) to help us by chain sawing through the main stems of several gigantic Poison Ivy vines that were taking over dead Ash trees on the edge of the woods.  What a difference that has made in the Ivy department.  I used to find half a dozen Poison Ivy seedlings in my perennial gardens every week.  I have maybe found two or three all year.  Plus, I don't have to look at that ugly vine out my window.  Once the vine died, we knocked the tree over with a tractor and even managed to salvage some of it for firewood.

Frost on the Pumpkin

 We had a good frost this morning, quite a few degrees colder than the first frost on Sept 25th.  This is right on time and welcome.  I am ready for the next season.

I am hoping to save one of each of my black pepper plants under a grow light this winter.  However, I do not want to play the watch for frost game, worrying about whether to bring them in or not. For a few more weeks anyway. They belong there by the steps.  It is warmer near the house with radiant heat from the driveway.  If they make it they make it.  If not, too bad, so sad.  I ditched the cornstalks after a week of soggy weather because they looked absolutely awful, but these Dracaena spikes were still looking nice.

I am actually looking forward to frost on the Dahlias.  Over the past couple of years I have noted that newly purchased tubers I plant do awesome the first year, blooming early and profusely.  And then in years after they dwindle.  Not in all cases, but often.  Some of this could be due to the fact that I did not fertilize the Dahlia beds this year.  I plan on dumping a whole bag of Garden-Tone in them next spring.  But, my theory is that I am not handling my tubers correctly in the fall.  The larger Dahlia farms wait until a killing frost to begin digging tubers.  The frost tells the plant to stop producing flowers and start storing energy for next year.  It is sort of like removing Daffodil foliage too early.  You won't get blooms the next year.  That is my theory anyway.  I need to wait longer to begin digging tubers.

Ice Tea

No frost on these yet.  They may wait to show some damage until this afternoon, but what I need is enough frost to kill the leaves.  Last year our first killing frost was Oct 27th.  I dug the Bee's Choice Dahlias after that and they are performing well this year.

Hootenany

I already moved my Coleus cuttings indoors after that first light frost. 

When they start to show some good roots I move them over to the soil in the cells.

Coleus are so sensitive to cold that they begin dropping leaves and I have already pulled all of the Coleus that was in the garden.  These cuttings are all I am going to get.  I will lose some throughout the winter, but I think I have a large enough selection to have a good start next spring.  After they establish well in their cells I will bump them up to 3.5" pots.

A Bee's Choice Dahlia

 It's gloomy and rainy here today, and most of the garden chores are done for now.  I just wanted to show you this Bee's Choice Dahlia from last year.  It is the one I call "Cosmic Red" because it reminded me of Cosmos flowers.   It has grown to be a huge plant.  I placed it in an empty spot in the landscape where it had plenty of room to grow.

For reference, the fence to the left is five feet tall.  It is now protected from deer so I have lost a few buds before they bloomed.

It is a bright spot in the garden.

Sweet Potato Harvest

 We harvested the Sweet Potatoes today.  We are expecting a little rain over the next two days and this is a chore that is more pleasant when the soil is completely dry.  The yield was great in my opinion.  This year I planted five really nice starts that I sprouted from my own stock, and the racoons rummaged through them to the point where I couldn't even find them.  So I replanted because I always save a backup.  I had four decent slips left but a fifth one survived the coons and popped up a little later.  So below is the harvest from five slips in one 25 gallon grow bag.  Those are really nice sized and they will store well once they are cured.  In fact, the potato I used to sprout slips this year was harvested in 2024.

And there are a bunch of smaller, irregular ones that I will use early on.

They are now curing for one week on a 85F heat mat with jars of water to increase the humidity in the Sterlite tub.  Below is a photo from years past.

This heat and humidity helps convert the starches into sugars and toughens the skin.  After one week I will allow the skin to dry well and wrap them individually in newspaper and store them in the basement.

It's Cuddle Weather

 We had our first light frost this morning which is almost two weeks early.  Finally the gloom has cleared and we are enjoying brilliant sunny days with highs lower than 70F (21C).

It wasn't a hard frost, just touched the roofs and fences.  The garden thermometer DID say 32F though.  

We are ready for Autumn.  All of the perennials and grasses have been cut back.  Most of the annuals have been pulled.  The vegetable garden is mostly cleaned out.  I do have a nice crop of peas coming.  They can handle some cold weather so we will still be able to harvest what is just filling out now.

I have a Sun Sugar cherry tomato plant going strong.  I snack on these all day and I had been keeping up with the plant until about a week ago when it got ahead of me.

The Pole Beans were still looking beautiful yesterday before I pulled them out.  The beans that were left were pretty tough and mature.  I picked a few that are waiting in the fridge but we got all that we needed from them this year.

And there are the Sweet Potatoes.  They will be harvested next week.

There are still a few pretty flowers here and there.

The Dahlias are just hitting their stride.  Below are the singles.  They are extremely popular with the bees right now.  My main garden chore each day is deadheading Dahlias.  The six (out of fourteen) Bee's Choice singles that I overwintered and planted again this year are growing monster plants and blooming well.    I numbered them and #2504 (which I called Cosmic Red) and #2510 (which I called Lavender Teacup) are out in the landscape beds, five feet tall, and blooming very well. 

This year I grew out a few more "Bee's Choice" seeds from the ball and decorative Dahlias.  Out of the tray I started, I only ended up planting out four transplants due to space constraints.  Out of those only one plant is still thriving.  It is an offspring of Bloomquist Gordan and it is a very bushy plant with many buds on it.  This is the first flower to open.  It is pretty impossible to guess what lighter colored variety it is crossed with.  There are several possibilities.  Maybe one of the other blooms will give a clue.  I really like it.  I'll save it for next year and see if it continues to thrive.  

Offspring of BQ Gordon

BQ Gordon

My Dahlias will take quite a bit of frost before they start to go dormant and need to be stored.  That is the last garden chore of the year.

The Big Apple 2026 Edition

 We have been picking a lot of really nice apples this year from both Northern Spy trees.  I did not bag very many of them so they do have some sooty blotch on them.  They are big, and uniform, and beautiful.  When the tree holds a lot of apples, they average around 12 to 13 ounces.  I have, on occasion, grown a one pound apple. Today we picked about half a bushel and when this one came off the tree I knew I needed to go in and weigh it.

Back in 2018 I grew one that was one pound two ounces.  This one beat it by almost an ounce.  One pound and 2.85 ounces.

Fall Chores ~ Deer Proofing

 We have been doing fall garden clean-up and protecting everything that needs deer protection in the winter.  We put one fence around all of the front shrubs,  There isn't much here that the deer like to eat but they will still taste things.  Last winter the fence sagged between the T-posts and they did jump over several times.  They didn't find anything they wanted but they don't need to be tromping around in there so this year I added some garden stakes in between the T-posts just to stiffen the fence and hopefully they won't see the center as a weakness.

Every year they eat the myrtle ground cover which doesn't really hurt it or bother me but last year they couldn't believe it was all eaten up so they kept excavating in there every night, digging holes and throwing mulch in the lawn.  The only way to stop that is to lay wire fencing down on the ground to stop the digging.  I pinned the corners with earth staples.  

There are several plants that are evergreen through the winter and even if they're not appealing in the summer, when you've been eating nuts and twigs for three months and you come across green leaves peaking out of the snow, it doesn't matter so much if you like the taste.  The Penstemon has gotten big enough that the wire squares I put over them the year before were too small and inadequate so I left them uncovered last year and they were decimated.   It took them longer than usual to start looking nice in the spring so I didn't want a repeat of that.

I cut larger squares of 1" hardware cloth but pinning the corners down to rock and landscape fabric isn't easy so I'm trying a single landscape spike with a washer driven into the center of the plant. 

 The washers I had on hand were a little too small, but use what you have... so I added a square of corrugated cardboard which should hold up enough to keep it pinned down under snow.  If not I can get larger washers.  The spike is in there pretty good and doesn't come out unless you pull straight up.

The deer are starting to try things that they have left alone up to now.  The Supertunias got munched on so those got pulled out.  I can see the tracks in the dewy grass each morning and I see blooms missing here and there, but nothing major.

When I walked past this hot pepper plant today I saw hoofprints in the grass and an empty stem.

Right there.  Empty stem. 

They bit off just one pepper?  Surely they didn't eat a hot pepper...

Oh here it is.  Right here on the ground with tooth marks in it.  

A little too hot was it?

Note to self.  Grow more ornamental hot peppers.