Still Gardening

 How lucky am I to still have my hands in the soil in the middle of November?  We are still enjoying gorgeous weather and I took the opportunity to pot up my Coleus cuttings and deal with the last of my ornamental peppers.

I had taken a lot of extra cuttings so I would have plenty to choose from.  It is hard to throw away a plant at any point, but I only want to save a tray of twelve 4" pots under one grow light all winter.  I can take more cuttings from these plants in spring if I want more plants.  I pulled them from their cells so I could judge them more by their vigorous roots than their pretty leaves.  For the most part, the nicest looking plants also had the best root systems.

I saved six of the El Brighto which I have been propagating for myself from the 2024 mail order plants.  And I saved six of the Rediculous that I had as the centerpiece for my dramatic black and red combination pot this year.

I tore apart the black leafed pepper plants that I used in my Autumn decor.  There were a couple of plants in each pot so I was again able to choose the best shaped and rooted plants.  I put them in a hodge podge of containers, and pruned them back hard.  I set everything out in the sun, gave them a good soaking before bringing them in and let them drip dry in the wind for a few hours.

The pepper plants are taking up one grow light.  I tried to save these last year using a different method that failed utterly and quickly.  My intention is to start next year with more established plants to see what sort of size I can get by Autumn.

The Coleus got the prime spot in the west window and were such a bright, happy little spot this morning, greeting me when I went into the workshop t check on them.  They will hang out here, semi-dormant, in 55F-60F degree temperatures until seed starting time.

I also made an attempt to save the Drecaena spikes.  I have saved these in a south window of my office building before I retired.  I couldn't simply throw out such gorgeous specimens, so I shoe horned them into 3 gallon containers and cut them back to a foot in height.  They will have to try to survive in ambient room light.  Survival of the fittest.

I still have things growing in the garden.  Herbs: Dill, Parsley, Rosemary and Sage.

And some lettuce that is just about big enough to dress a sandwich,

Today I am taking advantage of one last day of sun before we get clouds and wet snow.

Every minute of good weather counts!

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.

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.

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.

Rainy Strolls

 This August has been cool and rather rainy.  Yesterday's high was around 58F (14C).  It has been a good time to catch up on some indoor work, those things that get neglected when you would rather be outside doing something, even sitting.  In between trips to the garden to get beans or sweet corn for supper, I do a walk through to check on things.   Below is a Foxtrot grass that I transplanted in a spot where I removed a daylily.  I actually removed this particular grass from another spot where it wasn't growing well.  I kept it in a pot in the garden making sure it got watered and cared for and now that it is transplanted out it seems to be very happy.

In the spot that I removed the grass (after replacing yet another daylily last year) I put a Winecraft Gold Smoke Bush.  I thought the bright chartreuse color would look nice against this dark, uniform, green wall we have going on here.

Here is another Foxtrot from the same division last July.  This one also had a lot of winter die back and was growing a little slowly this spring, but it sure is loving this cool, wet August.

Below is a new Perennial from this spring.   I watered it supplementally all through June and July because it has high water requirements and it has been doing beautifully, putting out a lot of new stems and flowering away. 

 Obedient Plant

So has this little Amsonia that got burnt to a crisp in shipping and arrived with only about an inch of green stem left.  

Storm Cloud Amsonia

Out in the pumpkin patch, a vine from one of the original seeds is really going for it.  It is producing a whole family of pumpkins under there,

After two days of rain I will have to go around with a pitch fork and fluff some of the bigger grasses.  They are looking pretty droopy

The Niagara Falls panicum grass below is very perky.  It has held up very well.

Although I have curated my Dahlia collection over years, there is nothing I look forward to more than the first bloom of a new to me variety.

The Petunias need to be cleaned up again....

I am really looking forward to replacing these planters with cornstalks and pumpkins.  The fresh Celosia planters are doing really well and can be included in the Autumn mix.

Still waiting for things to dry up so I can get rolling on some after rain maintenance.