Why I Oughta...

Frost is how the gardening season ends.  It brings with it death.  And dormancy.  Another season in the books.  In some ways, it also brings relief.  Things slow down.  Stop growing.  And, I can shift into a 'closing up' mindset.   But, I can't do that until we get a frost.  The furthest that the forecast looks out on Weather dot com is between now and Thursday, November 5th. That's two weeks out.  And, here, below is what it looks like: What is notable?   The lows.   Look at them.  The lowest LOW listed between now and November 5th is 43 degrees.  That's 11 degrees ABOVE freezing.   Now, I recognize that weather forecasts aren't set in stone, but let's (for now) operate under the assumption that this is close to accurate.  We won't see a frost for at least two weeks. Note:  Parts of Northern Illinois had some frost earlier in October.  Here's a Tweet from the National Weather S...

In what is probably the final week of my dahlia blooms, I have one plant that is (finally) producing its initial blooms:  Sweet Nathalie.   Last year, I saw my first Sweet Nathalie bloom in early September and talked about how it is a 'slow to bloom' .  This year, the blooms came in mid-October.  Five or six weeks later than 2025.   But, what do they look like?  They're pretty great: Sweet Nathalie Decorative Dahlia Bloom - Blush Pink Sweet Nathalie is billed as a dahlia that compares with one of the dahlias that everyone loves:  Cafe au Lait.  Here's what Longfield says about Sweet Nathalie : If you love the colors of Cafe au Lait, this dahlia is a must-have. Sweet Nathalie walks a similar line between buff and blush pink, but its flowers are about half the size of Cafe au Lait and the shape and color are more consistent. What's interesting about that (for me) is that Sweet Nathalie is my second slowest-to-bloom dahlia.  The one th...

Just about every morning...if I wanted to...I could go out and cut an armful of dahlia blooms and bring them into put in a jar on the counter.  Here, below, is a look at what I sniped off the dahlia plants around the garden on a recent morning.  Includes (of course) Saint Martin waterlily dahlias, a Tsuki Yori No Shisha (Semi-Cactus) Dahlia white blooms (which...I'll have you know are "fimbriated" dahlias ), Ivanetti balls, Milena Fleur (formal) decorative, a few (what I think are) Mirella ball dahlias , Blue Wish dahlias, Great Silence (decorative) and the standout:  a single Peaches-n-cream dahlia bloom.  Here are a few photos of the flowers as cut off the stems: And, here, below, are those same flowers tucked into a recycled pickle jar on the counter.    I'm now close to 25 arrangements that I posted about this growing season .   Dahlia arrangement with Peaches-n-cream, Ivanetti, Saint Martin, Blue Wish, Milena Fleur, Mirella and more.... While...

The dahlias are going wild.  Warmer days and cooler nights right now.  Before...the inevitable frost that is on the horizon.  (Hopefully not too soon, though).   This week, I documented my 20-something arrangement of the season .  This post shows another one.   Including: Great Silence, Milena Fleur, Ivanetti, Blue Wish, Saint Martin, Crichton Honey, Wizard of Oz dahlias.  And, a single spray of Silver Dollar Eucalyptus peeking out the top.  Here it is on a couple of sides of the jar on our counter: Here, below, is how they looked as I cut them.  The lighting in the mornings makes the colors pop. Wizard of Oz (the pale pink one on the bottom right) changes a bit as the season goes on in terms of petal-holding.  Earlier in the Summer, every Wizard of Oz that I'd cut would drop petals almost immediately.  Now? They stay on much longer.  Wonder what is driving that behavior?  I really like Wizard of Oz, but if it is...

One of the new (to me) dahlias that I grew this year was Great Silence Decorative Dahlia.  I grew them from tubers that I bought from Longfield Gardens.  After starting them indoors in nursery pots, I planted them out in two different spots :  IB2DWs (down closer to the sidewalk) and in the back of the Island Bed in the front yard.   Those locations seem to have determined the success of the plants.  With the Great Silence in the Island Bed doing much better, being more productive and all-around happier.  But, before I show the photos of the plants, let's look at the blooms.   Here, below, is a photo of a Great Silence Decorative Dahlia (on the left) next to my first dahlia love:  Milena Fleur (on the right).   They're similar.  But, different. Great Silence Decorative Dahlia on the left.  Milena Fleur Formal Decorative Dahlia on the right. Great Silence has a loose-r, less-focused center and more broadly-exposed pet...

#13 on my 2026 to-do list was to do something that I used to do regularly:  plant some Fall bulbs. Here's how I described it when I drafted my list : 13. Plant fall bulbs. For my first few gardening seasons, I was pretty good about planting fall bulbs. Alliums and tulips, mostly. But, I got away from it. Get back to it this Fall. And…Try a bulb lawn in front. Yes…a bulb lawn. Or, at least a patch of bulb lawn as an experiment. When I posted my mid-Summer check-in on my list , I marked this   Incomplete. Since then, I planted 95 crocus corms .  And 14 dwarf daffodil bulbs .  And six bulbs of (gifted) hardneck garlic .   One of the plants that I took note of this season and told myself (self...you should plant more of these) were the Sicilian Honey Garlic (alliums) that I have in a few places in the backyard.  It looks like I planted 15 of these bulbs in 2021 .  And, mostly forgot about them.  Here it is in bloom  in 2023.  I found a...

Below are photos of two arrangements that I made this week after snipping off some dahlia blooms from around the garden beds.  These two mark the 20th and 21st cut flower arrangement of the growing season (that I've documented 1 ).   These feature Ivanetti, Milena Fleur, Messenger To the Moon, Wizard of Oz, Blue Wish, that unknown orange ball one, a couple (Not) Rip City and....(of course) Saint Martin Waterlily dahlias: The one on the left is in a blue glass Ball mason jar.  On the right is in a thrifted vase. The first one of the season was all the way back in July .  (Not) Rip City, Blue Wish, Saint Martin, that bubblegum cactus/semi-cactus one.  The most recent one was from last week that featured Crichton Honey, Brown Sugar, Milena Fleur and...Saint Martin.   You can see the other 20 from this year here at my [ Dahlia arrangement ] tag.   Going "big" with dahlias in 2026 was one of my priorities .  Seems like 20+ arrangements h...

Two days ago, I described the Saint Martin Waterlily Dahlia plants as my most productive dahlias of the season .  Today, I'm showing an update on my LEAST productive dahlia:  Cafe au Lait.   I didn't intend to grow Cafe au Lait this year.  Some of the tubers that I ordered from Longfield Gardens weren't viable, so they send a pair of Cafe au Lait tubers as a replacement.   They arrived three weeks after every other dahlia tuber was started (and had produced new growth), so these started behind from the beginning. I planted two.  One in the Pizza Oven West bed.  And one in the sideyard.  The Pizza Oven West dahlia died.  Suddenly.  One of those things. The one in the sideyard started slow.  And, kept growing slowly.  All Summer.   I was knee-high in August.   Now, a the beginning of October, it still hasn't bloomed.  But, it has put on a bunch of foliage in the past few weeks.   Cafe...

We're officially in Fall.  Calendar-wise, at least.   We have football on the tv.  The temperatures are dropping.  And, the stores already have their Christmas stuff out.  So, it was time to transition our front porch container into Fall. One of my annual to-do list goals (#16) is to do 'better containers'.   Our Wintertime container is done by a porch professional:  Churchill Garden Design .  And Elise Churchill (of Churchill Garden Design ) does a GREAT job.  MUCH, MUCH better than I could ever do with these containers.   Here's our 2025 version  featuring evergreens.  We've had her do a Fall container before and it looks so good.  Here is her 2024 version that featured some kales, an ivy, some mums and I think some hot pepper plants.  Like I said...she has such a good eye and a nice touch with porch containers.   Using her Winter 2025 container as inspiration and recycling some of the thi...

I've never grown garlic.   But, that is changing.   Thanks to one of the parents of a Swim Team teammate, I'm the proud owner of a single full head of hard neck garlic that they grow in their garden each year.  Here's what it looks like: The instructions were simple:  break apart the six bulbs.  And, prepare them to plant: Removing the bulbs left this carcass of a stem and roots.   I'm actually NOT sure if I can grow garlic in a raised bed.  Will the cold temperatures freeze the bulbs? Maybe?  I didn't want to take the risk.   But, where can I grow them?  I don't have a dedicated ground-level vegetable garden that I could tuck the bulbs into.  So...where? I opted for two spots:  both IB2DWs.  Yes...I planted these garlic bulbs in amongst perennials.   The first three are near the Bald Cypress tree IB2DWs: I covered them with a little bit of garden litter as mulch: And the other three are close...

Two days ago, I posted photos and details of the six Ajuga 'Chocolate Chip' plugs I planted in the sideyard along our property line in an attempt to help with some erosion control that is needed due to a couple of downspout pop-ups that bring a lot of surface water to this area.   When I bought Chocolate Chip, I also bought a six-pack of Ajuga Burgundy Glow.  I've planted this Ajuga before ( here this year in May ) and it is larger-leaf'd than Chocolate Chip and brighter in color.  The tray was full of healthy plants.  Here's a couple of photos showing the six-pack and the root system that has been created this growing season: These being bigger than the Chocolate Chip and having this large, seemingly healthy root system means that I can put them a little bit more 'upstream' where the water seems to be running stronger.  This area below shows the location:  right in front of the grown-from-cutting Limelight Hydrangea.  (we should talk about that,...

Over the past few weeks, I've made mention of a challenging infestation of Spider Mites that have come to take over a good swath of the dahlias in the sideyard.  Despite treating them multiple ways, they seemed to stick around and continue to attack the plants. I started by spraying everything with my normal miticide - Bifenthrin.  That has (historically) done the trick.  But, either the Spider Mites are immune to it, or I wasn't mixing it strong enough.  Because, they not only survived, they seemed to grow.  And take over more plants.  I did all the non-synthentic things, too.  Like...giving the plants a STRONG spray of water to knock the mites off.  And, I went for two-plus weeks with a heavy-hand of Neem Oil concentrate.  I sprayed the tops of the leaves.  I sprayed the bottoms of the leaves.  I sprayed the stems.  I sprayed the soil.  I sprayed the blooms.   Nothing would stop these freaking Spider mite...

I found a six-pack of Ajuga 'Chocolate Chip' plugs at Home Depot in their 50% off Fall sale and grabbed the best-looking one of the bunch.  I've had mixed results with some of these six-packs.  Most of the time, they're great and the plants get established and take-off.  Other times, I've bought some other packs that didn't work at all.   I've planted Ajuga in the Fall before and have also had mixed results.  Some of them get established enough and come back in Spring.  Others don't.  Farmer's Almanac has October 11th as our first frost , so we're just a couple weeks away.  Eeeeek.  Time to get these into the ground. Here's the pack below.  Looks healthy: Over on the side of our house, we have an erosion problem.  Between a couple of downspout pop-ups, this area sees a lot of water movement.  I've been using this cobbled-together mix of bricks, stones and other blocks to try to slow things down.  Right behind it is wh...