Why I Oughta...

I was supposed to have two Crichton Honey tubers in the garden this year.  I'm certain that I have one.  The one next to the pizza oven.  I labeled it as dahlia #1 in my 42 tuber planting map .  I bought two Crichton Honey tubers from Bonny Blooms.   The other one is at spot #12 along the sideyard .  But, that whole bed has been suffering the past few weeks from a terrible infestation of Spider Mites.  So, I'm not seeing ANY blooms.  And, I'm not sure that it is Crichton Honey.  At least yet. But, the pizza oven version?  Have a look: And, in addition to being real (and spectacular), they're certainly popping off right now with blooms and blooms. Apricot blooms.  Almost orange.    I think they say "pumping out blooms" in the trade.  That checks out. While my time right now is spent with my little snips cutting off flowers for arrangements....I am hoping that all this above-ground plant happiness that I'm seeing means...

Just a few days, I posted a ' musings' post on starting my dahlia tubers and talked about the  when/how/what/where of starting the flower farming season here in the garden.  Last year, I potted up the stored tubers right at the beginning of May and this year, I talked about trying to get it done a little bit earlier.  Today marks a few days shy of two weeks earlier.  That's pretty good, right?   The 10-day forecast shows ZERO days below freezing, but I'm not holding out hope that the last freezing temperature is behind us.  The State Climatologist Office for Illinois has a last/first frost table up on their site that I tend to use more than the Old Farmer's Almanac version.   On the Illinois version, they have a map up showing the "earliest" last Frost date (for us, it was April 9th ).  And the latest (May 28th).  The map showing the median lists April 28th for DuPage County .  And, that's just ten days away.   So,...

2024 was the season of the dahlia in our garden.  And, it is also going to be the 'season of trying to save the dahlia tuber'.   We garden in Zone 6a/5b.  That changed earlier this year when our neighborhood (yes...neighborhood) was reclassified from USDA Zone 5B to Zone 6A.  I wrote a post about that change earlier this year and talked about how less than a mile away, the listing was kept at 5B, but our spot was upgraded to 6A. According to Longfield Gardens , you can overwinter dahlia tubers in Zone 8 to Zone 10, which means that our climate is far too cold to keep these tubers in the ground from freezing to death.   That means that I'm faced with a choice:  dig them up and try to save them.  Or...leave them in the ground and (VERY LIKELY) lose them to Winter.  I say "VERY LIKELY" because....there's a TINY chance that the tubers survive our Winter due to one (or more) of a couple of variables:  We *could* get a very mild Winter....