Why I Oughta...

With the season hitting Thanksgiving this week, it is time to start making some indoor winter arrangements.  I mean...at least it is in our house.  I've done these the past few years with foraged evergreens and some Trader Joe's foliage plants.  Last year, I went *BIG* with branches and such.  I've learned that smaller can be just as impactful.  Also...mason jars fit into cup holders, so they're super easy to transport.   Here, below is the first one.  This has some faux Winterberries along with a variety of evergreens like Thuja, boxwood, Yew and some sort of short-needled tree like fir.  I also stuck a pinecone in there that I picked up on the sidewalk a few houses up the block. Here, below is a Google search preview widget.  

Just yesterday, I posted my first Dahlia Tuber Ordering FOMO post about the initial tuber sale s that are about to start online.  This is coming off my second successful season 1 of growing dahlias in the ground for cut flowers.  But, before I can get busy ordering for next year, I have to dig-up and process the tubers that I have on-hand.  This season, we grew A LOT of dahlias.  Here at my house, I grew dahlias in the backyard, sideyard, front yard and IB2DWs.  I also gave away a few tubers - to my mom and sister.  We had something like 20-or-so tubers to start the year.  And, that means...the time has come to try to keep them over the winter.  Last year (my first year), I used the "Saran Wrap Method" to keep my tubers.  And, that seemed to work.  (Or, I just got lucky?).  I only lost a couple to rot with most of the rest coming thru the Winter and sprouting.   Here's a post from early December last year showing the Sara...

I grew a Melina Fleur dahlia at my Mom's house in a container.  Or...well....she grew it.  It was one of the bulbs that I overwintered last year that I started in a one-gallon nursery container.  She transplanted it into a large pot and grew some cut flowers all season long.   It wasn't protected from the frost, so the foliage died back earlier in November.  When I was over there watching a recent Bears game, I dug the tubers out and brought them home.   My plan is to dig the tubers, let them cure for a couple of days and then...wrap them in Saran Wrap.   Below is a peek at the tubers that came out of her container.  One tuber went into the pot this year.  And, I was able to pull-apart three distinct tubers that (I think??) all appear to be viable (have eyes) on them.  Two are pretty large, one is smaller.  I bought some labels (this year!) and wrapped them around the stems of the tubers.   I'll leave these ...

At the Wannemaker's Annual Christmas Open House, we met the Big Guy (of course), ate some grilled foods from Casey's and...came away with two big amaryllis bulbs.  As is the tradition.  Each of my two youngest kids picked out a bulb that there plant as we try (*fingers crossed*) to get some Christmas flowers.  I previously posted some details of amaryllis bulbs at Home Depot this season .  Last year, I planted two bulbs from Wannemakers:  A Double Dream .  And an Exotic Star .   The Exotic Star bloomed right around the New Year .  But, the Double Dream was a total dud.  It sent up a bud tip in March (yes...March!), but then it withered and died.   In 2023, we planted three .  One of them was a dud - Samba. But, the La Paz went off quickly. With a Rilona Amaryllis coming in right in-between.  Blooming in January .   This year, we are trying two new (to us) bulbs.  Here are the two tags of the bulbs they...

Our screened porch is where we spend a lot of time watching screens. Football season, evening 'shows', etc.  It is not a four-season porch, though.  Might call it 3.5 seasons.  That's because we added Eze-Breeze four-panel windows to the frames and swapped out the screened door for a storm door with a screen.  Eze-Breeze windows are really great.  They keep the dust out.  They also - according to their product page - block UV rays which protects furniture.   And, in the cold time of the year, they keep out the wind and what I'll call 'extreme' temperatures.  They create an envelope that we can heat and be in the porch when the temps are low.  But, not too low.   I'd say that we typically get to use the porch all the way through Christmas.  Then, when Winter actually arrives in January, we're forced out of there.   That's because the 'envelope' that the Eze-Breeze windows creates is 'leaky'.  The windows ar...

The last few nights, we were getting freeze and frost warnings from the National Weather Service.  That means that the gardening season is coming to a hard close.  All of our dahlias, however, still have flowers and tons of buds on them.  Before the frost arrived, I cut everything that I could (more on that later), but for most of them, I opted to leave on some of the smaller buds and took action:  covered most of them with frost blankets.  And...crossed my fingers.   Here, below, is one of the Wizard of Oz Dahlias that I wrapped in a frost blanket.  Will the plant make it?  We'll know tomorrow.   The forecast calls for temperature moderation over the next week or more.  So, all I'm looking to do is to simply try to 'extend' part of the growing season with some of the dahlias for another few days.  

The newly planted (this season) Disneyland Roses are really popping off these days, too.  Blooms on top of blooms.  I was pretty good about feeding these monthly and treating them with multiple ways for pests and fungus:  systemic as well as topical spraying.  I also was deliberate in deadheading them and removing the rose nips.  The result are the largest, most productive Disneyland Roses I've ever grown.  They also have the longest stems of any Floribunda Rose that I've ever grown.   Below are a few shots showing the current state of these roses.  I'm going to stop deadheading them and hope that there won't be much new growth being put on in the final weeks before frost.

A few days ago, I applied my final (for this season) granular fertilizer application to all of the dahlias around the front/back/side yards as well as the five Disneyland Roses on the side of the house.  I (once again) used a three-in-one systemic granular that includes fertilizer, insecticide and fungicide from BioAdvanced.  I started using this stuff in May this season, so this marks the fifth application on the plants in 2025.   Here, below, is a peek at the base of one of the Dahlia tubers in the sideyard.  I use the cap from the bottle as the measuring device and dropped the granules at the base of each one.  Last year, I was getting blooms all the way up to the first frost in Mid-October, so this feeding will go for the next 5-or-so weeks.

The last time I checked in on our compost bins was back in July when the 'storage' bin was steaming from decomposition of grass clippings and wood chips .  I let the lawn get pretty long, so I had to bag-up a couple of cuts-worth of grass.  That meant that I needed to balance the bin out with some wood chips.  Since then, we've continued to add kitchen waste to the bin and I've been adding garden waste, too.   I also dumped a bunch more grass clippings in recently. How do the bins look? There's been some compaction in all three bins with the middle one seeing the largest voids created.  Take a look below to see the three bins as of late August 2025: Here is April 2025's view of the bins .   You can see the nursery pots that I've stuck on the top of the 'finishing bin' (on the right) have dropped a little bit.  And, that the middle bin has that large void about 1/3rd of the way down.  And, the 'storage bin' (on the left) is actively decom...

Last growing season, I fell behind on weeding the garden.  Between the pizza oven build, my own health and the lack of mulch on top of our soil, we had some weed problems.  Sure, I tried to use my push/pull hoe to chop them off.  But, I fell behind. That's why I put #8 on my 2025 to-do list : 8. Be a weeder. Just use the push-pull hoe. It is a good way to get out in the evenings to observe what is working in the garden. In the list item, I say that I should just use the hoe.  But, I (now) know that isn't enough.  Especially...when things are getting ahead of me in terms of weeds with flowers.  And...going to seed. This year, we have a clover infestation.  Clover in the beds.  Clover in the lawn.  Clover with little yellow flowers.  The past few weeks, I've been pulling as much clover and other weeds as I can.  See below...here's one evening's work: The weeds that are producing flowers are the key ones that I've been pulling and toss...

Peonies are Nat's favorite flower.  But, in our garden, peonies have a very short window.  They all bloom at the same time and the blooms don't last long.  Like a flash of petals, only to fade-away quickly.  That's why I was excited to come across the advice of how to cut and store peonies at the "marshmallow stage" by cutting them, wrapping them in paper and plastic wrap and tucking them in to a long Summer's nap in the cold climate of our fridge.   I wrote this post showing my process back in mid-June .  I cut-up-and-preserved two big bunches of peonies.   This week, I took one of the packages out of the fridge.  I cleaned up the leaves, cut the stems and put them in water.  They perked up and looked like the perfect peonies that we see a month-ago when they are fresh cut from the garden.   Below are a couple photos showing this peony arrangement on our counter - IN JULY.  Yes...July.  That's pretty great....

Last year, we had trouble with our Disneyland Roses. Between pests (Sawfly Larvae), diseases (Black Spot and Rust, I think) and drought, the blooms were few and far between. I fed them and treated the foliage with Neem oil, but I'm not sure I was making an impact.  They say that roses are "heavy eaters", so I've been trying to feed them monthly during their growing season the past few years, but I switched over to an "all-in-one" granular product last year.  These "all-in-one" claim to feature three different solutions:  fertilizer, pest control and disease control.    Below is canister of the granular that I recently applied from BioAdvanced named Rose & Flower Care.  The instructions say to use a half-capful of the granular around each rose.  I sprinkled it around the crowns of all five Disneyland roses then used a small rake to work it into the mulch.   Last year, we were showing the first flush of Roses by the end of May .  I'm p...

I seem to have failed to post photos and details of the dormant pruning that I did earlier this year on the pair of SugarTyme Crabapple trees that are trained into horizontal cordon espalier on the south side of our house.  The last time I posted about these was in September 2024 when the trees were going ham with new growth and tons of foliage .  At that time, I talked about the need to prune back both of these this Winter and noted how the tree on the right was growing faster/stronger/bigger than the one on the right. I pruned both of them while the trees were dormant, but I seem to have only take a photo when I had pruned back *just* the tree on the left and before I started with the one on the right.  That photo is below: I ended up pruning both back, of course.  And, they're now breaking bud with early foliage.  Below is a photo from this week (mid-April) showing the first sets of leaves emerging on both trees.   The photo above shows a few detail...

A few years back, I learned my lesson when it comes to pruning young trees:  don't.  Don't prune them.  Let them go a few years before you touch them at all.  No limb'ing up.  No removing limbs/branches.  If you have to do anything, just clip off the tips of some of the lower branches, but leave them in place - attached to the tree.   In trying to 'hurry the tree up', I thought I could prune off all the lower branches and focus the energy near the top of the tree - to drive the leader UPWARDS.  Turns out, the tree needs limbs and branches and leaves to collect the necessary energy to grow.   That 'leave the tree' advice is what I've followed with the Bald Cypress tree that is planted IB2DWs.    It went in the ground in 2018 .    The Bald Cypress is probably my most 'successful tree'.  I planted it as a tiny, pencil-thin pot-grown tree.  Today, it is probably fifteen feet tall and growing.   Be...

The Exotic Star Amaryllis bulb continues to bloom - now all the way until mid-January 2025.  I last posted about the Amaryllis' that we're growing was on January 1 - so a little bit over two weeks ago.  At that time, the first bloom had appeared on the Exotic Star, while the 'Double Dream' Amaryllis was still in dormancy.  Today....same situation.  Here, below, are a couple photos showing the Exotic Dream in bloom with the striped petals and candy-apple-green center. I like the 'dotted line' nature of the stripes.  You can see them in the close-ups below: The Double Dream is stuck - so we're (right now) hitting 50% bloom for the season. 

We grew two Amaryllis bulbs this Christmas season - an Exotic Star Amaryllis and a Double Dream Amaryllis .  Both were 'nice' bulbs from the garden center - not a big box store kit-type bulb.  I don't seem to have posted about these in December, but one of them - the Exotic Star - took off.  While the other one (Double Dream) stayed dormant.  That has held true all the way until today - early January. The Double Dream is still dormant.  But, the Exotic Star is in full bloom with three flowers opening up and showing their stripes.   See below for a what the Exotic Star looks like currently.  Note those bottom (and side) petals being a tad LONGER than the one sticking up at the top.  That's part of the 'design' of Exotic Star Amaryllis .  So, too are the red stripes on white petals and the 'green apple' highlights.   Once the stalk(s) started to get a couple inches from the bulb, I started to water this one with the diluted alco...

In October, I turned my compost over.   That meant pulling out the 'black gold' in the tumbler (that's where I finish the compost each year) and then re-filling the tumbler with more-finished (than the rest) of the compost from the right bin.  Then using a compost fork to pull out and move the stuff from the 'middle bin' to the 'right bin' - where it was properly mixed.  And finally...taking the storage bin - the 'left bin' which is mostly leaves and kitchen scraps and mixing it in the middle bin.  That left the 'storage bin' on the left empty. For like 10 days.   Here's what it looks like today - below.  The left bin (with the 'feed me' sign) is filling up with leaves that have come off our lawn and out of our gardens: There is A LOT of air in this bin, so these leaves will compact/compress to about 1/2 of the bin height.  I'm going to give it a pause for a week-or-so, then come back and fill it back up with even more leaves...

The trees and shrubs have been fed for the year.  Dormant fed. This is now year five of having the tree care folks from Davey apply a soil-injected deep-root liquid fertilizer (they call it ArborGreenPro) to all of our trees and shrubs on the property.  Here is the post from last year (2023), when they applied the fertilizer in December .  That was later than most years, as the first couple of guys who arrived didn't have long-enough hoses to reach our far backyard.   Here's the 2022 post from November 9th .  I posted on November 17th in 2021 .  And I posted in late October in 2020 - the first year of treatments .   The dude from Davey uses a long probe, attached to a hose to inject the fertilizer in/around every tree and shrub.  For the larger trees, they inject in a number of sites that line-up to the reach of the canopy of the tree. Does this stuff work?  I don't really know.  Do you???

A couple weeks ago, I posted a Fall project that I called "Lazy Garden Bed Extensions" where I first used my mower to scalp some turf followed by laying down cardboard to extend the front border of the front porch bed out a little bit.  On top of that cardboard went biosolids and compost followed by some wood mulch (from a big box store) that I had on hand.  I didn't do the full front porch bed border (then), but recently....I was able to get around and finish the entire border. I ended up extending the front porch border out by 18-inches or so out from where the French Marigolds were planted this season.  You can see the in the photo below the new edge of the bed is now stretching out a bit into the grass.  If you look closely, you can see the Marigolds (in decline) and the lone Dusty Miller (this is year 3 for that "annual"), so that gives you a sense of the new extension. I also found a couple of other spots where the bed was 'too small' for the plan...

It was just 12 days ago that I posted a Fall 2024 update on our compost bins.  In that post, I showed the decomposition and compaction that had occurred over this season with all three bins just about leveling-out.  The 'finished bin' was spilling material out and the 'hold' bin was (surprisingly) decomposing despite not being properly mixed. #14 on my 2024 to-do list was to 'keep going on compost' .  And, over the past few months, we'd *mostly* done that.  We were certainly ADDING to the bins, but when I did my September check-in on my list, I marked this one as 'incomplete' because I had NOT (yet) turned the bins over for the season .  That changed this past weekend, when I went to work on all three bins plus our tumbler.   I started by looking at the tumbler - where I found BLACK GOLD.  I've emptied this tumbler each year after getting that lovely loam-y black gold.  This year is no different.  Below are a few photos showing the outp...