Why I Oughta...

Last month, I shared that I made my first (ever) order from Farmer Bailey (Garden Club Plants) for a few sets of plant plugs .   I ordered six sets of eight (8) plugs each - 48 total.  One set of six (6) of each of: Lisianthus Celeb 2 Metallic Blue , Phlox Cherry Caramel , Plectranthus Silver Shield , Gomphrena Audray White , Eucalyptus Silver Dollar and Didiscus Lacy Blue . When you order from Garden Club, you get to select your delivery date.  With this being my first time doing this, I likely made a mistake:  I ordered for delivery too soon. I don't recall (now) if some of the later (late April, early May) dates were already sold out or if I just selected mid-April because I thought that was appropriate, but either way...my plugs arrived in mid-April.  They came in these cute little green plastic 'greenhouses': All 48 plugs look good and had leaf'd out.  The only one of the set that I had grown before was eucalyptus, so I knew what *that* foli...

Dahlia season is coming fast.  Or, at least it is feeling like it is coming fast to this gardener.  The past two seasons, I've started my tubers indoors, well ahead of the last frost date (around Mid-May here).  In 2024, I started them in early May.  There were only six tubers  to start.  How quaint.  Looks like I ended up with twelve total .  I planted them outdoors in June 2024 .   Last year, in 2025, I also planted them up starting indoors.  In early May .  By mid-May they were showing signs of growth .  I began to harden-the-off towards the end of May and (like 2024), planted them outside in the beginning of June .  Last year, I also pinched them all back to try to get bush-ier growth.   My plan for 2026 is to follow a similar trajectory, but I'm thinking I can start them even earlier.  Like mid-April.  The last frost date varies around here , but generally is between the middle and end of May....

Last year, I direct-sowed zinnia seeds into the cut flower bed in our sideyard and into the vertical tower on our patio.  And...it...well...worked.  We grew Zinnias.  But, this year I wanted to get them started a little bit earlier (not as early as I should have, though...) and decided to start some seeds indoors.   I showed the three varieties of seeds we bought this year - earlier this winter/spring;  Envy , State Fair and Cut and Come Again.    I had some eight-cell packs on-hand from annuals that I put out front, so I filled those with a potting mix and tucked seeds into each cell.   Pretty quickly, most of them germinated.   I kept the seedlings in the screened porch and they started to grow up and get taller.   In an attempt to keep them from getting too-leggy, I moved them outdoors as often as I could - weather-permitting.  Below is a photo showing the two trays out on the patio - where they live all day...

Five weeks ago, I potted up a number of stored-over-Winter dahlia tubers and a bunch of new-to-us purchased tubers in one-gallon nursery pots . I kept them inside for the month of May and by mid-month many of them were showing signs of life with new growth .  As June began, I started to harden off the dahlias with increasing time outside.  Eventually, leading to leaving them outside, overnight for a few nights.   Then...it was time to plant them.  Here's a look at the dahlias we are growing out on the patio getting hardened off: Hardening off dahlias that we started indoors a month earlier.   I have planted twenty-one (21) dahlia tubers in six locations.  Yes...twenty-one dahlias.  EEEK.  That's A LOT more than last year.   I also gave away three (two Melina Fleur tubers, one Pablo Gallery tuber).  And....Left on the patio are some slow-to-start ones.  These six *might* come to life, or they might be DOA.  This i...

Late last year, I dug-up and attempted to store a number of dahlia tubers that had been in our beds all year-long.  This was the first time I had grown dahlias (in the ground) and also the first time that I attempted to "save" the tubers from one-season-to-the-next.   In this post from last December, I showed how I ended up using the "Saran Wrap Method" to attempt to preserve the tubers over Winter .  I dug up clumps of tubers, let them dry out just a little bit, left most of the soil on them then wrapped them and left them in the garage where the temps *usually* stay above freezing all Winter.   With Dahlia planting season fast-approaching (I have to wait until last Frost date to plant them - which is right around mid-May), I grabbed the box of tubers and went to check to see how they did?  Were they rotten?  Dried out and dead?   Turns out...neither.   They not only survived the Winter.  But....most of them were ALREADY ...