Digging up Dahlia Tubers
I wasn’t going to plant any dahlias this year, in the past I’ve always grown the dinner plate dahlias from inexpensive tubers I purchased at the local discount store. They never held up well to the windy conditions in the back garden and the earwigs chewed them to pieces. This past summer, there was a vendor at the farmers market selling tubers to small dahlias, beautiful ones. I purchased three tubers and planted them in the garden. Since they were so small, they didn’t bloom much (that and I planted them late).
When I dug them up this fall I have really nice tubers that should produce lush plants with lots of flowers next summer. I typically overwinter mine packed in cedar shavings in the basement. It is a bit of a pain to dig them up, overwinter them, and plant them once again, but they are well worth it.
Do you grow dahlias? What’s your favorite variety?
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Still Harvesting
On Sunday I headed out and harvesting some spinach, kale, and leeks from the garden. There’s still more out there, but the deer have found the garden and thus the harvests are dwindling rapidly. Nevertheless, I’m happy to still be harvesting vegetables from the garden.
After this harvest, there are only a few things left, mostly lettuce under cover. While I often have grand plans of growing more things for harvest in winter, the reality is that I grow some, and harvest through December, but I can’t seem to get seeds started and transplanted in time for winter harvests. I also have found that I often don’t have space in the garden when things need to go in during July/August. Any little bit will do, and I’m happy that at least some of the vegetables on our table are freshly harvested from the garden.
What are you harvesting right now?
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Finally Back
Sorry for the lack of posts last week. I was actually sick, something I picked up on our way back from Israel. I had big plans of going through all my photos and sharing the beautiful thing we saw, but instead I spent the week on the couch trying to rest up to make sure I got better quickly for the busy holiday season. I was feeling better this weekend, which meant I was able to get out and get a few things finished in the garden, namely wrapping plants to keep them protected from the nibbling deer.
I find using upturned pots over smaller plants works very well. This is an especially effective method of helping plants that are on the edge of their hardiness zone as well. I cover several roses and my acanthus each winter. I also wrap plants in burlap. This year I used various plant supports I had throughout the garden. I put them over small blueberries, roses, and other plants that the deer find especially delicious. Then I wrapped them with burlap and fastened them with twine. This method works quite well and it looks fairly nice as well.
What methods have you developed to protect plants from deer?
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JET LAG
Mr Chiots and I have been in Israel for the past week (if you follow me on Instagram you already know), we arrived home yesterday evening. It was a work trip with a big of sightseeing thrown in. As you can imagine, it was a LONG flight there and back and we are feeling like this today:
Stay tuned, I’ll be sharing photos of our trip and all the things we saw coming up.
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Snug as Bugs
Two weeks ago our weather started to dip down into the 20’s at night. Before the cold snap hit, I covered my fall broccoli and my lettuce with low tunnels and plastic (the lettuce has a layer of agribon on top of the plants as well as the plastic). It has since warmed up a bit again, but I still have them protected under their warm blankets. Yesterday, I headed out to see how things were doing.
The lettuce is looking GREAT, as is the broccoli. I won’t get any large heads of broccoli, but that’s OK. Once we harvest the heads that are there, the chickens will enjoy the leaves. I’ll wait to pull them until the snow flies and the chickens are pining for something green to eat. The lettuce we will harvest here and there as we need it. None of these varieties are particularly cold tolerant, so they will all be eaten before Thanksgiving. Overall, it’s been a decent fall gardening season, especially since I didn’t really plan on doing much at all!
Are you growing any winter vegetables? any favorites to recommend?
