Oh, no where close, J.

You are probably 2 weeks ahead of me and with your climate, for good reason. I've got 2 pickup loads of dahlia roots to "lift." uff da!

Today I dug out an annual bed and piled dead zinnias in it while covering snapdragon plants in another bed. There are 2 more snap beds to pull but it seems a shame . . . they aren't anywhere close to dead yet - just won't bloom any longer.

Lilies have been hacked off but the mildew(ed) columbine foliage in the front yard beds look like heck. The dead asters & sunflowers (yes, sunflowers in the front yard ;o) have already been pulled. The finches didn't appreciate losing the sunflowers but the chickens had a last "go" at 'em. They're a small flower variety, small seeded too.

Veggie garden is a total mess. I've got one bed . . . . no actually, I haven't got anything finished out there yet.

I like pine needle mulch for perennials, J. But, not everything really "needs" it in my neck of the woods.

digitS'

This year, going along with the stock market and what happened to my savings, I'm gonna try the grasshopper thing - the ant gig didn't pan out so good. So no 6 cords of firewood gathering for me, I'll just mooch off my friends and neighbors. Go fishing and dancing and partying instead.

We spent the afternoon, upon reflection, building the Mother of All Compost heaps right in the middle of the garden, with all the whiffy stuff buried right there, just a short drag and drop away. Then mowing up the last 3 weeks accumulation of leaves and grass, and dumping it all on top. Usually I do this the hard way, and haul it all off somewhere else and compost it, and then haul it all back. This is called progress. I think. We'll see.

Lessee. All the pots with the egg plant are snipped off and stacked on the north side of the greenhouse, where they hide for the winter. All the hanging baskets of petunias are all dead, and still hanging. Tomorrow, off comes the sun screen from the greenhouse, and then more mowing. Need to collect basil seeds. Then put the out door chairs and UV susceptible stuff somewhere they won't get fried by the winter sun, and then not look at seriously depleted wood pile. Actually, we're going over to Dolores to watch a demonstration / clinic on mountain bike racing by some professional mountain biking dudes. These guys have some serious, serious, leg muscles, and watching them climb up some absurdly angled slick rock face on a bike is something to see.

It sure felt like summer outside today, but it looks like fall. I ripped out all of the dead annuals, and cut back any perennials that died back after the hard frost last week. Then I emptied the pots of dead peppers, tomatoes, and basils that I should have moved to the garage during that cold snap, but forgot about. Cleared out all of the dead stuff out of the veggie garden. Nothing left but a few carrots, and pots of lettuce on the porch that never got planted out. I did get the last few potted perennials planted out that have been sitting on the porch all summer, and harvested seed on a few things. Oh, and cut the grass for what I hope was the last time this year.

DH spent the whole day working on the long awaited pergola. I'll post some pics on another thread later.

A very productive day overall, though I still have piles of ripe tomatoes staring at me from the kitchen windowsill, just begging to be made into sauce : )

Bonnie

A short reply from Chicago -- visiting family!

Your Castilleja is a parasite, Jennifier. When you plant the seeds plant them next to a native grass or something like that. Or they seem to like Artemisia too. That'll help improve your chances that they'll make it.

With the perennials, I cut my ratty looking ones all the way down to the ground. Anything that's finished blooming, like the mums, or anything that just doesn't look good anymore, I cut down to about an inch above the ground. You saw how far I was cutting the shasta daisy down. It's grown lots of nice new foliage again now that should look good most of the winter. If you cut your mums down all the way, they'll start to form new foliage at the base, if they haven't already. IÂd cut the catmint all the way down too. Anything thatÂs naturally evergreen, like your geraniums, you shouldnÂt need to do anything at all to.

And since you should probably have snow cover most of the winter, you really shouldnÂt need to mulch anything. Snow is one of the best mulches there is!

My garden is pretty much closed down for the year. The tomatoes are cut and hung in the garage. The squash, cukes, and "hot" eggplants are cut down and cleaned up. The only thing left is the beets, carrots, and parsnips that are waiting for their winter covering of maple leaves---as soon as my neighbor rakes their's up and I get them! And my leeks are still out in the ground too. How long can you leave leeks outside? This is the first year I've grown them. I covered them when I left on my last trip--just in case, and I'll be back home again by Tuesday, so I can cover them again or dig them if I need to this time. When you dig them, they need to be stored in the fridge, donÂt they?

My perennials I'll cut down slowly over the winter, on nice days, unless we get another blizzard winter like we did a couple years ago. That year they didn't get cut down till spring--when I could actually see them again! The things that finished blooming earlier in the year were cut down then and are mostly looking pretty nice again for winter. My roses will get cut down to a little over a foot, but they're still blooming like mad. It looks like we're gonna get a hard freeze this week, so I'll cut them whenever I get around to it after that.

Oh! I dug my sweet potato vine to bring in to try to keep over winter again this year. Have 2 in pots and got a couple nice big tubers that I'm gonna dust with sulfur and try keeping in the garage this year. How do you store all your dahlia tubers over winter, Digit?

And I managed to get a little chunk chopped off of my purple fountain grass and have it in a pot to save me having to buy more of that expensive stuff next spring too.

And I have Perilla magilla (sp) cuttings rooting in water to stick in pots for some starts for next spring too. Sure wish I had more sunny windows to keep stuff it!

My short reply got long! WhatÂs new! Gotta...

Skybird asks, "How do you store all your dahlia tubers over winter, Digit?"

When I first started off with dahlias, there were only 3 plants. The tubers were dug, dirt and all were dumped in a leaf-lined cardboard box, and the 3 boxes were carried down to spend the cold months in the basement.

That worked just fine . . . I made no effort to remove the old tuber or anything else. But, that was when I only had 3 (and a reasonably strong back ;o). Now, what is it I counted the other day? 300, yeah, I think so.

Dirt and rocks are washed off and last year's tuber is removed. Broken ones go, too. Then I put a few handfuls of peat moss in a supermarket plastic bag and place clump of roots on top of it. More peat moss goes in and maybe another clump of roots. Everything is covered with peat.

The bag is now full and taken down to the basement. The top is left loose and the dahlia tubers, for the most part, have a happy snooze down there until the weather begins to warm in the Spring.

Glads have been going in boxes of pine shavings the last few years but I'm not willing to risk the dahlias to anything but peat for right now.

d'S'

I have no idea what the low temps for leeks is, but they'll take some seriously low temps. They look fine after one night down to 15º, and I know some gardeners who plant them in the fall and grow them over the winter in trenches, filling them up with straw as the plant grows. I should think that a cover of leaves would keep you going for some time. But they really don't last long out of the ground - in the fridge, put them in a plastic bag.

Steve, I kept a variety of white glads for years, they kept multiplying, and I kept digging them up, until I had a half a dozen bushels of the things, and it was taking up a huge amount of room and time.

I went to the far side of the pond, tilled up a huge swath, and planted them for my "reflective pool" and just left them there. Awesome for that last season.

Thanks, Digit. Is the peat youÂre using the standard fine Canadian peat as opposed to the long fiber sphagnum peat you can get in small packages? And is it completely dry when you pack the roots away, or do you start with it damp? I think IÂm still gonna get some garden sulfur to dust them with before I stash them in a bag, just as a little extra protection against mold, and then IÂll hang them somewhere next to the tomatoes.

And thanks for the leek info, David. I know onions can take pretty cold temps, but I didnÂt want to wreck my whole (small) batch of leeks by assuming incorrectly that they could too. I think IÂll harvest a few of them for some potato leek soup, and dump a bag of those maple leaves on top of the rest and just store them in the ground like I do the root crops. I was hoping I might be able to do something like that so I can use them slowly over the winter. And it sounds like theyÂll be just fine uncovered for the next couple weeks till I get the neighborÂs maple leaves. But right now, itÂs cold and rainy here in CHI, and itÂs supposed to be cold by the time I get back to DEN too, so some nice thick, HOT soup is sounding really good! When I have time to experiment, I think I might play around with inventing a nice creamy potato carrot soup and maybe a potato parsnip soup too. Guess I have hot soup on the brain right now!

Thanks again,
Skybird