We cruised through the Mediterranean regions and enjoyed beautiful places of Italy, Spain, Portugal and France this month. I barely got any time to spend in the garden. The maples had a stunning color this fall. The mild (but very wet) weather made the colors last a lot longer than usual. The dahlias kept blooming all through November. In between the travels, I did manage to plant all the bulbs (daffodils, tulips alliums and crocus) in the ground. I am so excited for the flowering display in spring.
As per my tradition, I was happy that I managed to put up my Christmas tree and the holiday decorations the day after Thanksgiving!
Not much to share from the garden this month, but please enjoy the short video of the highlights:
This year fall/autumn weather came just as we entered October. The weather has cooled down, the leaves are changing colors and the mornings are foggy. It is a beautiful time of year in the Pacific Northwest. For the first time in my life, I saw the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) – that too right from my backyard, What an amazing natural phenomenon!
October is usually super busy for us Indians! It is the festival time and I got caught up with the festivities spending very little time in the garden. I did enjoy all the colors that are still there. The dahlias are continuing to bloom – actually they are more and more stunning in the cooler weather. I am so happy with all the dahlias I have all around my garden.
My favorite rose Eustachia Vye also gave me a beautiful flower! The alyssums and calendula flowers are continuing to provide the pops of colors throughout the garden. I harvested the remaining tomatoes, carrots and peppers and planted a few garlic pods in the veggie patch. I also started planting the spring flowering bulbs.
As the garden chores winded down this month, I completed the cross stitch needle work I started months earlier. This piece says “Count Your Blessings” – so I am hoping to display it till Thanksgiving.
A few snippets from October gone by are captured in the video below. Happy Fall, everyone!
Fall arrived here in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) in September this year. The average night temperature is hovering around 40f and days are much cooler too (in the 60f range). The cooler temperature was brought on by regular rain, so it is a very pleasant time in the garden. The plants are all greener and I am regularly harvesting from my veggie bed. I am amazed with the dahlias this year, all so profuse and beautiful. Even the dahlias I grew from seeds are huge and flowering beautifully.
I have to call out the awesome carrot harvest I am finally able to get. I sowed the carrot seeds on 5/23 and started harvesting them around mid-September. These are the best carrot harvest I got so far. I think I finally got the timing right. I will have to figure out the time to sow beets/radishes to get the best ones too. I do grow and harvest beets and radishes but I always feel that I don’t get the best crops.
One huge addition to the backyard this year is the pergola. I am so happy we got this put up. One final step of hardscaping the left side of the backyard and I think my vision of a cozy backyard will be complete. The other structural change I got done this month is the front door which I got painted red, I love the door now – what do you all think?
Strangely my lethargy to work in the garden continued in September. While I enjoyed the cooler temperature, the lovely flowers and my harvest, I just couldn’t bring myself to do the regular chores of weeding and cleaning up. I hope I get my energy back in time for planting the bulbs and moving/dividing the perennials.
A brief video capturing the garden scenes in September are in the video below. Enjoy!
The Pacific Northwest (PNW) region is known for its dry weather in August. I usually get tired of lugging my hose around watering the plants in August. However this year, while we had a very dry first half of August, we got a good soaking rain towards the end of August. The plants and I appreciated the natural watering.
I harvested a lot of veggies this month – beefsteak and roma tomatoes, bush and pole beans, carrots, radish pods. This year I got the most plums ever from my backyard trees. I was so thrilled.
The dahlias are the highlight among all flowers this month. And among all the dahlias I have, the Breakout variety is the most prolific with the biggest flowers.
This month I started sowing seeds for fall. I sowed coriander which I also started harvesting and beets. Fall is almost here, and I am ready for cooler weather.
I captured the highlights of the garden in August in the video below:
The highlight of this month is Bolt’s birthday. The love of all our lives, and my gardening buddy turned 8 on 7/11/2024.
It is uncharacteristically dry in our area during the month of July. The temperature soars and it becomes imperative to water the plants often. We had multiple days of temperature over 90f this month and the first rainfall of the month came on 7/29 – so we went with no rainfall almost all of July. Since my garden is large, I have to hand water areas of my garden which becomes very tiring. This is the month every year that I question my decision of expanding my garden so much and I feel like I want to downsize. I will table this decision until a later time but the fatigue is real.
The garden is also tired, but with annual flowers, dahlias and the veggie garden at its peak, there are still exciting things happening. The dahlia beds are now full, the self seeded larkspur are blooming beautifully, geraniums look lovely and this year I grew cosmos from seeds! I tried direct sowing in the previous years but failed. This year I sowed the seeds indoors and transplanted the seedlings. How beautifully they flowered! Unfortunately, the Lime Green Zinnias and not as profuse. And I also grew dahlias from seeds – the first one that bloomed is such a beautiful color.
There are days in the garden when I am totally blown over the beauty of something I grew! This is exactly what happened when a I dahlia called “Verrone’s Obsidian” first flowered. This is the first time that I grew this dahlia (I got the tuber from a gardening friend) and it is definitely the most black dahlia I have ever seen. Isn’t she a beauty?
In the veggie patch, I harvested a lot of peas this year. The radishes have all bolted and I am waiting to harvest the seed pods which I heard are delicious. I also pulled out a large garlic with huge pods even though I didn’t plant any last year. I think a pod remained in the ground. I am a disappointed that the beefsteak tomatoes have only one fruit with a lot of flowers. I was definitely not expecting these healthy looking plants that I painstakingly grew from seeds to not produce much tomatoes. Thankfully I also planted a variety called Roma “Monica” which I got from a local gardener. That has a couple of tomatoes so far and I am hoping to get some more before the season is over.
A huge surprise in the side yard is a tree which I thought was a Winter Berry. It turned out to be a plum tree and it bore lovely, sweet red plums this year. The Japanese plum in the backyard is also full of fruits waiting to ripen.
I started sowing seeds for fall – coriander, swiss chards and beets. As with every year, I am now ready for the summer to be over and cooler temperature and rain to be back.
The highlights of my garden in July are captured in the short video below:
May started with bursts of Columbine blooms all around. Especially the east facing entrance to the backyard is full of columbines. They look a little messy but I love the flowers so much I let them bloom. I usually try to cut off the bloom heads before they set seeds, but often some seeds escapes and I get more and more of the columbines every year.
Among the bulbs (corms) that I planted in March, the first anemone flowers opened on 5/1 while the ranunculus were slower to bloom. By the end of May both varieties of Anemones (Mr.Fokker and Sulphide) and Ranunculus are full of gorgeous flowers. However, the highlight of May is certainly the peonies! And at this point I am obsessed with the Coral Charm peony that bloomed for the firat time in my garden. I planted a small bare root in 2022 and it bloomed for the first time this year. So so pretty. When it opened fully, the pollinators enjoyed it too. The roses also started flowering and I spotted the first dahlia emerge on 5/2. I am so happy that I don’t dig up my dahlias anymore. A lot less work for me and I only lost very few so far. Plus since last year, I am growing dahlias from seeds which is working so well for me.
This month is a busy one for the veggie patch. I planted the tomato (heirloom Beefsteak variety) plants that I grew from seeds in the ground on Mothers day – which is what I do every year. They are big and strong and already has buds. Pea plants are also big and strong but surprisingly no buds yet. I sowed a lot of radish seeds which have all sprouted. Beans and cilantro are planted too. I am very disappointed with the pepper and basil seedlings. They are growing so slow indoors. I guess the lack of warm weather here in PNW is slowing them down. As the weather heats up, I hope they catch up. I got a little impatient and bought a couple of pepper plants which are doing well.
I have been able to restrain myself from buying more perennials because I want the impact that groupings of plants can provide. Writing this blog throughout the month has also taken a back seat while I got busy tending to the garden. The video linked below shows a lot of the highlights of the garden in May. I am not a trained or skilled videographer, but I tried to capture the garden as it progress from the beginning to the end of May. I love to see the garden fill back with color after the spring flowering bulbs petered out. I hope you enjoy a short tour of our garden!
It has been a strange gardening season this year. The spring and early summer has been so mild and very very wet. Slugs and snails have been having a feast. But as always nature steps in and there are beauties to enjoy in the garden. I am so happy with the two dahlias that are currently blooming – Crazy Love and Kelsey Anne Joy. Both of them are new to my garden this year. Crazy Love is in excellent health but Kelsey Anne Joy is very slug/snail damaged. The dahlias in pots are doing a lot better than those in ground. A new learning for me is to always start new dahlias in pots to prevent slugs from decimating them. My precious Shirley Temple peony is also blooming for the first time this year. It was in a pot last year and I did not get much blooms. I planted it in ground in September 2021. It is beautiful. The two white roses (David Austin Winchester Cathedral and Iceberg) are lovely as always.
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