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:
June started with lots and lots of color in the garden. The weather wasn’t consistent and we continued to get lots of rain. We did get a few days with temperature highs of 80F but also lows in the 50’s.
It was a very good year for the peonies. Not only are most of my peony plants matured at this point, but I think they are also loving the consistent moisture. Lots of flowers are blooming. The roses are beautiful and I absolutely love the David Austin Eustacia Vye rose. However, this year I lost some of the roses – the Winchester Cathedral rose and the Knockout rose both finally died. And the three roses that I got from Costco last year didn’t survive either.
It was so exciting to spot swallow tail butterflies in my yard. Also very exciting is harvesting carrots. However, these carrots took so long to mature – I planted the seeds in September of 2023!! The first ones I harvested were very thin but sweet. I could harvest handfuls of strawberries this month as well. The tomatoes in veggie patch are looking strong, the peppers that I bought as seedlings are also looking fine. But the basil and pepper that I tried to grow from seeds are stunted. While I still planted them in the ground, I am not hoping for any yield this year.
The true bane this month have been the deer that keeps eating the roses, peas and even ate the tops of a strong tomato plant. The rabbits and slugs are at it too!
The highlight of this month is thyme front “lawn” which is flush with purple blooms! And the mophead hydrangeas in the backyard are also glorious.
While the front lawn is now lush with clovers, I did need to get that mowed a couple of times this month. In the last week, I spotted a swallow tail butterfly enjoying the clover blooms. It looks messy at times, but I think for now I will enjoy the buzzing activities of beneficial wild life. You can watch a video tour of my garden below. Enjoy the summer!
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!
The spring garden is thriving this month. Perennials are coming up while spring bulbs are in their prime in April. While the tulips and daffodils started winding down their show around mid April, there are other beautiful things to enjoy around the garden. Last October, I planted a combination of Minnow daffodils and Muscari around the circle flower bed in the side yard and it looked beautiful this year. I am going to repeat this combination in other parts of the yard.
The sweet pink rhododendron has a story to tell. I grew it from a cutting from the garden of my last house. It was a 12″ rooted plant that I brought along to its new home and is largely neglected. I do fertilize it once every spring and then leave it alone for the rest of the year – never even providing any supplemental water. This is the first year that it is blooming so profusely. Such a happy sight it was when I came back from a Florida/Bahamas trip in early April and saw it filled with flowers!
Primrose “Wanda” has formed a wonderful border around the front yard. Iberis (CandyTuft) looks like a white carpet around the edges of several parts of the garden. In my opinion, Peony foliage are a sight to behold. Their upright, foliage looks so pretty and adds a wonderful texture in the spring garden. How are hellebores still looking pretty? Thats four months of beautiful colors! I certainly need to appreciate them more! The backyard cleanup has started – though it is a never ending cycle and I have a lot more to do. Mr. Ducky looks happy with tulips blooming behind him and the red Candelabra Primrose (Primula Beesiana) is blooming strong!
The seedlings that I started indoors are thriving! Except the peppers. They germinated but are still so little with only a set of true leaves. I hope these will grow better and faster. I need to do more research on how to grow peppers from seeds better. The basil seeds are also very slow to germinated. The tomato plants are so big now and already setting buds. I think it will be best to remove the buds before planting them in the ground – but I have not had the heart to do that yet. I will remove them before I plant.
One of the major changes to the outdoor areas this month is the extended patio. Its not that we needed a bigger patio, but it was needed to keep this area weed free and making sure this area is usable. Now that the patio is bigger, it looks much better given the large scale of the backyard.
Chores I tended to in the garden this month are:
Cleaned up the ferns along the narrow side yard. Taking care of Ferns are easy! While this is not necessary, they look their best with a little spring cleanup which entails removing last years leaves being careful not to cut the emerging fronds.
Removed the weeds as much as I could. Over the years, learnt that I can’t have a weed free garden and not to be too tied up cleaning weeds.
Pruned off the dead from two of my roses. Sadly, I might have lost the David Austin Winchester Cathedral rose. It had a lot of dead branches and when I removed them, I was left with barely any green. I am sad since it was the first David Austin rose I owned. However, it gives me an opportunity to add a new rose.
Added some mulch in the dahlia bed. I didn’t mulch the whole bed since firstly I ran out of mulch and secondly I want to wait for my dahlias to emerge.
Tended to the growing seedlings and also sowed the annuals – marigolds, cosmos, basil, nasturtiums, zinnias, coriander and allysums. The cosmos and marigold are ready to be planted outside after hardening off.
The irrigation system is now plugged in and primed.
Added compost to the veggie patch and the veggie containers.
Highlights of the April garden are captured in this video:
I have been growing Primrose Wanda for over a decade. I started with one small plug and now I have many which forms a border in my front flower bed and dotted throughout my garden. The deep purple with yellow centered flowers form tidy mounds with contrasting green foliage. Exceptionally hardy, and quite a sight in the early spring garden. Primroses are meant to be grown in part shade to full shade parts of the yard. However mine are in the sunniest parts of the garden and has been thriving likely due to our relatively cooler summer temperatures in the PNW area. The plant foliage depreciate in the heat of the summer. Plants spread by creeping rhizomes to form small clumps.I propagate these plants by dividing the clumps after the blooms are over in late spring.
This month is the busiest time in the garden. The spring flowers are starting to bloom, perennials waking up from their winter slumber and most of all seed starting for summer annuals and vegetables. The weather has been mostly mild and reached a high of 70F two days this month and did not dip below 40F. I feel spring is when my garden looks its best and I try to make sure that the clutter is removed and I “juzz” up the garden for the spring show.
The garden has lots of flowers this time of the year. Every day some new spring flowering bulbs start blooming – hyacinths and daffodils are already glorious, but the Red Devon Daffodils which are the late blooming variety are just starting to bloom. I just love primrose “Wanda” which I have been growing for many years now. It forms a lovely border around my front flower bed. I also divide them and it is now beautifully flowering in other parts of my garden. The camellia tree has exploded with stunning flowers and the two Japanese Plum trees are also so full of flowers. The hellebores are still looking beautiful – I feel they are the longest blooming plants! The Red Currants (Ribes Sanguineum) are starting to flower and I can’t wait for the hummingbirds to start visiting her! That truly makes my day!
An interesting anecdote about one of my trees. A gardening friend had given me a small tree which was 12″ tall 6 years ago when she had given to me saying that it was a seedling of a plum tree. I planted the then tiny tree and it grew tall every year but did nothing else. It is now approximately 20 feet tall but was not producing any flowers or fruits. I was growing frustrated with this tree and thought I will remove it if there are no flowers or fruits this year. Well, guess what – this one has beautiful flowers now!! I asked the local gardening group and they identified it as an American plum. How exciting is that!! I am looking forward to observing what the tree does in the coming months and years. Hopefully I will get plums soon!
I wanted to increase the depth of the raised veggie bed from 2″ to 6″. Keshav helped me with this and now I am happy that the veggie bed is 6″ deeper. I filled this bed with raised bed mix and sowed peas and beets so far. I also sowed 6 peas in the barrel.
March is when I sow most seeds that I want to start indoors and so the number of seedlings I have to take care of indoors increases. I am always amazed that dahlia seeds germinate so fast!! 3 days after sowing, the seeds germinate and start growing!
Garden Chores this month:
Planted ranunculus and anemones in the front flower bed after pre-sprouting. They are still very small but growing well.
Started applying mulch after cleaning the dahlia bed.
Sowed dahlia seeds indoors which are now growing nicely under grow lights
Snapdragons, swiss chards, and beets seedlings are growing well too.
Tomato seedlings look so big and strong!
Highlights of the garden in March are captured in this video:
We rolled into February with hope for warmer weather and a pile of gardening chores. But first, it was so exciting to see the Iris Reticulata start to bloom as soon as the new month began!
Hellebore blooms are still going strong! Its amazing how long these lasts. I already cleaned up the older leaves, and the flowers look much better now – but still not as “flashy” as I would like. A little confession – though I appreciate the early blooms and the long lasting flowers, I am not sure that I love the hellebores too much. They remain very close to the ground and seem to disappear into the surroundings unless I peer close to them – even though I have 4 of them in my backyard. . They are expensive plants, so planting en masse is not an option for a thrifty gardener like me. I am on the look out for a very early blooming, deep shade plant that will lift the winter spirit.
The crocuses have started blooming too! These are very attractive to rabbits, so I truly treasure the few that manages to bloom in the garden. The ones that I planted in pots are strangely still not blooming. There are a few daffodils starting to bloom but I am waiting for the main show. My favorite pink camellia has started to flower but then again, the full display is eagerly awaited. Same with Primrose Wanda – I overlook this hardy, beautiful primrose but it adds the pop of color just at the right time. I have them as a border in my front yard and also all around the garden.
On the house plant front, the Thanksgiving cactus is flowering again! I missed the flush of bloom during Thanksgiving time as I was vacationing in India, so I am thrilled to see some flowers now. The African Violets I bought last month are still in flower. So happy to see the long life of these beautiful flowers. I forced some forsythia branches to bloom indoors. I love the bright yellow flowers this time of the year which are also very appropriate for Saraswati Puja. If you want to know the process I use to force branches indoors, you can review my post on this.
The tomato seeds (Beefsteak variety) I sowed on 1/21 have germinated and doing well. They even grew tall enough and I repotted them into bigger pots. However, the pepper seeds (Hot Portugal variety) did not germinate. They seeds were very old and I think they were not viable.
Garden chores completed this month:
Cleaned up the two front yards.
The flower beds in the front yard now has nice, crisp edging – thanks to Anselmo who helped me with that.
Hydrangeas and roses pruned.
Hydrangeas fertilized.
Started the pre-sprouting process for Ranunculus and Anemones.
Sowed Swiss Chards seeds indoors on 2/6. Only one out of 6 germinated. I think I am wasting my time on the old seeds.
Spinach seeds sowed indoors on 2/6. No germination on this at all. I will try growing them as micro greens before discarding the seeds.
Sowed Apple Blossom Snapdragon seeds indoors on 2/27.
A short video encapsulating the February Garden is below:
simple urban living 