Pulling, Planting, Blooming

Today is October 15th, which means it is Garden Blogger's Bloom Day! Every 15th day of the month, gardeners put together photos of their own personal "state of the grounds". In my garden, the blooms are finishing their last push until frost, summer bulbs are being pulled and the fall bulbs are starting to go in.

My favorite Dahlia getting ready to bloom

Dahlias are fighting mums for pride of place this October, thanks to frost free nights 

and a streak of warm weather. (That all ends tonight says the 35 degree forecast!)

Hyacinth Bean Vine is twirling and dancing around the potager still...

 ...while its blooms steadily turn over to bean pods richly hued as royals.

The morning glories are giving the beans a run for their money too, with frilly blue and purple blooms.

 The dahlias and glads are part of a late summer clearance of bulbs, all thrown into the vegetable garden as cutting flowers and "stock" for me to hold onto for next year. I planted them in mid-July (VERY late) and managed plenty of dahlia blooms, but only a sparse number of glads. However, easily pulling up those corms/tubers/bulbs of summer bloomers will ensure plenty of blooms NEXT year when I plant everything on its correct schedule.

In fall, I do the same thing with tulips, daffodils and other spring blooming bulbs. They go straight into the vegetable garden where the soil is loose, rich and available for the winter. Once I see them bloom in spring, I can determine where they will fit into the gardens for future years. Tulips that only bloom well for one year are simply available for easy cut flowers.

These are double tulips, courtesy of Garden Media and Bulb.com to celebrate the National Garden Bureau's Bulb of the Year - Tulips!   Visit the Everything About Bulbs page at Bulb.com to learn more.

For the bulb crop, 2018 will be the Year of the Tulip.

For annuals, 2018 will be the Year of the Calibrachoa.

For vegetables/edibles, 2018 will be the Year of the Beet.

For perennials, 2018 will be the Year of the Coreopsis.

Speaking of coreopsis, the Uptick line of samples I tried this year from Darwin Perennials is going STRONG into fall. I have all three varieties planted in various types of soil, from the worst possible to nice potager soil and they are thriving everywhere.

Back to the glads and the tulips...see any difference between these two glads?

The glads on the left are thick, hard and have tons of "babies". On the left, the glad is healthy, but nowhere near as prolific. The difference was Starbucks. I typically stop by a couple Starbucks on my way to and from preschool dropoff, grabbing whatever amount of used coffee grounds they have available. Typically I am responsible and sprinkle the grounds onto a larger garden area or the compost, but on this particular day, I guess I was lazy. I just poured the whole bag in a small pile in the vegetable garden. Turns out several glads were planted underneath this pile and they LOVED it. Who knew?? Here is a closeup of the "regular" glad:

Just 2 babies :(

The glads were planted under IKEA drawer inserts to help support them and grew very well this way.

They are clearly finished for the season though and need to come out before the frost tonight!

I have decent, loose soil here, so I can just grab and pull:

If you feel like treating your glads with a bit more respect, a large trowel digging UNDER and pushing up does the trick.

Once all the glads (and surprise potatoes!) were up, the tulips could go IN!

When the bed was cleared and replanted, it looks a little bare, but goodies will be there come early spring!

You might also notice the saplings growing here - in the far corner is a cherry tree that dropped its leaves already and on the right are Sargent Crabapples (from the free Arbor Day tree deals). These are very small trees or can be trained into bushes. The "plan" for the garden is to eventually have live bush fencing to replace the current fencing when it inevitably dies.

Note the Uptick Coreopsis STILL going strong!

To finish off the tulip planting, I decided to experiment with coffee grounds again, so half the bed got some and the rest of the bed stayed "normal". Results to come next spring!!

My haul - glads, suprise potatoes and a pumpkin!

If you have followed along with Garden Blogger's Bloom Day in the past, you might be aware that May Dreams Garden writer Carol Michel has written a new book. It is just as charming as the blog and a perfect "sit and giggle" book after a long, tough day. It is only $15 on Amazon and well worth a read if you love garden memoir-type writing. Carol has long been one of my favorite garden blogs and I am thrilled that she has put her magical, fantastical garden characters into book form!

ORDER Potted and Pruned HERE FROM AMAZON

 To finish up bloom day, here are a few more beauties that caught my eye:

Not in bloom really, but how beautiful is asparagus all grown up and dripping with water??

Also, mums ready to bloom, full to the top with rainwater are the picture of fall abundance.

Note in the picture above how the sedum and more "yellow-orange" mum in the background create a gradient of color.

Here is the combo (below) more clearly:

Forgive me while I indulge in a few more photos:

 Cheap zinnias bringing color, garish though it may be:

 ...and we wind up with ANOTHER coreopsis doing very nicely in its first year!

Happy Bloom Day!