Carola's Alberta Garden 2019: November 2016

Fall Update

In August my Cosmos were really growing like gangbusters and blooming grandly. The prettiest flower though was the lavatara which always grows well and blooms profusely right up until Jack Frost comes along.
My Dahlias were also looking lovely as they usually do at this time of year. The Firebird tubers especially( which I had overwintered in the house and and potted up in March ) were tall, with huge orange and yellow blossoms, one bunch was in the yard tub by the driveway and the other was in a deck pot for the longest time.
Eventually I planted it in in Round bed on the south east side (the usual stack stone bed spot was grown in by the Turbo Rose bush).
The Red "Thompson" dahlia was also still in a pot on the deck, but I transplanted it to the spot at the end of my long perennial bed facing the house. It stopped blooming there at first but the got another set of buds, ( but did not bloom as profusely as usual as it really didn't get the sunlight there that it deserved. ) :)

NOTE to Self: Next spring plant a dahlia in the stackstone bed again, if possible, in a sunnier location.

Poppies: I threw a bunch of loose poppy seeds on the soil in my stackstone bed behind my Morden belle rose bush. They eventually sprouted and grew quite thickly. Once they started to bloom, (mostly single orange or red petals) they continued right up until the frost killed them on Thanksgiving weekend (Oct 8/9) I left the stems there so that some seeds will hopefully reseed in the same spot.

We left for 4 weeks vacation on Sept 10 and missed most of the September garden season. Before we left we picked all the tomatoes and as many squashes and cucumbers that were ready. I dug up or took slips from some of the pink zonal geraniums and one of the regal geraniums that I wanted to keep over winter. Sadly we missed our crop of plums this year. We had not had any Hyer apples AT ALL on our tree and no crab apples either which was a first!

We arrived home a few days before Thanksgiving and the weather was cool. We thought we would still have a couple of weeks to do the flower bed winterizing and get the goldfish out of the pond for the winter but were we wrong about October!
In started to snow suddenly on the Thanksgiving weekend, October 8 and 9th and the weather stayed cold for about 2 weeks. The snow slowly melted and was mostly gone by Hallowe'en, thankfully.

We had unseasonably sunny warm weather in November which was lovely! The days were short, especially after the time change on Nov 3, but I managed to get outside, clip off most of my day lily leaves and use them as mulch around my Morden rose bushes. I managed to get them all wrapped in burlap and strangely enough, I found 2 stems of roses that were still blooming, one Morden Ruby stem and one Morden Centennial. Somehow Jack Frost had missed them :)

I spent a few afternoons clipping down more perennials in the bed at the side of the house, the stack stone bed and the round "Angel " bed. The Cosmos had grown into giants in Sept while we were away and had been frozen in mid bloom! Sadly there were hardly any seeds to collect for next year. I think I may still have a few from 2015 though which I could use. Many of the cosmos had such a firm grip in the ground that I had to just trim all the side branches off and leave a stump of the main stem behind.

I also left a few stems of Lavatara seeds in the stack stone bed for the birds to eat. :) I wonder if they would be viable next spring if they are left out all winter? Not wanting to take that chance, I collected some to keep in the laundry room till spring.

I left some of my calendulas in the flower tub and sprinkled a few of the seeds there. Let's see if they sprout like they used to do in my flower beds in Thompson. (Most likely will get eaten though….)

I chopped off the tall False dragonhead stems which had all fallen over in my stackstone bed and also cleaned up my long perennial bed. The only flower bed that I didn't cleaned up was my triangle bed. Most of the long leaves on the day lilies were all wet and mushy. :(
Oh well, one job that will need to be done in spring.

Goldfish retrieval

We finally had warm enough weather to go out and retrieve that goldfish from the pond on October 15

Diligent Husband drained the freezing cold water out of the pond and we started to net as many goldfish as we could. We had lost a few of the bigger goldfish over the summer (to the dog who kept jumping in and catching fish!) but we managed to retrieve quite a few large ones and far too many babies! (Over 40 in all.)

I listed some goldfish to give away on 2 local internet site and I gave some away to 3 different people.