Dahlias - A Labor of Love

When I was a kid I thought it would be cool to be an archaeologist. I imagined myself crouched over dinosaur bones and priceless artifacts, brushing away dirt and sand to slowly reveal clues from the past....what was I thinking? That sounds awful!

Sure, it might be fun for a few minutes but after that your back starts hurting you just want to get a shovel and get things moving. I say that because you have to be part archaeologist to successfully grow dahlias.

The greatest thing about dahlias, other than their beauty, is that they multiply every year. Maybe they don't produce a lovely scent like some pretty flowers but at least they're not lazy! I know that daylillies, daffodils and other flowers multiply but they don't have anything on dahlias.

These are all from my garden this and last year. I am obsessed with growing dahlias. SADLY- I made mistakes last year by thinking we were in a warm enough area that the tubers could overwinter in the ground. MISTAKE. They all turned to mush and I had to buy new in the spring. Waste of money and gorgeous flowers. 

When you order dahlia tubers you pick by staring at hundreds of amazing flowers and then you get this in the mail-


These are dahlia tubers packed in sphagnum moss.

To plant the tuber you dig a 6in deep 1 foot diameter hole and place the tuber at the bottom. If it's a tall plant it'll need to be staked or provided with support of some kind. Then you fill the hole with good light dirt and wait for them to grow. My garden's natural dirt is nothing but heavy clay which is why I dig deeper and wider and fill in the difference with good light dirt.

At the end of the season, as soon as the first frost hits the dahlia plants will go from this-

To this overnight-

Then it's time to dig up and separate the tubers, a daunting job! Today I paid my dues and excavated all of mine. You may start with one horizontal tuber but they multiply like Mogwai and bloom into a bushel of tubers shooting in all directions. It's really amazing. 

This is about 10minutes in when I had to start working with my hands to avoid nicking the delicate tubers. 

I thought I'd dug a wide enough hole but the new tubers grew into the thick clay making the excavation even harder. This next photo is after another 10-15minutes of brushing away dirt-

If I had perfect dirt I could do what other people do and pry the entire thing out with a pitchfork but alas, the thick clay is like cement so no dice. Here's the final product after a total of 30 or so minutes and one or two broken tubers that didn't make it. 

The final step in the process is to divide them up and store them for winter. I need to do that tomorrow so for tonight they're still intact in their winter homes of sphagnum moss filled paper bags. I made the mistake of trying to store one survivor from last year in a plastic bag filled with sphagnum moss and it turned to mush. They need air and regulated moisture. They're very finicky so I guess they are a lot like having a Mogwai! 

I've already gotten my tubers mixed up during the process, shocking I know, so it'll be a surprise to see what blooms where after I plant them in the spring!

Fall Beehive Check

Two weekends ago I did a complete hive check. I hadn't bothered the bees in over two months.  Beekeepers are supposed to check the hives monthly but I'd walked out there and seen a lot of pollen gathering activity at the entrance so I knew they were okay and wanted to let them stay on a roll. 

The first step in a hive check (and again, this is my first year so I am constantly learning, improving and in no way an expert) is to get the smoker going good. I'm nothing without that smoker! Also my bee suit, I'm nothing without the bee suit! I need to order those little smoker pellets because the old fashioned way of gathering pine needles is pretty time consuming and takes a while to get going. 

Once the smoker was puffing away, I started by removing the top inner cover. Then I removed the top box (called a "super" in beekeeping jargon) and looked inside it and inside the lower brood box.

The bees make a substance called propylis that is like a super sticky glue made from pollen. They use it to fill even the tiniest holes in their hive to keep it airtight. It's like caramel, it gets gooey in hot weather and super hard where you have to crack it apart in cold weather. That's where the hivetool comes in, you have to pry each frame off the box ledge to lift it out. 

When I finally got a look at the top box frames in the daylight I saw that they are FULL of honey! 

The end frames are halfway full on one end and empty but starting to get filled on the other. The frames above are pulled from the sides. Here's what a frame looks like when the bees are just starting to build the honeycomb to fill with honey in the top box- 

Bees always keep their brood on the bottom and their honey at the top.  After checking to make sure that they had plenty of honey and sufficient brood comb I looked for the queen- no success and then  did the same thing for the other hive. The other hive was NOT in the mood to be trifled with- they started getting into swarm formation flowing over the bottom super so I smoked the hell out of them and kept the visit short. 

I really need a bee mentor. I'd love a sassy old lady with grey braids to tell me what I need to do better- alas...I may just have to start going to the local beekeepers meetings where I'm pretty sure it's just going to be me and a bunch of old guys. No offense to old guys! If they're anything like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino we'll get along famously. I even have a porch where we can drink beer and judge America's youth. Until then, I'll keep feeling my way through this. 

Warning: In Gran Torino style, there is a curse word in the first 20 seconds of this video. What do you want from me? It IS effing fascinating, okay?? :)

*Many thanks to my patient videographer for braving the bees to briefly document this inspection! 

Hoop Houses!

The learning curve in gardening is pretty severe- I feel like I was in elementary school last year and now I'm taking the SAT's. My ONE hoop house last winter/spring season was a learning experience.

 The plastic was too thin and the sheet needed to be cut but I was too lazy to go inside and get scissors so it flapped all over and got dirty pooling water and goo. 

The hoops weren't high enough which meant that in the spring when it was even a little warm it would be blazing in the hoop house with not enough air circulating above the seedlings and plants. I scorched many a seedling.

This time around improvements were made- we went with a 6mm thick white plastic that's pretty rigid and resembles wrapping paper vs the flowing thin, clear plastic from last year.

We also lengthened the hoop tubing so it sits taller overall.

All materials were bought at Home Depot- our home away from home where I now have Rainman like abilities in that I can tell you what aisle to go to for just about anything.

The tubing is sold as a coil- we cut it with heavy duty tree pruning clippers. Here's a close up of the details: 

 
We hammer shim-like pieces of wood into the ground and force the tubing onto them.

Ms. Jo, the farm cat, approves of the new construction.

I'm covering 4 beds for the winter and keeping materials to start a 5th and 6th for spring seedlings. The winter hoops are protecting lettuces like Arugula, Leafy green, Romaine and other cold hardy things like Cilantro and Dill.

The bed above can be credited to my patented "Lazy Gardener" technique of letting the lettuce bolt and throw it's seeds all over so that the bed repopulates itself before fall. Lazy...and brilliant!

Most of the other beds have room in them so over the next few weeks I'm going to try and start a few things that do well in the cold like carrots and beets.

We'll see how it goes!