Surprise Visiter From Provo

This morning as soon as breakfast was over and I had watched some of the morning news, we, Carol and I, pulled all of geraniums and a few other plants in the kidney.  We put them on the tarp.  We also pulled the volunteer flowers that in the gravel next to the lawn.  I pulled them over to the new compost pile.  It is getting pretty big.

A sprinkler had run all night on the dahlias. The flower bed was really wet and muddy.    I planned to dig them this afternoon, but decided to do it this morning.  The ground was muddy and soft and it was easy push the shovel into the ground.  I dug all around the dahlia far enough away so not to cut through a tuber.  I then pried back on the shovel at several locations and pulled the dahlia plant out of the ground.  I grabbed it by the stem.  I cut the stems of yesterday and cut too short.  That made it hard to hang on and hard to find some of them.  I dug all of the dahlias in the same way. I dug the rest of them in less time than I dug one yesterday.  Some had a lot of mud clinging to them and others there was not to much mud.  The photo below shows the muddy dahlias and where they came from.  There are three drip lines visible.

Here is a close-up.

I moved them over to the lawn close to a garden hose and a spray nozzle. It took me awhile to get mud off all of them.  The photo below shows them pretty well cleaned up.

I had several ideas about a container to put them in.  I used a large nursery can.

I stopped for lunch and a little relaxation surfing the internet.  The doorbell rang.  Carol went to the door and there stood Frank Williams.  He brought with him a bail of potting soil and some thirty bare root bush clematis.  He wanted to put them in containers.  I thought a two gallon nursery can would be good, then after a second thought decided to use a one gallon can.  It would take a lot less soil.  We worked on that for about an hour.

Where should we put them.  In a cold frame, some where out side.  We decided to put them in house five.  There is no poly on it and a smooth surface.  That is were we put them.  I wanted to have some potting soil that covered the pots up two the top edge of the pot.  I filled the wheelbarrow with two loads of recycled potting soil.  When they were pretty well covered, I a put sprinkler on them and  turned it on for the night.

Frank and I had a discussion on what and how we should proceed next year.  I won't go into detail.  We discussed

• What to grow
• How much to grow
• How to sell what we grow.

Frank picked peppers and tomatoes that he took home.  He may be back some time next week.

The red beets and radishes in the north bed are germinating well.  The seeds that I planted in 1206 tray are beginning to germinate.

Comments and questions are welcome.