Kitchen Garden Forum

amazing shot!
First frost of the autumn this morning in the park that I cycle through to work. That was a chilly commute! Brrrrrr.

We've had a few flakes of snow up there recently.

Well here we are mid October & I've been wandering around the garden in a vest top without a hint of shiver! I like to think it is Mother Nature saying sorry for the troubles of a heat wave in Summer & the Beast last winter! I'm willing to forgive & forget if you are mother, lets resume the status quo of a bit of predictability - deal?

Thank you for a lovely photo. Foe those of us who live in more urban situations seeing something like this is a joy to remind usnthere,s another world out there. On a crisp autum day with some sunshine I,m sure it feels totally magical

I've just been watching Gardeners' World and saw something I've never seen or heard of before - Monty was washing his dahlia tubers before storing them. Have I missed something all these years, does everyone else wash them? Dad loved dahlias and always rubbed off the loose soil cut the stems to about 4inches and stored them upside down until the stems had dried out. Then he stood them in trays of dry compost in a frost free place until Spring. It works for me.

I've heard of it but never done it. I treat them like your Dad did; wait for the frost to blacken then, cut them down, dig them up, get off most of the soil, up end them in bread trays in the greenhouse, when thoroughly dry knock off the rest of the soil then store in a frost free garage. I don't bother with the dry compost bit just pack them fairly tight together. I do sometimes get the odd one that is reluctant to start again which maybe because I let them get too dry. I don't grow from tubers only from cuttings, usually give the tubers away when they have a second flush of shoots. Mine haven't gone black yet despite 2 or 3 ground frosts.

That's good. I grow a few new ones from cuttings of my favourites each year too. It produces nice strong new plants and increases your stock. I put the dry compost round the smaller tubers in particular as it seems to stop them shrivelling as much.
This week's frost has damaged some of the flowers but not turned them black yet. I'm going to label them so I know what colour they are as I didn't do it last year and had to guess?

You never buy them washed do you and they are hanging around in garden centres for a while de-hydrating, yet mine always grow.

I onky have a couple of dahlias Nd I cut mine back after the frosts, leave them in the ground and cover with a pile of compost. But my favourite dahlia is massive this year and I,m wondering whether I can risk digging it up , splitting the tubers into two clumps and replanting them? I haven,t really got any spare space to store t(em in the garage now.

Can you in fact split dahlia tubers?

I leave mine in the ground too and just mulch with leaves or mound up extra earth. Probably because I'm in Dorset and mostly it's a tad milder here.

Last year I dug mine up and split the tubers, put them in dry compost in large pots and sunk them in the ground in the greenhouse, they all survived.

Dug a strip across poly 17 about one rod.
Mowed the main path.

Hope I'm not "paying for this" in the morning.
Been told I have a Bakers Cyst of 1cm x 4cm in the back of my left knee and probably a smaller on on the right.

Good for the first, bad for the second, Peter.....

I've always brought mine in. We get very cold winters here and if the frost doesn't get them the slugs will eat any new shoots in spring.
There's been a ladybird colony on my dahlias all summer, both seven spot and harlequin and they don't seem bothered by each other.

I've picked a bucketfull of kiwi fruits today and all the Falstaff apples so I've only got another hundred or so Newton Wonder to pick and store and the fruit harvest should be dealt with.

I've swapped the shade netting for bubble plastic in the greenhouse so I'm ready for the cold weather now too.

More silly harvesting today; Bramleys 62 kg, Ashmeads Kernel 11 kg, Black Worcester (a cooking pear) 16 kg. Another small Bramley and a Granny Smith still to pick. We bought a juicer years ago but decided it was more trouble than it was worth but today I retrieved it from the garage, dusted it off and juiced a bucketful of small Bramleys, that should wake us up for a few mornings!