Author: Allie

Here we are. 2021. I never thought it was going to happen but Yay! A new year, new flowers and new growing experiences. Everyone knows that flower gardening is never stagnent, but always changing, for the better or the worse, we are always kept on our toes.

To get you up to date, I know you have been waiting for this. The first batch of flower seeds have been ordered and delivered.

Then I realized that I had more to order, more varieties that is, than what was in the catalog so another huge order has been placed. Two or more orders to different seed companies need to go in this week. The word out on the gardening street is that orders are extremely strong and seed is selling out fast. Chop chop. Get those orders in. Lesson learned on Jan 1. A online dahlia sale was to go live on Jan 1 at 9:00am. When I got to the computer at 11:30 am all had been sold. Chop Chop.

Speaking of dahlias, I checked on the ones I had in storage and I lost about six varieties. Damn. I don’t know if they were stored to wet but they have now been added to the compost pile. The rest of the tubers look good so far so I am keeping my eyes open and my fingers crossed. Don’t worry, I will still have plenty of dahlias come next summer. All is not lost.

I am hoping that the snow cover finally stays for the rest of the winter protecting the flower beds. All that beautiful snow we had before Christmas melted away on Christmas day. NOT a very nice present I must say. I just need to have the spring bulbs, peonies and perennials that all got planted in the fall covered. I did put leaves and bark mulch on top of everything before the ground froze, but snow cover is just an added insurance. On the good note, the pond down in the donkeys pasture is as full as I have seen it at this time of year so I should be going into spring with adequate water.

Now that the gardens are going to be as large as I think they are going to be, (Don’t laugh, that is the plan) I am going to work on making the gardens more sustainable. Lots of flowers are going to be added in the verges for pollinator’s, and lots of cover crops will be sown to build up the soils. My flower pixie is busy making potions to feed the plants with from what I have already growing on the property like comfrey, nettles and dandelions.

As you can see, I have a lot of exciting things happening on the farm already this winter so stay tuned. One thing I can say. It wont be boring.

Until next time. Allie

Here we are, siting at the kitchen counter listening to the bucketing rain. Yes, it will be a white Christmas, but only with the leftover snow from last weeks’ dumping. Am I complaining, not much, the ground isn’t frozen yet so all that rain that we are to get, all 2-2 1/2 inches will go into the ground. My Christmas present, not having a dry summer like the last one.

The seed, the largest and probably most important order has been placed and delivered. Yay! Seeding of the flowers will start shortly after after the new year. Other seeds will be ordered so the variety of flowers will hopefully be larger, bigger flowers, more colors, more space to plant beautiful flowers.

Meantime the gardens are safely under snow, and like me, and hopefully you, awaiting spring.

I wish you all a very Merry, be safe and stay healthy, and I will be back to regale you all with the goings on at Lottarock in the New Year. I miss you all, and look forward to seeing you in a few months. Hugs to you all, my favorite flower people. Allie

You might be wondering why there wasn’t a blog last week. Honestly? Just plum forgot. I didn’t think that you would mind much though. I mean, what was I going to write about? The gardens are all tucked in and I have taken a breath. That said, here I am, back with Flowers at Lottarock news.

We have been getting good rain. We are still in drought according to the state drought map, but water is flowing in the creeks again, our pond in the donkey paddock is filling, water is flowing over the dam in Peterborough, and the ground is starting to feel soft when we take the dogs for their morning walk. All good signs in this flower farmer’s eyes.

I have finally gotten all the tender bulbs safely tucked in for the winter. The dahlias are labeled and in their pine shavings, the peacock orchids are now in their storage container and now I will just have to check on them every few weeks to make sure they are not rotting or too dry. Speaking of dahlias, a flower grower in Maine is selling their excess stock starting on December 1 so I am hoping to score some interesting varieties for this coming year. Yikes! Not that far away.

The seed catalogs are starting to rock in, finally. I am madly going through this year’s notes, seeing what I can grow more of, what not to bother with and what new varieties wow me.

I am going to try to place my seed orders as quickly as possible. Last year there was such a shortage because of the pandemic, everyone was wanting seeds. Flower, vegetable and herb so in order to get the best selection I am just going to play it safe. I will top up if I have to for those last minute ahah’s but hopefully that will be kept to a minimum.

I still have to go through all the ranunculas and anemone tubers and get them sorted out. I dug them out finally a few weeks ago and there they sit in the dirty room, looking at me like why have I forgotten about them? It is to rain again tomorrow so that will be a good time to make a mess.

I leave you with a photo from my brother’s taken the other day, overlooking the valley with the Christmas trees heavy with the previous day’s rain.

So until next time. Allie

My it has been a busy week. The dahlias have finally been divided and are in storage for the winter. I always find this project worrisome. Will the tubers make it through the winter? Last year’s dahlias didn’t even make it to dividing. They were a total loss before I even got them into storage. I think, and this is only a think, that I hadn’t let them cure after digging them, then I washed them and then let them sit in the sun in the dirty room and that was a complete disaster. This year, they cured for about a week. Thankfully we had all that beautiful mild weather so they were able to hang out in the garden shed until I got to them early this past week. So here they are, all varieties individually bagged, labeled more than once by variety just in case I forget what they are, and now safe in the basement. My biggest fear is rot, but let’s keep our fingers crossed please.

All the neatly composted beds, and I must say they are a beautiful sight, especially when they are covered by a hoar frost.

They are now all covered with a layer of chopped leaves so now the beds are safely tucked into be for the winter.

The leaves will break down into a fine tilth. That is the plan anyway, the earthworms will make lots of earthworm poo and they will be pretty ready for planting in the spring. Oh that time seems fo far away right now, but really only five long dark months. not far at all. I will just keep telling myself that.

And when one thinks of it, soon I will poring over seed catalogs, putting in orders and starting seeding. Not long at all. So even if the gardens are all safely tucked in, I will still have lots to do and to get you all excited about.

Until next week. Allie

Well it has been a busy week, but even with a few curve balls, I have managed to get the dahlia tubers dug and labeled. They are still in the garden shed awaiting to be divided, but the lovely, no, stunning weather is to hold a bit longer so I figure I have a few more days to get that task done. If not? Into the basement they go untll spring.

All the flower beds have now had compost spread on them, the stone walls have had the leaves blown out, mown and mulched and blown back into the borders beds. I still have leaf mulch that has to get spread onto the new narcissus beds, but I feel pretty good about going into winter as far as the beds are. I have taken my soil test and will get that of into the mail this week.

All I have to do now is wait impatiently for the seed catalogs to start rocking in, do a bunch of online classes and catch up on my reading and podcasts.

But that just really applies to the flowers-at-lottarock. Otherwise I will be running around trying to get the normal slew of things done on the farm. Not too many idle moments here.

So until next week, enjoy the beautiful weather. Allie

Well I was caught a bit off guard with the snowfall in the middle of the week. Talk about throwing a spanner in the works. The snow has mostly gone today, it has only taken three days. Oh well. I haven’t been idle, rest assured. I have been catching up on this year’s garden notes. I know, I am supposed to do them weekly, but that just didn’t happen, so now I am relying on my ahhm, memory to get things written down. Tonight it is raining, that is to end in snow again, but hopefully that forecast will be wrong. Fingers crossed. The end of the week is supposed to be stunning. Hopefully,

As of today, all the beds have been cleaned up with the netting and irrigation put away for the winter. Hopefully safe from little gnawing, winter bored rodents. All I have left are the dahlia beds, and I am waiting for that beautiful weather at the end of the week to get that done. But progress is being made. Speaking of progress, Steve pulled up a drone image he took back in April, before all the stumps and rocks have been removed. Whoah. Compare that to what the recent image shows and what a huge difference. I could say that I had been busy.

I have piles of cut down flower stems that are in various piles before I get them onto the compost pile, but I decided to let the goats have fun, and they certainly did enjoy the flowering cabbage plants.

Between rounds in clean up, I managed to create two still life arrangements for the doors. I was having a blast. Even though the flower beds are all done for the season I am still gleaning enough material around the property to be able to be creative.

Like I said, I was having fun. And really, isn’t that what it should be about? Having fun, creating beauty on the first day of November.

Until next week. Allie

Here we are at the last week of October. The flowers have been more or less done for a few weeks now. I manage to get a tiny bouquet for myself gathered to grace the kitchen, but even Mom is done with getting flowers. I have loved every minute of it and I hope you have as well. These are two of my late season bloomers. I have no idea why they took so long to bloom for me, but I am grateful that they bloomed before our hard freeze.

All of the plantings are now done. Fini, Complete. What a job that was. I had scored a bunch of peony divisions last week, thank you Carolyn. I went to get them into the garden and realized that where I wanted to plant them just wasn’t going to work. I had a back row of misfit or unknown peonies, then a row of narcissus. The only open bed was below the recently planted narcissus. I thought to myself. No problem. Those bulbs have only been in for about two weeks if that, I will simply dig them out, keeping the varieties correctly labeled, plant the peonies in that row and in the empty bed, replant the 100 narcissus. Well, it went like this. I got about five bulbs dug out and quickly replanted them. I was far easier to replant two lilacs that had only been in since spring than to replant 100 narcissus. So I moved more rocks so I could plant the lilacs, then re jiggered the already unknown peonies to make space for the new ones. Sheesh.

Now that every thing is safely tucked in the ground, we are tilling up the new garden beds that I had been dreaming about all year. As you can see, tilling hasn’t improved any. Here we have a lovely hedgerow of rocks, ready to be picked up by the tractor bucket and dumped.

The weekend was spent dismantling the flower beds, which entails cutting down the spent flowers so the netting can be removed, then cutting them stems to the ground. Then pulling the weed mat up, taking up the drip hose and getting that rolled up and put away. Lucky for me Steve had done about four of the beds. The dahlias are still in, I haven’t had a freeze hard enough to really kill them yet, but hopefully by the end of the week that will happen. The cleaned beds have had compost added, and will have mulch spread on top.

Here is a drone shot of the flower garden, I think it is pretty cool looking. I think that this is the final size. It has to be. I am running out of places to go!

I leave you with my last flower image of the year. I think. This stem of flowering cabbage is a bouquet in itself.

Until next week. Allie

We have had two, count them, two, hard frosts. Much of the garden is done, save a few stragglers such as a handful of cosmos and chrysanthemums, and bits and bobs. Still enough for a bouquet for mom and me, but the pickings are getting slim, but one learns to be artful.

Clean up is slowly starting. Slowly. Steve has gotten down the fencing for me which was a big help, and has started to chop the now brown flowers into bits so I can get them onto the compost pile and then I can get the netting put away. After that the the irrigation, the weed mat, then more compost and tilling getting the beds prepped for spring. It will all happen, in time. There is so much other things to do. Like planting bulbs!

This past week I have been busy planting bulbs. All the bulbs areas have been rototilled again. And, more rocks have been pulled out. So far, this week I have planted all the daffodills, about 300 of them. Then the long awaited peonies finally arrived and they were planted on Thursday or was it Friday before the rain came down down down. Heavens. I have extra space, so I have ordered more. Not much left to order. I was amazed about how many of the bulb selections were sold out. I did score four more peonies, 50 Dutch iris, and either six or twelve Eremurus. Then I am done ordering for spring. Promise.

Today, I spent this morning planting the 900 some, lets just call it 1000 tulips. They are safely planted in the vegetable garden and all I need to do left is spread compost on the top of the beds and hopefully they will be safely tucked in till spring.

So that is it for this past week. Next week is full, still have to clean out the little greenhouse so I can find last year’s ranunculus and anemones. They were totally sold out so if I want to have some for you in the spring I better get last year’s dug, cleaned and ready for planting in February. I am going to try it a little bit later this year and see what happens.

So until next week, let the rains continue because we still need about 9 inches to make up for the summer’s deficit, I will continue on in the gardens cleaning up and prepping for spring. Soon the catalogs will be rocking in and I will be drooling over this next springs offerings.

Allie

It has finally happened. We have had our killing frost. Bam. The end of the season. Clean up is now beginning.

But in the meantime, I have been very busy. The perennial and biannual beds have been roto-tilled, thank you to the tiller and Steve. Otherwise I would still be out there trying to dig one hole for something. Oh, we still had plenty of rocks to dig out believe you me, but the beds have gone from this

To this.

Looking good I think. The two unplanted beds are for the peonies that we are still waiting but ready for. The very back rows have been tilled a number of times, each pass excavating more rocks. Some needed the spud bar and the tractor to get them out and rolled down the hill. I certainly hope I don’t need to expand, which I won’t. I promise Courtney, because I have been dumping ALL the rocks beyond the big rock you see and that would just be an outrageous nightmare.

So this past week, besides digging up more rocks and oh, breaking the tiller tines because of rocks, then flooding the engine block with oil because silly us, we turned the tiller on it’s side to access the tines and filled the block with oil, soooo to make a long story short, we pulled the spark plug, shot oil all over the place and now we are running. So we can dig out more rocks. There is a reason why we are called Lottarock farm.

So what have I done this week you might ask. I have moved rocks, planted 25 allium, 150 fritillaria, 50 Ornithogalm, 100 Leucojum and 300 assorted narcissus. I still have to get 1000, choke, 1000 tulips planted but they are going into the vegetable garden in trenches so that should only take a day?

But wait! I have two rows of extra space! How did that happen? And nothing to put in them. Ohhh, what am I going to do? Wisely cover them with cardboard and wood chips and wait till next year? See what is on sale and fill the space? OHHHH this is not good. Allie with open garden space. Not good at all. I had wanted to get some Iris reticulata for spring….

Soon I will be perusing the seed catalogs. Oh dear.

Until next time. Allie

I know it has only been a week, and so much has happened. So you know that the peonies that I thought had arrived? Nope. We prepped the space, and then I opened the box. No peonies, silly me, read the paperwork, but they were bulbs. The good news is that we are ready for the peonies. The bad news, or the other news is that tomorrow I have 66 pounds of bulbs being delivered. Am I ready? NOPE. But through the generosity of gardening clients, I will be. Hopefully. I mean, 66 pounds of bulbs. Each bulb weighing approx .25 of a pound. No problem. We /Steve just has to till the said space and pixie and I will get planting. (Before the snow flies I hope).

But the garden waits for no one. Perennial beds have been tilled, composted and I have started to move all the plants that I have been holding in the vegetable garden into their real space, to make room for all the tulips that are starting to be delivered tomorrow. I believe it is called the gardening do-se-do.

Plants that are no longer doing much are being cut down and mulched, irrigation is being disconnected, I am spinning in circles…I can’t seem to get may fall clean up in focus. Goats can though.

So. Needless to say, there is a lot going on here. My goodness there is a lot going on here. The push and rush to get everything done is scary. Which brings me to the sad news….

This flower season for Flowers at Lottarock is over. Sad, but not. Sad not to see all my flower people, but glad that I can take a deep breath in anther month. I still have lots to do to get ready for next spring. If you still have credit, don’t sweat it, it is still good because spring and all of its beautiful narcissus, ranunculas and tulips will be ready for you. And don’t worry, you will still hear from me every Sunday to let you know what is happening at Flowers At Lottarock.

So this is the final 2020 bucket of flowers saying farewell, and until next year.

2021 I big plans for so tell your friends and bring your friends. We are a happy, merry, flower loving group. Until next week. Allie