I can hear my mother now. "Why don't you pick up after yourself? You're always leaving your toys laying all over the place it's no wonder you lose keep losing stuff!"
It snowed yesterday. One of the things I love about Chicago is that it always seems to snow on Thanksgiving. I left these outside after cutting back my shrub roses the other night. At this rate, all my tools will be rusty next year. Mom is right - I should be more careful with my toys.
It snowed yesterday. One of the things I love about Chicago is that it always seems to snow on Thanksgiving. I left these outside after cutting back my shrub roses the other night. At this rate, all my tools will be rusty next year. Mom is right - I should be more careful with my toys.GB gave me some of her excess mulch and I almost had enough for every rose to have it's own bag. This was Monday evening and I was working feverishly to cut back the roses and get the mulch on them before it started raining.
I don't know if I did it right but I cut back the roses and piled the mulch around the bottom. I thought I might have done this too early but today it's freezing outside!
Regarding dirt:I went to buy dirt today and was amazed that Menards had already gotten rid of their topsoil. No more till spring. Home Depot had it but it was frozen solid! I got discouraged and went home. I'll just suck it up and have it delivered.
I still have bulbs to plant! I'm thinking big patio pots at this point.
Thankfully your snow is melting! It is staying on the ground here ... which is frozen solid at the moment. You'll have a chance to get your bulbs in!
ReplyDeleteThe Red Velvet Cake looks absolutely delicious! Yum, yum ...
Great job on the roses! They will do fine. I've already, accidently, completely buried a mini-rose with garden waste in the Fall, and in Spring, when I found it, it was growing like mad. You could have grabbed the frozen bags of dirt, split the bags and just put the slab of frozen dirt on top of the leaves. It would have worked pretty good. Oh, yes I left some pruners outside all summer - they need a good oiling now!
ReplyDeleteTee hee...I leave my toys laying around too...I get tired, go have a rest, and never remember to go back! And I don't have my bulbs all planted either...it's been too cold or wet or cold or windy or wet...but tomorrow it'll be done if I can chisel through the ground! Wish me luck, Gina.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't get all the bulbs in the ground, you could always pot them up for indoor forcing. I used to do that every year, but I've just been too lazy lately. I was recently reading (but can't remember where) that you don't have to cut back your roses in Fall. In fact, it was suggested that the roses would do better being left til Spring to be cut back. You might want to look into that, as I have no roses, so no personal experience. However, anything that saves labor in cold, nasty weather is worth considering.
ReplyDeletekate - yep, the snow is all gone! bulbs are going in tomorrow if I can decide tonight where they should go.
ReplyDeletealyssa - thanks! wow what a trooper that little min-rose was, huh?
jodi - repeat after me....I WILL PLANT BULBS ON SUNDAY, I WILL PLANT BULBS ON SUNDAY, I WILL PLANT BULBS ON SUNDAY.
mmd - thanks. i'm going to try to get those bulbs in tomorrow. the weather should be slightly warmer.
Gina, I still have bulbs to plant, too. In fact, they aren't even here yet. UPS is due to deliver the last of them on Tuesday. I planted some yesterday and the top inch of mulch/soil was sort of frozen, but we're not close to having hard frozen ground yet. The bulbs will go at least three inches down so there's time yet.
ReplyDeleteI sat in on one of my mom's garden club meetings last spring and a rose expert was there. He said in our zone, we can experience up to 18 inches of die-back, so it's advisable to leave that much when cutting your roses back. Also, he said to put about six inches of mulch up around the base of the roses and don't use those rose cones. The other thing he said was when planting roses, in our zone we should plant the 'knot' about 2-3 inches below ground level. That's all I know. LOL.
Your topsoil looks wonderful to me! If there are clumps of grass, you can just toss those out. Small rocks shouldn't matter a whole lot. Better drainage!