#29 Harvesting Dahlias, Nematodes, Fall Lisianthus Blooms

Okay, it's another week. I'm getting started a little bit later and later every morning. I'm finding the shorter days, it's harder to get out of bed in the morning and I don't know, I'm just feeling a bit more tired. I think I feel like this always at the end of the season. There's actually only two more weeks of market. We've done 18, so there's this week and then next week is the final one right before Canadian Thanksgiving. Usually that's a really good market for me, so I try to get a lot of flowers there and a lot of stuff prepared. So I'm buckling down for the next two weeks, working hard trying to get as many of the flowers in. There's no, looks like no chance of frost in the forecast, so very thankful for that. So hopefully there will be lots of flowers. Yeah, I even went away on Saturday. I went with my family to Toronto. This is the first time I went with my siblings and parents, but so much fun. It was fun to go to a Blue Jays game, walk around Toronto. We went on the GO train. That was the first time for some of my family. So that's a really good weekend. I was, yeah, I probably should have been working here because there's a lot of work, but I am trying to just walk away from it every so often. I just think it's, yeah, life's too short to work all the time. So I took a little half day, a little bit more than a half day away on the weekend. But now, now it's go time. A lot of harvesting to do this week and cleanup and seeding and yeah, okay. I would like to report that the cucumber beetles have left my field. But like, yeah, there's just one right there. I still see them, but their population has either gone down or they're just not eating as much. Like, oh yeah, here's one right here. I actually, I have a white order this week, so I actually can walk through and get some white dahlias without organza bags. So I am thrilled. And I'm getting other colors too. I'm just so happy to finally be getting some dahlias. This has not been a great dahlia season for me. But next week is Thanksgiving, so I want as many dahlias as possible. So I'm happy the cucumber beetles have, maybe they've just found something else to eat right now. So it rained last night and I got nematodes in the mail from Natural Insect Control as a company here in Ontario. Nematodes are those really tiny microscopic worms that you put in the soil and they will attack certain pests. And what I'm trying to get rid of is cutworm. And I really want to get rid of the cutworm for next spring because this is the bed where I want to put lysanthus next year and maybe some other early April planting. So one of the strategies is, besides the other things I tried this year, is nematodes. And you can apply them in the fall before it gets too cold, and then you can apply again in the spring. So I'm going to do this again in the spring, but I just wanted to try and see what it was like and get some on this fall. So I'm doing everything not correctly. My application rate is much lower than it's supposed to be for what I bought. And you're not supposed to do it when there's sunlight. You're supposed to do it on a cloudy day or at dusk. But it rained last night, you need the ground wet. So I'm like, okay, I'm just going to put them on quick this morning. It took longer than I thought, so it's a little bit sunnier now than it was earlier this morning. And then you water them in so that they move in the water channels, I think. So I'm just going to move the sprinklers around this morning. And the dahlias needed a little bit more water anyways. So the chickens are really attacking this bed. They probably should be moved off of it, but I don't have time to move the fencing right now. So they are really digging up holes and making a mess. But yeah, if there's any cutworm left, hopefully the nematodes now will find them and we will have a wonderful April spring planting here. I'm just so happy to be cutting lisianthus. It's been like it was quite a warm September, and even now it's October. I'm not wearing a jacket. It's not that cold out. I know that in the next week, the temperatures are going to be dropping down. So the cold does affect lisianthus and a lot of wind and rain. And we haven't had that this past month. So it's so fun to be able to be able to cut bucketfuls of it. I do need to go through and clean them up. Lisianthus, you have to deadhead out the old blooms on the bottom of the stem, and then it's the top blooms that you're selling basically. So yeah, these are actually for orders for next week. And I'm just getting ahead on my prep for the Thanksgiving market because there's a lot of flowers to cut and prepare and little time. So trying to stay organized here as I wrap up this week so that next week goes super well. But yeah, I'm just super excited. How can you not? How can you not love lisianthus? And what do you think of my new variety this year? This one just came out. It's Coco something or other. It's a single and the designers, they've been enjoying it. I think they can reflex it to get a little bit of a bigger flower size. But yeah, market was really good this week. Weather was great. I had more dahlias than I have had all month. And so I put a special on them and they flew out of my booth quite quickly. It's nice to end the season strong. So I'm very happy about that. Very happy that the nematodes or some of them are in the hopefully they're working because that just means next year we can have more lisianthus. Yeah, so I'm just going to get these in the barn. It might it looks like it might rain or spit. It was a little bit but I don't want them getting all wet. So yeah, thanks for hanging out with me. And I'll see you next week as we prep for Thanksgiving.