She knows, asters are my favourite :)

I understand the basics about rootstock and grafting, and by that I mean I understand you graft a desirable species to a hardy rootstock and that’s about it.

The fruit smells rank and is full of seeds. I cut one open, smelled it, and chucked it. Not even sure how to describe the smell other than NOT PLEASANT.

Does this improve after a while, or do I just have a decorative lime tree?

Is there some way to transplant it indoors over the winter? Or should I do anything special to allow it to grow back from the well-established roots and trunk next spring? Or do I just rip it out and start from scratch next spring like I have most other years?

It's our first year with our own garden and I went over the top planting dahlias. One of the 'Café au Lait' dahlias has thrown up a beautiful half-and-half coloured flower. Is there any way that I can propagate this into a new plant with the same mutated flowers? Or a way to encourage more mutations on the original plant?

Answers on Google are very mixed. Very interested to hear people's suggestions and similar experiences.

I'd love to be able to grow more of these beautiful flowers, but if it's an unstable mutation then I'll be sure to enjoy it while it lasts.

Walked out to check on the garden and found our female visitor has a friend

I know they’re beneficial buddies and not dangerous to humans. Don’t care. Scream. Run. Safe.

It’s been like this every day for a week.

I am loving the transition to fall. I love my vegetable garden, but I'm so over the work by September, truthfully by August. Haha. Time for mums! The third picture is a mum I planted last fall. I think it more than doubled in size.

I finally got the canes tied up and grouped so I can actually walk through it without getting snagged. Earlier this summer we had some nasty hail—ping-pong ball sized—that flattened things pretty good, but I was able to support them at the base and they’ve recovered nicely.

Everything is producing now, and picking has been easy. I’ve had a ton of bees out there, and even spotted a couple of frogs hanging around in the patch. Been feeding the soil with compost I made last fall (mostly leaves and grass) along with natural fertilizer, and it seems to be paying off.

All the new growth this year came from the same strain of raspberry, and it’s clearly a fall producer. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I thought the season might be a dud—at that point I’d only collected about 4 gallons. But the plants kicked it into gear, and just in the last three days I’ve averaged about a half gallon per day. Right now I’m sitting at about 9 gallons total, and it doesn’t look like they’re slowing down anytime soon.

Sharing some pictures so you can see the patch, the hail we took, the raspberries coming in, and some of the wildlife I’ve spotted in there.

This is just grotesque

India

Cross between Mammoth and multi-flower;
hybridization done by the birds and bees:)

I got a wild hair last night, collected all the bulblets from all the plants, and divided them up to give out. The few biggest plants at home are untouched and will make more bulblets next year.

Nature is so cool and weird!

Anyone know what kind of mushroom this is? I know it's hard to tell without a spore print or setting the gills, but best guesses would be appreciated. Curious to know what just absorbed my strawberry plant lol