How's It Growing: November 26, 2025

The garden has been put to bed for the winter and pretty much all of the leaves are now off the trees and on the ground, for which our garden guy is extremely thankful for at this time of the year. Finally he can get ahead of the leaves. We pile most of the leaves in several areas of our forest with the idea that leaf mold is being created. However, to date, the only ones that are benefiting from the plan are the trees in the forest and the wildlife. We have sometime spotted deer taking a nap on the top of the pile.

One of the last jobs in the garden was digging up the dahlia tubers to divide and store for the next year. Each one of the clumps shown above started out as a single tuber. I divide them into individual tubers again because it makes storing them easier, but obviously we’d have way too many dahlia plants if each one of the tubers became a new plant. So I was quite ruthless in the dividing and tossing out of any that were even remotely questionable. Still I think we be having a dahlia tuber and/or plant sale in the Spring. What you see in the pictures are from just one of our two dahlia beds.

We’ve had a number of frosty mornings and some light snow so far. I never tire of admiring the frosted Lamb’s Ears (Stachys byzantina). I probably have at least 21 pictures of these leaves after the first frost, one for each year that we have been the stewards of this property.

Lamb’s ear is still the champion deer-resistant plant in the gardens and luckily it grows and spreads magnificently, so we can use it whenever we have a bare patch created because another plant proved to be more deer candy than deer resistant.

Speaking of deer resistant, look at these cut plant cages I found. I decided to try to direct sow a couple varieties of perennial seeds that work with a late Fall sowing but want to be able to clearly identify where they were planted to keep them safe from critters and over zealous Spring weeding.

The seed varieties that I’m trying out are Coneflower Ozark and Green Twister, Rattlesnake Master, Vicar’s Mead Angelica; all from Select Seeds.