✅ Deadheading Coleus Veronica Speedwell | Potting Up Sea Holly | Dahlia Tubers | Gardening Vlog

Feeling overwhelmed by your garden to-do list? Join me for a garden workout! In this garden vlog, I’ll share my practical tips for getting garden chores done without feeling stressed. We’ll tackle everything from trimming coleus to deadheading veronica and even preparing dahlia tubers for winter. It’s the ultimate guide to checking off your list and feeling accomplished!

[00:00:00] Intro & My Garden Fitness Plan
[00:01:48] Trimming Coleus Blooms
[00:11:06] Digging Up Sea Holly Seedlings
[00:17:10] Deadheading Veronica (Speedwell)
[00:25:28] Emptying Dahlia Tuber Pots
[00:36:20] Making a DIY Potting Mix
[00:41:04] Potting Up Winter-Sown Seedlings

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Hey budget gardeners, Vita Loki here. Join me today as I share my garden fitness plan with you. So let’s go. [Music] It is the end of August. Both my kids are back in college. The weather has started to cool down and it’s a perfect time of year to be back out in the garden. Even though I was in my garden a lot this summer, it was a hot summer. It was very humid and I’m not complaining. I really enjoyed it, but I’m basically recharged. I’m ready to go and be out in my garden again. I fought the same issues that you probably did when it came to the garden. I’m sure a lot of us felt garden fatigue. It was either too hot, too humid, too many bugs. There were things that flourished, there were things that didn’t flourish. And I want to know after you’ve watched this whole video, did it inspire or motivate you? I’m hoping that it inspires and motivates me to continue making videos like this because maybe it will make me continue doing jobs in my yard. So, even though I’m calling this a garden fitness plan, it’s not necessarily the traditional fitness plan of exercising physically. It’s more of putting together a plan of what I’m going to do today in my garden and setting realistic goals. You know, when you work out, you do repetitions. Well, I have certain things that I need to do on a daily basis, at least in the short term. So, I’m going to call those repetitions, and I’m going to be sharing with you what my garden plan is for today. I put down a list today of things I want us to accomplish together, and I know by the end of it, I’m going to feel really good if we can get these things done. I tried to be realistic with this garden fitness plan so that I can feel a sense of accomplishment in the very end. So, let’s not waste time. I’m going to go over what’s on the list and let’s get working. I’ve never been one to have neat handwriting, but that doesn’t matter. So, we have trim kolus blooms. There are sea holly seedlings that have gone everywhere. So, my goal is to do five sea holly seedlings a day where I’m digging them up and potting them up. I have some Veronica or Speedwell that needs to be deadheaded. I have Dalia tubers that I pre- sprouted and well, they never got potted up and they never got out in my landscape. So, at this point, I’m going to be emptying them out of their pre- sprouted containers. I have potting mix that I need to make. We’re going to pot up some strawberry plants, and I’m going to show you where they are and why we’re potting them up. I don’t know about you, but I still have winter sewn seedlings that I never potted up. So, we’re going to do that. And then we’re going to make up more potting mix that we’ve used for previous potting up projects. And then in the end, we’re going to celebrate. I love kolas, but I don’t love the look of the flowers. So, for that reason, I’m just cutting off all the flower stock socks. I’m planning on doing an end of August garden tour soon. But this is not the reason why I’m cutting back these blooms. I love all of you and I want to show you some pretty spaces in my yard. But honestly, I’m doing this because I want to enjoy my own gardens. I love walking around. I love looking at things blooming. But when I look at these flowers, I don’t love the look of them. So, I want to enjoy the space for as long as possible. I have probably another month before we get a frost, so why not enjoy the space, but I get it that you may have already given up on your garden this year. There is nothing wrong with that. Or you might be in a place in your garden where you’re ready to go. You want to be out there and you want to be moving plants around, putting plants in the ground. Whatever stage you’re at with your gardening journey this year, it is okay. We are all at different points in our gardening journey. and you might have given up and you just want to start over again next year. But I just like sharing with you what I’m doing right now in my garden, why I’m doing what I’m doing, and how I’m doing it. I have the type of personality where I just need some sort of motivation, some sort of drive, and just doing this video today is encouraging and driving me in my garden. And I’m excited to show you basically my thought process and how I do things when I’m out here. I was looking at the outlook for the temperatures here in New England and they’re saying it’s actually going to be a pretty mild September and that actually excited me. I was really happy to see that. And just seeing that made me think, okay, I’m not giving up on my colus. I’m not going to let them go. I’m going to go ahead. I’m going to cut back the blooms because I have all of August to look forward to when it comes to enjoying my kolas. I have a lot of other flowers in my yard for the pollinators. So, I don’t feel bad cutting back these flowers at this time. So, as part of this video, what I’m going to do is I’ll show you a task that I’m doing, but then I’m going to go ahead and finish the task. So, I have kolas not only in this old arborite bed, I also have a bunch of kolas out front along my walkway. So, I’m going to tackle those as well and then we’ll continue with the list. Here we are now at the front of my house along the front walkway. And I just want to show you all of the colus that we have up along the front of the walkway. I I’m just staying focused on the kolas. I’m not even going to worry about other plants that need to be attended to. That’s when gardening becomes overwhelming. So, if I just stay with what I’m supposed to do in here, then I’ll be happy because that’s a task that’s manageable. So there are a lot of kolas here and I’m just going to keep doing the same exact thing coming in and trimming back the kolas. In my word, look at these kolas. They aren’t too bad, but you can see even they have some flowers on them. So I have a lot to do here, but it’s manageable. While I was cutting back some of the kolas, I started thinking and I’m like, “No, I’m going to turn the camera back on and tell you what I was thinking about.” So, you might love the look of the flowers on a kolus plant. They are pretty. They’re definitely pretty. So, there is nothing wrong with leaving the flowers on. It’s more about what you prefer in your garden. Just because I’m cutting back the blooms doesn’t mean that’s the right way to do it. It’s just a preference thing that I prefer not to look at the blooms. But if I went to your house and you had the blooms there, I’m not going to be like, “Wow, that doesn’t look good.” You might love the blooms. And I think that’s totally okay. So, I wanted to make sure I told you that or mentioned that. Because just be because I’m doing it doesn’t mean that this is the right way to do it. This is just something that I prefer to do that I prefer the look of the kolus without the blooms. One of the reasons I would say is because I want my plants to be a certain height. This is my front walkway. And from an aesthetic standpoint, I like the plants in my front walkway to be on the shorter side. When I say shorter, short medium side, not very tall. But again, that doesn’t mean that that is the right way to do it. It’s just the way that I want my flowers to look along my walkway. The other thing I wanted to talk about was if you are going to follow along with me and work in your garden, come up with a list, kind of like a workout plan in the garden. You might only have one thing on your list, but someone else might have 20 things on their list. There isn’t a right or wrong when it comes to that either. I just wanted to make sure that I threw all of that out there because I was out here cutting these back and I I said, “No, I better share some things that are on my mind.” Again, I just like showing what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and hopefully inspiring or motivating you in some way or the other. For me, I just want to be able to come out here and just really enjoy my garden. I don’t want to look at these blooms and feel like I don’t love them. If you don’t love something in your garden, you don’t have to live with it. You can change it. And just by doing this, just by making this change makes me really happy. There are snapd dragons in here that need to be deadheaded. I’m not worrying about it. That can be on tomorrow’s list of things to do. And the other thing I want to talk about is in terms of the layout of garden spaces. Some people like a very tidy, a very neat garden. Other people like more of a chaotic garden, more of a wild garden. There is no right or wrong. It’s all about what you prefer, what you like. In fact, a garden like this might be a little too chaotic for someone. Someone else might say, “This is too neat.” But at the end of the day, as long as we’re out working in our gardens and we’re happy, I think that’s the key point to take away from all of that. Okay, enough talking. We have a lot to do here today. So, I’m going to finish up with the kolas and then we’ll move on to the next thing on our list. We got the kolas cut back and I like the look of it. I think it looks really pretty. And it’s not a job that’s one and done. More blooms will come, but the job is done for today and that’s the key. And my goodness, these kolas just make me smile. And I started them from seed that I collected. How cool is that? Trim kolus blooms done. Okay, next up we have five sea holly seedlings. Let’s go and get some dug up. So, just for reference, we were working over there earlier when we cut back some of the colus flowers. We are still on the south side of my house right now and I call this the side walkway flower bed. I have some sea holly or arenium that had dropped its seeds and I ended up with the plants all around this flower bed. So, we are going to dig up some of the sea holly that we see right here. We have a small patch over there and a small patch over there. Our goal is to dig up five plants. So, let’s see how many we can get. Some of you have already seen me starting this project of trying to dig up five sea holly plants a day. I believe today is day three or day four of this project. This task of digging up five sea holly plants each day will be on my gardening fitness plan for a number of days. So I’m just using a small hand shovel and I want to get as much of the root as I can. Sea holly plants have a very deep taproot. So, you want to try to get as much of that root as you can. And if part of the root breaks, the plant will still be fine. It won’t be happy, but it’ll be fine. Just trying to tug, but I don’t want to pull too hard. The root looks like kind of like a carrot root. So there’s one. This guy has quite the root to it. I could use a larger shovel, but this works just fine. And like I said, if part of the root breaks, it’s okay. We have two. And yes, I have some sea holly seedlings that are much larger, but in order to feel a sense of accomplishment with this ongoing task, I’d much rather go after all the small sea holly seedlings first. Really, what’s the difference between that and any other fitness plan or workout plan? You start off slow and then you increase from there. Same thing. We’re going to start with the smaller seedlings and then eventually move our way on to the bigger ones. That will be a beast to dig out. This guy is three. It’s very hard for me to film in this angle right here. Let me get two more out of here and then let’s put them up. I’m trying to do a mix of things that I can do pretty quickly in one day, like cutting back the kolas foliage or the flowers I should say, but then things that are going to be ongoing. When it comes to like for example all of the sea holly, if I was to try to dig up all of that sea holly in one day, it would be a lot of work for me. And I think that’s a reason why I’ve decided to chunk it out where I’m just doing five plants a day. It’s something that needs to be done this year because I didn’t do it last year and now some of the plants are very big in that area which makes it much more difficult to dig them out. But also, I just want to get this done. So, I figured doing five a day is very manageable for me. But when it comes to these projects, it’s also nice to tackle something that I can start and finish in one day. That’s why I’m going to be mixing it up just like that. The reason I came up with this idea of a garden fitness plan was, to be honest with you, I went down to my plant nursery a few days ago and I got very overwhelmed when I looked at it. I didn’t even know where to start. So, I don’t want to feel that way in my garden. I want to feel like I can start and finish small little tasks, little bite-sized morsel tasks in my yard, and that will motivate me to keep on going. And also, there are bigger projects that I need to work on in my yard, like dividing and moving plants. And you’ve seen me doing that in my garden lately. But sometimes we just need to rest our body just like we would if we were working out in the gym. They say, you know, work out x amount of days a week, whatever it is, three days or five days a week, but then rest your body for a few days. So, in a way, I’m kind of doing the same thing. I told myself today, I’m not going to do any sort of major project when it comes to moving or dividing any perennials. I’m just going to do some light work. But when I say light work, it’s still all of this is tedious. It all adds up, but it’s all necessary. And yet, they’re all mini projects that are doable. They won’t take me all day and I’ll feel a still a sense of accomplishment or satisfaction. The same sense of accomplishment or satisfaction that I would feel if I was t taking on a larger project in my yard like dividing and moving perennials. After all, all of these parts or all of these projects are all good. They’re all motivating. They get me out in my yard. The pots that I’m using are just recycled pots. And when it comes to the potting mix, it is a mixture of some top soil that I had left over from a previous garden project where I worked on some raised beds in my backyard, but it was heavy soil. So to I mixed it up with some used potting mix. And I’ll be showing you where I’m getting all of this material from later in this video because I think it’s good for you to see what I’m talking about. Even when it comes to the potting mix, that was overwhelming. Thinking about where are we going to get all this potting mix from when I’m potting up all of these plants. But I had a solution to that problem. And that’s part of this video. Actually, I will be showing you where I’m getting all of this dirt from. And when I get the dirt, then it motivates me to do a project like this. It’s almost like what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Do you dig up the plants? But now, where do you get the dirt from? This next step is optional, but it’s better for the plant. I’m just cutting off some of these large leaves, but I do need to leave some leaves on the plant because it needs those leaves in order to feed the roots through photosynthesis. The reason I’m cutting off these large leaves is they actually are just going to droop anyway. They’re really just not going to look good. They’re going to be flopping over and the plant doesn’t need all those leaves. Instead, it will just put its energy into the roots and it can still feed itself with a couple of leaves that we leave behind. This one is okay. This one is okay. I could cut some off if I wanted to. I’m more concerned with the ones that have a lot of leaves on them, a lot of big leaves. But if I didn’t do it, would the plant be fine? Yep, it would. Just give these a nice drink of water. Okay, I just placed the five sea holly that we potted up right there. And just so you see, I’ve been very busy potting up all sorts of seedlings. A lot of these are plants that were winter sewn, but some of them are just plants that I dug up from other areas of my yard. I’m keeping them all huddled near each other so I can easily access them to give them water on a daily basis. And we are done with Sea Holly. Next we have Dead Head Veronica Speed Well. By the way, I tried to do it so we had something easy, then something a little more difficult. Now, let’s move to something easy. I know what you’re thinking. We only did two things on that garden fitness plan checklist and then I took a break. But let me explain. So, we worked on those two things and then I did have a few people stop by for some plant sales. As some of you know, I have a backyard plant nursery where I sell plants. So, I was occupied with that. And then it was lunchtime and then it started to rain and which is so welcome because it’s been so dry here. The rain has finally passed and so now we can get back in the garden and continue on. What’s great about this checklist that I made was I told myself, I just want to tackle all of those tasks throughout the day. They don’t need to be in any specific order. They don’t need to be in any specific time. As long as they’re done today, I’m happy. So, we still have plenty of time left. Let’s keep going. Hooray for the rain that we got. Boy, did we need it. Some years I get to cutting back or deadheading my Veronica, also known as Speed Well, immediately after it’s done blooming. This year I just didn’t get to it. And you know what? That is totally fine. And if I didn’t dead head or cut these back today and I just let them go through the rest of the season, that would be fine, too. But I do want to start cleaning up this flower bed little by little. So, I figured that’s a quick, easy thing for us to do today. When it rains, it pours. But I’m not going to let it rain on my parade. I’m going to keep cutting this back. I just had to move my camera under where it’s not going to get wet. So, you’re going to watch me from a distance and then if I get a chance, I’ll bring you in for a closer look. But what I want to tell you is this may not bloom a second flesh for me. And I’m totally okay with that. I just want to cut it back so that it tidies up my garden a little bit. Yeah. I mean, this is ridiculous. How am I supposed to garden in this? It’s raining too hard. Forget this. Let it rain. We need it. As long as it doesn’t thunder, I’m fine. As some of you know, I’m afraid of thunder and lightning. It’s a phobia. It kind of looks pretty actually with it raining. All right. All right. So, what I’m going to do is just keep on cutting these back. Could I just take a whole handful of them and just hack them back or take some sort of hedge clippers and cut it back in half? I could do that, but a few of them are sending out some new growth. So, I want to enjoy the few extra blossoms that I may see from now until a frost hits this plant. So, I am coming in and just selectively pruning or deadheading this plant. I have videos that show you close up how to do it. And if the rain stops, I can show you it, but if the rain doesn’t stop, I can at least tell you what I’m doing. So, there are some that have blooms just barely on the tips there. And I know the pollinators absolutely love this plant, but at this point, I would much rather just clean up the plants and leave the few small bloom heads that are still on here. That way, I know that this job is done and this plant looks a lot tidier. And just like all my other areas of my garden, there are a hundred things, or maybe not a hundred, but there are a lot of things that I could be doing in this flower bed. I’m not even going to worry about them. I’m not going to let it bother me. I’m not going to get overwhelmed. I’m just going to think about what did we set out to accomplish in this area and let’s get it done. And in a way, I’m excited because when we come back and do another plant fitness gardening day, we can tackle something else in this bed. And maybe that’s the plan of attack is look at each garden bed in my yard and think about what is something small that I can do and is it feasible for me to add to our list of things to do on a given day. Like I know there are a bunch of DAS that need to be deadheaded. That could be for another day. There are a whole bunch of snapdragons that need to be deadheaded. Same thing. But the thunder and lightning is killing me. It’s killing me right now. The funny thing is I looked at the radar. I swear the radar or the Doppler lies. It did. It showed that the storm was out of here and I’m like, perfect. Let’s continue on with our project. I am not going to complain. I’m very thankful for the rain and I’m very thankful to be able to get out in my garden and get this job done. And I’m just going to keep talking to you because you’re way over there and I’m way over here. You’ll have to let me know if you have Veronica or Speedwell in your garden. One thing that I noticed at the base of the plant is that many times the leaves look kind of brown. They don’t look very good. I don’t know why that is. I thought I read somewhere that Veronica Speedwell doesn’t like to be too wet. So maybe because these plants are right next to drip irrigation, they’re not happy. I mean, they look pretty and they do bloom. It’s just the bottom parts of the leaves look kind of ratty, kind of brown. So, you’ll have to let me know if you run into that same thing or not. In fact, I divided a whole bunch of the plants from this area and moved them over into my rose garden in the springtime. And those plants didn’t do as great as I was hoping they would. And I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t know if they’re getting too much water out there. This was one of those plants again when I would walk by here, I just it bothered me to see all these blooms that had already gone by. So just getting this job done will be awesome. If you have great blue loilia in your yard, then you may already know this, but the plant when it drops its seeds ends up everywhere. I love that plant, but the funny thing is I don’t have it anywhere in this flower bed. And yet I have a whole ton of great blue loilia seedlings throughout this flower bed. I do have great blue loilia. It’s in a another flower bed in my long border which is on the other side of the house. But it’s it’s kind of funny that I have that many great blue loilia seedlings all throughout this bed. That will be another one of my find maybe 10 or 15 seedlings to dig up. You might be thinking, I’m in the thunderstorm gardening and how ridiculous is that? Well, I told you I’m already I’m afraid of thunder and lightning. It doesn’t sound like it’s very close by. So, for that reason, I’m out here. If it was close by, I wouldn’t be out here. But I am trying to finish up so I can get out of here. One more. Done. Now, let’s get out of here. Empty 10 dalas. Let’s go. That one’s That one’s a good one. I’m going to tell you why. This whole entire small rolling cart are annuals, mostly annuals that were supposed to get in the ground. Well, they didn’t get in the ground. And I’m not even ashamed. I really I honestly don’t care. Things happen. Life happens. My kids were home for the summer. I was busy cooking, cleaning, doing all that awesome stuff that I love doing for my family. So, um, and just enjoying the time with them and going and doing fun stuff. So, I have a lot of plants that they will not survive the winter and they’re also not going to get planted out in my landscape because we’ll probably get a frost in in the next one to two months and I’m really sick and tired of watering them all the time. I did the same thing last year. There was a handful of das that never made it in the landscape. I went right after them when I had time in the late summer months. I got them prepared for dormcancy and they survived just fine. So, I want to share that with you. All the rules out there say to wait until a hard frost hits your das before you cut them back and get them ready for storage. Yes, that is true. That is all great. But if you’re in a situation like me and you have a bunch of DAS that are never going to make it in the landscape, you might as well start the process early. I have so many das so many das that I have to do that process to when it comes to overwintering them that for me and my time it makes sense for me to just come in and start preparing them for storage for the winter months. So my gardening fitness plan includes emptying 10 pots of diaas a day and storing them for the winter months. So let’s go ahead and get them emptied out. Let’s go ahead and start with pot number one. It looks sad and it is ready to be put away for the winter months. The first thing I’m going to do is use my hand pruners and I’m going to cut back the foliage. There is a certain point in a growing season that I think as gardeners we have to be realistic. We could view something like this as a fail, but I prefer not to do that. I grow a lot of das not only from seed but also from tubers that I overwinter. I get them planted in my landscape. I even sell a bunch as part of my backyard plant nursery. I even gave away a bunch when someone was buying a lot of plants from me just to do something nice. I would give them a pot of das. But at this point, I just want to make my life easier. And I don’t want to be looking at these anymore. The reality is they are never going to make it into the ground. I don’t want to just give up on them. I don’t want them to die. But keeping them watered, especially the summer that we had, was quite a chore. So, at this point, it’s time to start putting certain plants like these das into in for dormcancy because they’re not hardy here where I live in New Hampshire, zone 5B. So, all I’m doing right now is I’m just trying to remove as much of the soil as I can. And it is quite a chore. It’s quite a task. I don’t like to wash my delia tubers. I prefer to do it this way. Although, to be honest with you, because we still have some nice weather going on, it’s still quite mild. I could wash them off, but I normally don’t because I don’t want to encourage rot, especially in the later months when a frost has hit it. At that time, it’s pretty cold outside. I definitely don’t want to be washing my Dia tubers. I know some people do, and that’s totally fine. whatever works best with you and how you store your das. But I’m just right now trying to take as much of this soil off as I can. And I do have extensive videos on my channel that talk all about dalas and how to start them from seed, how to collect their seeds, how I prepare them for storage, how I wake them up. So this video today is not to talk about that. This video is just to show you things I’m doing in my yard and how I’m tackling them, but I can link those type of videos down in the description below in case you’re interested. So, yes, I realize this is not the optimal time to be doing what I’m doing, but it’s the most optimal optimal time for me given my situation with how many plants I need to take care of and given the situation that these will never make it into the ground or in a pot. And right now I’m just going to try to take off as much of the soil as I can. But I can also do this in another few days. Come back and take off some more soil as because this is not very wet, but it’s a little wet. And I can just let it rest. Do I have to take every speck of soil off of here? No, definitely not. And I could even store it just like this. And when it comes to dividing my tubers, I don’t usually divide them in the summer or in the fall. I actually divide them in the spring once I see that they’re starting to wake up. Some people do like to divide them in the fall when they dig them out. So, it’s really up to you. And that’s it. That’s all I’m going to do for right now. And like I said, if I choose to, I can always come back in here and take off some more of the soil here. But that, look how big that was. I bet that was just a very small little tuber in just inside of its pot. It grew and it got big. It has the energy that it needs for it to bloom next year. I can tell you that. I’ve done this before. I’ve dug them out before early and it turns out to be totally fine. Is it optimal to be doing it this early? Nope. But it will be perfectly fine. All right, here’s number two. So, one strate strategy that I’m going after is I am trying to empty out the bigger pots. Partially because they dry out faster and partially because they have a lot of good soil in the base of them and I can use that soil for planting projects because I’m potting up a lot of different plants right now. And yes, I realize I can be taking cutings and propagating this plant, but well, I’ve already shown that I have all these plants. I don’t know what to do with them. I definitely do not want to just start propagating to get more plants right now. Plus, for me, timing wise, it’s too late to be taking cutings and propagating my uh dalas. Where you live, you might still be able to do that because you have a longer growing season. So, even though I’m using this tool, I am trying to be a little careful. I don’t want to stab the tubers. So, I’m just trying to gently rake the soil in an effort to loosen everything. I prefer not to overwinter my tubers inside of container pots because I just like to be able to divide them in the spring. And if they’re in a container pot, then I’m not likely to divide them. Plus all the container pots that they’re in right now, those were temporary, what I call pre- sprouting container pots. In other words, they were just used to be able to wake up these Dalia tubers with the intention that the tubers were then going to get placed either in larger, more decorative container pots or they were going to get placed in the landscape. And the funny thing is, I don’t feel bad that these didn’t make it in the landscape. I think And I’ve said this before in my videos. As gardeners, we need to have grace on ourselves. We all have gardens that something just didn’t go right or we didn’t get to something in time. Maybe we lost seedlings. Maybe we bought a plant and it died. Maybe we pre- sprouted a whole bunch of Dalia tubers and only some of them made it in the ground. It’s okay. These things happen. Life happens. and we just move on. I’d like to say we learn from it, but no, I will probably still have Dalia tubers next year that don’t make it in the ground, but what I would like to do to be honest with you is offer more of them for sale because I know there are a lot of people when they come and they buy plants from my plant nursery, like perennials, they were looking at the Dalas and asking about them and I’m like, “Oh, I I’m going to try to get them in my landscape. That’s the goal. And I still will try next year, but I also will be better about trying to sell more of them because a lot of people don’t have the means in terms of space to or a time to pre- sprout their own dalia tubers. They’d rather just bought buy tubers that have been pre- sprouted in a pot ready to go. Now, I do have a whole bunch of dalas that are in much smaller pots, so I could end up changing my mind and doing maybe Five large pots today. Five small pots. We’ll see. I think actually that’s probably I would feel it would be easier because you can see this has taken me quite a while to do this. So that’s we’re going to change it up. We’re going to do five large, five small pots. So I’d say this is good for now. Okay, here’s another large pot. Although it’s not as large as the other ones that we’ve seen. And what I’m going to do because it’s the same process over and over again, I’m going to just finish this up. It’ll be a lot quicker rather than showing all of it to you and talking. But you see what I’m doing. So I’m going to keep on going. I’ll show you the 10 when I’m done. So the top row, you can see there are five largeiz tubers. And then at the bottom, I went above and beyond. The ones on the left were the smaller ones. And honestly, that was kind of depressing. I’m like, “No, I need bigger tubers than that.” So, I went back to pulling out the larger tubers. They really only grew as big as the pot they were in. If they were all in the ground, I would have way more tubers. But, let’s face it, I don’t need any more tubers. I have plenty. I have a lot in my landscape. I have more in pots in this uh room here. I will end up letting them dry for a few days and then they will end up going inside. So, when I have them dry, I just have these little crates here. I don’t stack them on top of each other, but I put them near each other, just not touching. I’ll leave them in my barn or my shed for a couple of days so they’re not in the sun. I can brush off a tiny bit more soil, but I don’t have to. And again, I’ll put links to videos that show my process on how I store them. And we have all this used potting mix that we can use for potting up plants. But let’s go ahead and check this off our list. I swear it does something to our brains when we just check something off. I don’t know. Makes me feel good. Anyway, make potting mix. Oh, that’s an easy one. So, let’s do that. I have been very busy potting up plants. Oh, take two. I have been very busy potting up plants. So, I like to reuse potting mix that I have, but this potting mix that we just took from all the Dalia tubers is basically it’s too well draining. It’s overly well draining and it would actually dry out too quickly because it’s very Pete based. And I only used it to wake up my Dalia tubers. It was meant to be temporary and it’s great as a potting mix, but when it comes to potting up perennials that are going to go down in my plant nursery, such as plants that I’ve winter sewn or plants that I’m dividing for my landscape, this is too dry. It will dry out too much. I need something a little heftier. So, I have some soil that I had dug up from my raised beds out back in my backyard, and I kept it under a tarp. I didn’t want weeds to grow in it. I’m going to be mixing that in with this. That way it’s a nice mixture. It’s basically kind of like compost that we’re mixing in here. So, let’s go ahead and mix it in. I’m going to do about a 50/50 blend. This is what I had in my old raised beds that I had in my backyard before I redid my raised beds. It’s a little bit, in my opinion, too heavy to have in a raised bed, but it’s perfect for what we’re going to use it for. It’s pretty sandy. And we it will mix really nicely with the potting mix. And I’m not being exact. I just think about four or five shovel holes will be plenty. And then I can go ahead and just mix up what I have here. I think about when it comes to potting mix for my plants that I’m potting up, I think about where am I going to get that from? I do try to reuse material I have in my yard and we had all this soil behind me and I knew that I could definitely use it for potting up plants. And I also have all this potting mix that I had in my dalia pots from pre- sprouting diaas and why waste it? So, seeing that I have other projects where I’m trying to pot up plants, I might as well use this soil. So, let’s go ahead and go somewhere where it’s not raining and let’s also look at our list and see what’s next. So, we made our potting mix. And let’s be realistic. Seeing that it’s pretty much raining all day today. Wasn’t supposed to. I also had make potting mix for tomorrow. I was trying to be proactive. That is not necessary. What’s left is pot up 10 strawberry plants. It’s raining outside pretty hard, so we’re not going to do that right now. Empty and pot up a winter sewn seedling container. Let’s go get one and let’s empty that out. So, let’s talk about winter sewing. I love winter sewing. I’ve been doing it for a number of years. I will continue doing it. I made a video talking about what I would change in terms of winter sewing for next year. The number one thing that I will change is I will not sew the seeds of plants that I have plenty of in my yard. I’ve done that in the past partially because I love to collect the seeds of plants and then when I have so many seeds, it’s just so fun and so easy to sew those seeds. But the reality is that’s just more maintenance and more work for me. If I already have, let’s say, purple cone flour and plenty of it, it really doesn’t make sense to start anymore from seed in terms of winter sewing. If you have it in your yard, then you know what I mean. That plant typically, at least it does in my yard, um, self sews very readily and I end up with a ton of baby seedlings everywhere. So, if I really need more plants of purple cone flour, all I need to do is shop my my yard and I’ll find it. So, I will not be starting seeds of plants that I have plenty of because either they’re going to drop their seeds naturally or I can easily divide those plants. So, this one here says it’s an echgonatia and it’s a shorter variety pink color. So, I clearly collected this from probably someone else’s yard. I’m guessing my sister-in-laws. Here we are at the end of August and I still have these plants in their original winter sewn containers. It happens. And again, we can make a thousand excuses on why it happened. It really doesn’t matter why it happened. The big thing is I want to get these plants planted out, and I’m going to be just potting them up in small little 3-in containers. They’re going to go to my nursery. Had I planted them out earlier in the season, there’s a chance they might have bloomed for me, and then there’s a chance they still wouldn’t have bloomed for me. So, it doesn’t really matter. The key is that I kept them alive. I kept them watered and they’re going to be much happier in their own little 3-in pot and they’re going to be put down in my plant nursery for the winter months. One of the goals that I’ve set for myself is to tackle one winter sewn container a day. Now, some of the containers might only have a small handful of plants in it. So, if I get to two or three containers that are like that, then that’s fine. This winter sewn container had at least I don’t know maybe 15 plants in it. That’s a lot. And so I realistically think doing one container that has 15 plants in it is good enough. [Music] I knew that was coming. I saw the lightning bolt. You’re going to think this video is so amusing. I had my mind set on working today on this project because I had so many little things that I wanted to tackle. So, I’m not going to let the rain bug me. Or the rain doesn’t bug me. It’s the thunder and lightning. Such a silly phobia, by the way. I can see a snake slither right by me and I’ll be like, “Hey, what’s up? How’s it going, buddy?” And I’m totally happy, totally fine. That could hurt me. That could bite me. Thunder and lightning. I mean, it could hurt me, but most likely will not hurt me. And yet, I’m still afraid of it. I don’t know. There’s just no rationale behind it. So, yes. So, I’m just going to be tackling one container at a time. Um, I also wanted to share in case we don’t get to the strawberries today because again, I don’t want to be out there if it’s thundering or lightning really hard. It’s just not safe. With the strawberries, I have them in my raised beds and they have done really well in the raised beds. However, when I initially put in these raised beds, these are ones that I have um near my fire pit on the side south side of my house, I had filled those with all sorts of great organic material like leaves and grass clippings and such. So, they really their level has dropped quite a bit. So, they really need to be topped off. But not only that, the other thing is that I’ll be installing a greenhouse, which is very exciting. It’s been in the works for at least a year now. It’s just it hasn’t happened because it’s just it’s not a priority. It’s been sitting in my uh barn. I got it on Facebook Marketplace. It’s brand new. I’m very excited. So, that whole area where my fire pit is on the south side of my house is going to have to be redone. Not. That’s where I have a bunch of raised beds that have blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries in them. And when it comes to strawberries, if you have them, you know what I mean. Eventually, you have too many because they just spread. So, I plan on actually potting up all the strawberries. And I’m going to be planting plants in these little 3-in pots. And then we’re going to move the beds around to where we think they’re going to go. Well, we’re going to move them to where they are going to go based on the greenhouse. Put the soil back in there, top them off, and then I can heal in all my pots of strawberries in there. And that’s going to be a huge project. So, I’ll set some sort of a goal. I think it was 10 strawberry plants a day, and that’s for those larger plants. And if I don’t get to it today because of the rain, then what I’ll do is when I make my list for tomorrow, I’ll just say pot up 20 strawberry plants. I could view it as I didn’t do everything on my list today. I failed. That’s so negative. I don’t think it’s a good way to think. I’d rather say I didn’t get to it and doesn’t matter what the reason is and tomorrow I’ll try to get to it. But I’m really really happy with everything we got accomplished today. And I enjoyed bringing you along. I know this is not a typical video of what I do, but I don’t know. I started thinking about it. I kind of do feel like when you make a list, it feels so good. And it, at least for me, is similar to like doing repetitions in a fitness club or in your basement in your house where you’re doing five situps and 10 of this. So, it’s kind of similar. We’re doing one repetition. Well, it’s not really one, right? This had probably 10 or 15 plants in it, but nevertheless, and x amount of dalas. And then we also had other little chores that we tackled. So, it’s such a great feeling. Um, I would like to continue this type of video series. I’m hoping that you’ll follow along and maybe you’ll make some sort of little list like I have. Maybe you have winter sewn seedlings you need to tackle and maybe you have plants that need to be cut back. So you can make your own little list and check off things and if you didn’t get to it, you can add that to the list the next day. I’m definitely a list person, but that doesn’t mean I live by lists all the time because I don’t. But I know that having a list helps keep me on track. Having goals keeps me on track and knowing that the goals are not always going to be met makes me stay on track. I think if I expected to meet my goals every single day, then I would just not meet a goal and then I would give up altogether. And I don’t want to do that. I know I had asked in a previous video if anyone else had winter sewn seedlings that they didn’t do anything with, if they were still in their containers. And I know a few of you said you were in the same boat as me. So hopefully this video motivates you to to get out there and tackle one of those containers, but if the container has like 500 fox glove seedlings in it, maybe don’t even tackle the whole container. Maybe tackle 1/4 of the container. And don’t feel like you have to, by the way, pot up every single individual seedling. That would take forever. At that point, I would suggest just do the hunk of seedling method. And you can look that up what that means, hunk of seedling. But it’s basically just taking a chunk kind of like a brownie chunk. Taking a chunk and placing it in a pot or a container out in your landscape and calling it done and survival of the of the fittest at that point. So, I’m already excited about what will be on my next list. I think what I’m going to do is because the weekend is here and my husband will be helping me with bigger projects in the yard. I think what I’ll do is I will still make a list, but my list won’t have small little things like this. It might just have empty one Dia pot and um something else like maybe dead head the snapdragons that need to be done and that might be it. And then the project, whatever the project is that he and I are going to work, the project is working on the north side of my house in an area where there used to be trees and trees were cut down. And now that area because it gets so much sun, there are shade loving plants that were not thriving there. So the other day I went in there and dug out a whole bunch of shade loving plants and that space is ready to be filled. And so the project that we’re going to work on will entail dividing, digging, dividing, and moving a whole bunch of different dlies and peies, which I can’t wait. That’s going to be such an awesome project to tackle. The other thing I wanted to mention about the winter sewn seedlings is in some cases some of the container pots might only have like one or two seedlings that germinated. that soil that I have, I would mix it in to this mix here and reuse the soil. I didn’t have any extra soil really that was in this milk jug. There were so many seedlings, but normally that’s what I would do is just reuse that soil. The other thing I wanted to share was if you know it’s going to be a rainy day and you have a covered porch or a covered balcony, maybe you have a garage or a shed or a barn or something like that. Sometimes it’s actually nice, even if it’s rainy outside, to just come under an area where you’re not going to get wet and do something like this that needs to be done. You’re still getting your hands dirty. You could be watching a YouTube video or you could be listening to books on tape or whatever that’s called. Um, there are a lot of things, you know, where that you can still do that are garden related. Like how I was emptying out those dalas. It could be fall time and you have dalas that you need to get ready for storage. You can definitely be creative. Um, if the weather is just not cooperating outside, in fact, sometimes I need weather to happen like a day like today. It forces me to slow down a little bit. And I think that’s really important when it comes to gardening. We don’t always have to be go go go. Sometimes we can just have a day off or a week off or a month off. Maybe even have a year off. It really depends on your situation. But what I want you to take away from this video is don’t give up when it comes to gardening. You might have had a bad year for whatever the reason is, but don’t give up on it. After all, gardening is supposed to be fun. It’s a hobby for most of us. So, you really want to just look at what worked and embrace all those victories that you had this gardening season. I also wanted to make this video because I wanted to show you that just like you, I’m I’m just an everyday average gardener that has successes. And I guess you could call them failures, but they’re not really failures. They’re just things that didn’t work out and it happens and it’s okay. I have das that never got it into the ground. It’s not the end of the world. If anything, I’m getting ready for the winter months. I’m getting those dalas ready for storage. And we checked some of them off our list today. Listen to that rain. Okay, so we emptied the winter sewn seedlings from one container. Potting up 10 strawberry plants can happen tomorrow. And yes, I added one more thing to my list. Bloody Mary and appetizers. It’s time to go out. We ended up with 19 seedlings. And well, it’s raining out, so I don’t need to water them. [Music] Such a bizarre, weird yet productive day for my first day of my garden fitness plan. I feel really happy and I’m so glad you joined me. If you’ve watched this video all the way through the end, thank you for doing that. I know it was kind of a crazy video. We got almost everything done on the list. Again, when it comes to those strawberries, they’re going to wait until tomorrow and then I’m going to pot up 20. So, I’m just going to double down on that one. We got everything else done, though. I’m really happy. And I want to know, did you find this video helpful at all? And if so, what was your favorite part? Please drop it down in the comment section below. And let me know if you want me to make more videos like this. If they’re helping you like they’re helping me, then that’s even a double bonus. And until the next video, make it a great day with gardening. I’m going in though. I don’t want to be out here anymore.