in my zone 5.. dahlia is a tender perennial.. meaning if i dont dig them up and put them in the basement.. they die... i presume they are the same in z6 .... but you can do the research ... when a plant has so many flowers that individual spent flowers can not be taken off.. trace down the plant lower to the ground.. and look for tiny leaves where branches go off from the main trunk.. and if you see tiny leaves there.. you can take the whole branch.. and a new branch will start ... to become a GREEN THUMB.. you have to turn off the computer.. and go pinch your plants ... do a little research.. but you really have to JUST GO DO IT ... if you have a couple of a plant.. do different things.. to different plants.. and see which works best for you ... that is how a GARDENER does it.. trial and error.. and killing a bunch of things.. lol ... have no fear... JUST DO IT ... the whole point of gardening.. is to be in the garden.. and mess around with things... it is not meant to be scary.. or stressful.... or anything to worry about... some peeps actually say... that you arent a gardener.. until you have killed every plant 3 times .... ken

If there were no deadheading needed, I probably wouldn't be as interested in the plant! I love to fuss, and pull off dried/yellowing leaves, and dead head. That's my time (in addition to the watering and weeding) to spend unwinding from the day, for me it's like therapy. But on the other hand it can be time consuming if there's too much of it to do (and I get real cranky when I see the need to clean up my containers/garden but don't have the time). This year I grew a sweet little plant called gypsophilia (miniature baby's breath), and only periodically ran my hands over the mound to shake out the seed and bugs (aphids, although it didn't appear the bugs slowed the plants at all). Then I got to them a day late with the watering can and they looked a bit fried, so I took my scissors and sheared them back by half, fertilized and was faithful to future waterings and within 10 days they were well on their way to being covered with little pinky/purple flowers again. Another colorful addition to your containers that need little care and are not bothered by any bugs (in my zone 3 area anyway) is coleus. Such an array of designs and colours, and the colour is there right away when you plant. On the seed grown ones you would need to periodically pinch off their flower spikes, but the work involved is minimal compared to deadheading petunias! ~ k ~

emerogork2, for many years, Avogadro's Hypothesis held my interest; because, in spite of the fact that it was observed to be true, it could not be proven. Therefore it was never elevated from hypothesis to law. I tracked the subject for a long time after I left school to catch the transition. I must have missed it. Now, I now see that 'Hypothesis' and 'Law' are used interchangeably in regard to the Hypothesis advanced by Mr. Amedeo Avogadro in 1811. The "Hawthorne Studies" impressed upon me a vital component of the Experimental Method. The investigators changed the working conditions, one at a time, of a small group of employees. Each time they did so, the productivity of the group went up. When, as the methodology required, they returned the conditions to the original, productivity went up! The rest is history and historical. My training and experience has instilled in me, a skepticism towards terms like, Clinical studies, Anecdotal References and the like. Instead, I look for - Experiment Design, Sampling Method, Statistical Analysis and Degree of Significance. Undoubtedly, I have missed out on some exciting developments - a trade-off that I willingly concede.

Jennifer, I am glad the rain reached you. I hope y'all got a significant and useful amount. We look so much greener already, although some of the tired, hot, worn-out zinnias that have been blooming since late May or early June just didn't perk up enough. I think they are really worn out. Luckily, the zinnias I planted as succession crops later are making up for the tired ones and the rain did perk the younger plants up like crazy. With cooler weather in the forecast all week, I hope to really get out into the garden next week and do a lot of cleanup as long as I'm able to avoid the venomous snakes, and they haven't seemed too bad lately. Or, if they are there, I'm not seeing them, so I just hope they aren't out there. I kept the chickens in their coop yesterday because they were so stressed from the dog incident the day before, but they free-ranged as normal today and no dogs visited. I do think the chickens spent more time sort of hiding underneath the chaste tree near the back of the house today than they normally do---it is one of the places they go to when they feel threatened by something. We were out at the pool a lot so we were right there anyway, and that may be one reason they stuck around so close. I do not mind the neighbors' dogs visiting at all as long as they don't bother the chickens. If they bother the chickens, then that's going to be a problem. I know one of these dogs killed their owner's chickens when he lived somewhere else before he moved here, and I appreciate him telling me that because at least I know which dog to keep a close eye on. Even a dog that has killed chickens in the past can be reformed with some training, so I certainly don't think this dog necessarily will be a problem---she's sweet and she's smart and I think she now knows (because I yelled at her and locked her in my mudroom) she isn't supposed to chase the chickens here. She did look longingly at the chicken coop as we were leading her to her owner's vehicle, but she didn't break away and try to go to the coop either, so she gets points for that. Jen, It is hard to have pets and plants co-exist inside the house, so I understand your need to create a cat room and a plant room. Our dogs and cats are the reason I don't have plants indoors, except for seedlings on the light shelf in late winter/spring, and I keep the pets out of the room with light shelf. Oh, and in winter I usually have the Christmas cactus and a few potted amaryllis and paperwhites indoors, but for whatever reason the cats don't bother those, and I have the plants high enough out of reach that the dogs can't reach them. Nancy, I feel the same way about the oleander aphids, but what I noticed this year is that all I needed to do was basically ignore them. They never seemed to hurt the plants, so I'm not going to worry about them in the future. With hundreds and, dare I say it, even thousands of native milkweed plants in the pastures all around us (a few pastures whose owners don't maintain them well have more milkweeds most years than grass) for miles around us, it is a pipe dream to think our garden milkweed won't have the oleander aphids on them, so I am just going to pretend I don't see them. Even if I hose them off the plants twice a day every day, they come right back, so what's the point? Really, with all the native milkweed around, I could skip growing it in the garden except that I worry about those really awful drought years when the milkweed plants in the pastures all wither and dry up and go dormant months early, so that's why I try to keep a few milkweed plants going in the garden. All the fields here are full of everything possible in bloom thanks to the August rain and now the more recent late September rain will keep those plants looking lovely, so at least the migrating monarchs will have plenty of flowers in bloom in our county for nectaring as they journey southward. We had lovely weather today although it was a bit humid, and we just watched lower-level moisture-laden clouds fly over us headed north all day long. Wherever that moisture ends up, I think someone will get some great rainfall out of it. There's still big standing puddles in our yard today, though some of them are not as deep as they were yesterday, so you can tell the rain is soaking into the ground. The newish cracks in the yard that had appeared recently are all closed up and I'm grateful for that. A great side effect of the rain is that the feral mama cat moved her three kittens into our garage to escape the deluge and they are so happy in there that they've even let me see them a few times, though they still are inclined to hide when a human appears. I'm happy that they are in a dry location, and one that keeps them safe from the wild varmints at night. I hope to tame them and save them from living the feral life. It is especially hard to tame feral kittens who do not grow up around humans, but we tamed Yellow Cat after he had roamed our neighborhood for at least a decade, so you never know---sometimes kindness, love and food win over even the wildest little feline. I almost bought a pot or two of mums today. I really wanted to do it, but I still am inclined to not quite trust the cooler weather to stick around just yet. Maybe in another week or two. We'll see. If we heat right back up into the 90s, I'll know it was smart to wait. I'm already seeing mums in the garden centers that bloomed too early and are browning out even before someone has bought them and taken them home. You can't really blame the wholesale growers for that---they grow on the same time schedule each year so they can deliver the plants to the stores when the stores want them, and it is beyond their control if the heat sticks around for longer than usual. Ugh. Today we noticed that Wal-Mart is pushing the indoor garden center merchandise into a smaller and smaller area and replacing it with Christmas trees and such. I am SO not ready to see Christmas stuff in the stores, though it has been in Hobby Lobby for months and in HD and Lowe's for a few weeks already. I hate the way they rush the seasons. I'm not ready for all the gardening merchandise to disappear from the stores already when we still have another 2 months, more or less, of warm growing season left. Dawn