Well, it happened. First frost, overnight on Thursday the 9th. On the one hand, still later then September. On the other hand, four of my dahlias still haven’t bloomed.
So I did something I normally wouldn’t do, and brought the three that have buds inside for the night. The long range forecast isn’t predicting frost again until the 22nd, so I figure I’ll see what they can do in that amount of time. I won’t bring them again. The Noordwijks Glorie didn’t even have buds, so I let that one die back. I’ll over winter it in case something else dies, but I will probably not plant it next year.
It was kind of pretty before the sun rose enough to melt the frost.
I was working from home the next day, so I was able to pull a fair amount of the dead foliage out on my lunch break. I did leave the dahlias for the moment, just to not cut them so much that they’ll get water in the stems. I probably won’t be able to dig them for a bit, and since it won’t freeze overnight, it won’t hurt them to cure a little bit in the ground. I may just leave those until the last three die back.
Interestingly, the Bolivian peppers seem to have survived the frost, even though the purple peppers and Aleppo peppers died right back.