The garden formerly known as tropical

Jul23

There’s a spot in my yard (actually most of it inches over into my Mother in Law’s yard) where I like to indulge in a little of the tropics. Last year it was full of cannas, sweet potatoes, and other warm weather friends, but this year it seems to have lost some of that bold tropical flair. As usual it’s my own fault, and as usual it’s a long story, so I’ll try to keep it short. It all begins in April when mulch was purchased for next door, and a willing volunteer was needed to spread it. I foolishly agreed, but the deal was to add a couple tons of topsoil (I said I needed it to fill in along a sidewalk). “I’ll spread all your mulch if you buy me even more stuff which needs spreading”. Let me just say I run a hard bargain.

Look at that three inch drop from the sidewalk into the tropical bed. Clearly an ankle twisting lawsuit in the making!

So the mulch was spread, perennials divided, shrubs trimmed, weeds pulled…. the deal kept getting better and better it seems, but then it came down to the heap of topsoil sitting in the driveway. I used a few wheelbarrows to raise the soil along the walk and was still left with plenty. Finally my plan was coming together hah hah hah. I’m pretty sure I mentioned I might use the topsoil to expand the bed a bit, so that’s what I went ahead and did 🙂

Line the edge with a hose, cut in and dig out the edge, smother the grass with about two inches of topsoil… wow did I hate mowing this sloped little patch of sickly grass!

No one said a word about the tripled in size, very empty bed. I think people around here may be a little wary about asking questions for fear I will plant up a field of dandelions or something. Some people have said I’m stubborn and criticism may tend to encourage me even more. I like to think of it as proving a point 😉

A huge empty garden bed in May. What could possibly make a gardener happier (other than a few loads of compost mixed in)?

The last bits of mulch made the bed a little more suburban-friendly and a few paver scraps thrown down along the center made an acceptable shortcut for the kids. Then on to the real fun! Canna and dahlia roots were lugged out and planted, and that was well enough, but then trouble started brewing. A box filled with a dozen or so rooted chrysanthemum cuttings showed up at the door. I can check on them constantly if they’re right along the edge of the new bed, so that’s where they went. Don’t ask me why I needed a box of chrysanthemums, February is a tough month.

Somehow random perennials invaded the tropical border, that and chrysanthemums….

Then of course I tried to make the front yard more respectable by not having sunflowers all throughout the foundation plantings. Out they came and into the new bed they went. I have a serious problem in trying to show any kind of resolve against sunflower seedlings, they’re all summer and sunshine and it seems borderline criminal to pull them as weeds.

Peony “Do Tell” can’t seriously expect to be the only plant using this spot of sun all year. The sunflowers should take over by July and the peony will just hang out in their shade until next year…. that’s the theory at least.

Things still look awfully barren but until the heat of summer hits it’s all kind of just biding its time. Looking over from my yard you can see the bit of slope which made me hate mowing this spot. Plus I’m not all that crazy about lawn to begin with *yawn* ….. it’s only really good for walking around on while checking the plants out!

Year two of “I should give the table another coat of pain” -June 10th

My grass just doesn’t have the strength to come up through the soil (southerners may have a different experience), and even without soil improvement the new plants are still doing well as they feed off the decaying lawn underneath. A month later and things are looking better. The cannas still give a tropical look, but all the sunflowers are giving more of a neglected-agriculture vibe!

July 13th, about a month later and the cannas are up, the sunflowers are growing, and I still keep looking at the bare dirt wishing for some compost or mulch to cover it up with.

As the sunflowers come into bloom they’re pretty and cheerful… but they’re not the tropics.

It looks lush and green, so I should be happy. Also it’s not the color disaster I grew here last year, another reason to be pleased!

Besides it being a non-tropical border, a few other problems are coming to light. The first is that some of the chrysanthemums relentlessly insist on setting buds and blooming for summer instead of fall. I think I failed to pinch them back enough when planting them out in the spring, but I just don’t have the heart to do it now.

Chrysanthemums blooming in July, hopefully they’ll be on the correct schedule next year…. but they’ll need dividing by then, so I have no idea where to put them all!

To me a more insidious problem is the sunflower blooms. When the first flower opened I cringed. They’re completely pollen free, and because of that they don’t offer much to pollinators, and even worse they don’t set seed as well as the normal types. I thought for sure since they were selfsown from last year’s plants that they should be normal functioning sunflowers but that’s not the case. These all appear to carry the pollen-free gene, a gene which I’m sure came from the birdfeed seed. I’m not big on all the seed conspiracies, but this looks like a genetic insurance policy that keeps farmers coming back to the seed supplier each year, and keeps them from replanting their own crop. Good for a seed seller but not so good for me and all my now genetically tainted sunflowers.

Not much here for the bees.

Luckily there’s a small patch of sunflowers out front which still grow normally. Once these started blooming I noticed a few seeds starting to form in the other patch (I guess a little pollen goes a long way throughout the garden!). I need to make sure I get my seedlings from this area next year.

This sunflower looks like it’s full of tasty seeds, not full of empty husks like over in the other patch.

The sunflowers look pretty enough, but all I see are the black soulless eyes of the walking dead…. ok maybe not that bad, but they lack the busy bees and bugs that usually do laps around the big open pollen filled flowers. The goldfinches have also been very insulting as they touch down to check on the seed supply and come up empty. Hopefully pollen from the front yard will work it’s way back here to at least make the birds happy. Just in case, I planted a patch of heirloom sunflowers in the now completely dug up daffodil patch. They’ll be late, but they’ll have pollen, and I think they’ll still make it before frost.

Sunflowers coming on strong.

I’m still holding out for a few tropical effects. One castor bean seed came up and is now taking off, and “tropicanna” canna is looking healthy. Also if I have nothing better to do this week, a few coleus and sweet potato cuttings can fill in one or two of the still empty spots, and maybe by late August ‘tropicalismo’ will revisit this bed once again.

Castor bean “carmencita” and a few over-fed “Tropicana” cannas. The cannas seem to get much brighter colors when grown on the lean side, or with just a little 10-10-10 fertilizer. This batch has a lot of green in them due to higher nitrogen, probably from some miracle grow.

I don’t know if they say tropical to everyone, but dahlias never fail to bring brightness. This peachy pink with yellow cactus flower makes me think of some overdone tropical drink. Yummy!

Unknown dahlia which I keep saving from year to year. This spring I tried to show some restraint with them since last season planting a dozen or so might have been overkill 🙂

One plant I still need to plant out more of is verbena bonariensis. In almost all my other beds it can be counted on to show up and make a play for taking over any open spot, here in the new soil it hasn’t had a chance to seed in yet. Any transplants made this time of year will shrug off the shock of moving quickly and should be blooming up a purple storm in no time at all so I better get moving.

The grassy tropicalish leaves of arundo donax “gold chain” make a great mix with the sunflowers and verbena. I might have to plant this combo on purpose next year to make sure it happens again!

The tall old fashioned red leaved cannas always make me happy. They’re super easy to overwinter, never look ratty, and always grow as fast as the fertilizer and water will take them. The small reddish blooms which come later in the season aren’t much to talk about, but the hummingbirds love them.

Maybe canna “red Russian”? We call them Polish cannas after the old Polish woman who years ago gave the first ones to a friend of mine.

So that’s the latest from the ex-tropical bed. It may still heat up as the season progresses, but for now it’s decidedly temperate and might remain so for a while. No amaranthus or salvia seedlings showed, and this spring was a bust as far as all the seeds I started, so many of the brightest colors from last year are hushed. For now I’ll have to keep satisfied with my little bit of the tropics in containers.

A couple real tropicals planted in containers where I can best keep an eye on them.

Not to go on any longer than I already have, but those weak little pots of tropicalismo surrounded by weeds and dead grass aren’t just a bad planter arrangement. To me they’re the accent on a new gavel terrace backed by a low stone wall. Maybe a fire pit. I think one of the reasons my garden looks the way it does is because I have a bit too much vision, but we’ll see. I do tend to work backwards and always find the plants first…. who cares if the seating area is still a little “in development”?

Catching up with summer

Jul12

I always admire other gardeners who seem to throw things together and they work out perfectly. A list, a trip to a store or two, a few hours of work, and voila! You’re ready to relax and move on to something more entertaining. My projects never, never, ever work out like that. I start something innocently enough and before you know it a budget is blown, there are walls missing from the house, or you’ve been for a visit to the emergency room.

Wax on, wax off. This tabletop has seen better days.

So here’s this year’s deck saga. You give it a good cleaning, plant up a few pots and warm up the grill for dinner, right? Not in my lucky world. As you get ready to pressure wash you notice the kid’s craft table is looking a bit worse for wear and really should be cleaned up before the next waterpaint session. Out comes the sander and varnish.

Once the table is all spiffy, the pressure washing commences. The clean looks great, but it makes you realize how abused and dirty the vinyl siding is under the covered portion of the deck. So off it comes. You’ve been wanting to replace it with wood paneling and now that the table is looking nice again…..

The succulents will look so much better when this is done… and the wasp nest is removed from the outlet box… and the rusted broken light fixture replaced….

The woodwork should only take a few days, but then I might as well paint the rocking chairs saved from the dumpster, and I need to plant a few of the annuals so they don’t die waiting for their deck planters.

As long as you’re redoing the siding, a pair of ceiling fans sure would be nice….

A pot crowded with calibrachoa seedlings. I’ve never had reseeding with these before so I’m curious to see how they turn out… these are just four spoonfuls of seedlings out of the hundreds that came up!

Not to change the subject (as if I could stay focused long enough to finish something anyway), while the renovation is going on I still need to get the annuals planted in the deck pots. Of course this is the year everything reseeded. One pot is full of blue salvia seedlings, another is packed with red snapdragons, and a third has hundreds of baby calibrachoa. They all need moving off to find new homes.

Once the planters are vacant (mostly) I decide I really need some tall miscanthus in the big planters. Mine hasn’t quite recovered from the winter, but a quick phone call finds a friend across town who can spare a few wedges out of his clump. So off for that.

And the weeks go on. Finally the porch and deck are finished and the new plantings are filling in.

All set for fireworks viewing on the fourth of July, but all I could think about were the agaves and succulents in need of repotting.

I really like calibrachoa on the deck. They bloom constantly and don’t get the little inchworms in the blooms like petunias do. These were all purchased plants, luckily by the time I got to the nursery it was so late in the season they were all marked down!

Calibrachoas filling in a few of the deck pots.

This year I plunked down the money for a nice mandevilla. It’s not my favorite “Alice DuPont”, but after complete failure with Alice last year, it was time for a change, and this one is filling in nicely. I suspect last year’s vine (purchased from a box store) had been chemically treated to bloom nicely in the pot. It produced blooms all summer but never grew an inch (which defeated the purpose of growing a vine), and I suspect it’s from the blooming hormone cocktail it received before it got to me.

Mandevilla growing up bamboo stakes on the deck. White vinyl fencing and construction out back complete the picture 🙂

I managed to squeeze a bunch of the miscanthus into this pot, and although temperatures shot up to the 9o’s (32C) two days after its division the grass recovered nicely. All the red was kind of a surprise though. The snapdragons came in on their own (and all bloomed in reds) and the calibrachoa really clumped up, and the overall effect is growing on me. I like it even more with the chartreuse leaves of the sweet potato.

Chartreuse sweet potato vine, red calibrachoa, miscanthus grass, and red snapdragons (with a little plug of blue scaveola).

I’m really glad I just left the snapdragon seedlings, they took off once the pots started getting regular water and feedings, and I love the color. Now snapdragons are showing up in a second pot which was supposed to have just a single miscanthus in it. I had pulled all the extra snapdragon seedlings out of it, but with determination like that I guess I’ll have to let them stay now.

Another gratuitous photo of red 🙂

Fortunately the succulent pots are more subdued. They’re calming things down a bit as well as the other survivor from last summer, the rosemary.

I’m developing a little bit of a terracotta habit, I blame the cacti and succulents for it.

So finally I’m done cleaning the deck. The covered part has become a nice little retreat made all the more cozy (in my opinion at least) by the Virginia creeper which has brought the garden up to the porch edges. Maybe next year I’ll work out some kind of trellising system so that the creeper can climb higher and then hang down as a sort of curtain. I like the idea, but that’s another project!

The view o the porch from the garden. The creeper was never planned, but once it started growing up I welcomed it. With access from both the top and bottom it’s easy to keep an eye on it.

Now I just have to decide what to do with the geraniums. All the time at the DIY store and I figured I might as well pick up a few new pots….. and then find some dark chocolate paint to tone down the orange…. and then divide up all the overwintered geraniums (and maybe add a new one or two) to fill the pots. And come to think of it I should probably finish off those steps too, and the deck supports would look a lot nicer wrapped in brick…..

Why am I collecting geraniums? They overwintered a bit too well from last year and who am I to hold that against them.

I hope your summer projects are coming along at a faster pace than mine do! With the way they move I tend to think nothing gets finished around here, so as the temperatures rise I might take a break and do a few recaps to see where things are going.

And then it was spring!

Apr7

This was a good weekend. Not so much Saturday with blustery cold winds and stray snow and rain…. more so Sunday with calm sunshine and some of the highest temperatures of the year! Of course Saturday (the cold day) was the open day for Hitch Lyman’s garden, so trust me you’ll hear more about that, but for now I just want to bask in the warmth that was. Pansies were on the list and Perennial Point did not disappoint.

Just one of several pansy filled flower benches

Perennial Point is my go-to nursery for the best plants in my neck of Pennsylvania. This was their opening weekend, and I’m always glad to see them back especially after nearly losing them three years ago when the Susquehanna River flooded, spreading plants far and wide and covering the whole place in over ten feet of rushing water. They’ve rebuilt, and the new and improved is overflowing with spring goodies. Here’s the interior filled with more delicate things not ready for the frosty nights.

A spring greenhouse overflowing with all that’s good about ending winter.

I have to say my daughter was very patient while I looked around. Not every 5 year old tolerates plant shopping as a follow up to her first day of T-ball practice. Stopping for chicken nuggets helped, and she got to pick out one of these trays of primula for mommy. How could I not at $4.59 a tray (four plants)!!?

Some perfect primulas. I hope the ones I bought stay this nice for at least a week or two.

I could have hung out for a while among the spring color and fragrance, but ice cream was promised so off we went. I wanted to carry out another spring tradition, the visiting of a local spring snowflake patch near the ice cream shop. The snowflakes (the good kind!) were in full bloom and although there were fewer than in years past (there’s been some careless construction going on) there was still a nice patch filling the creekside hollow.

Naturalized snowflakes (leucojum vernum). Notice the cool green tips on the flower petals?

I love snowflakes (leucojum vernum). They open just after the snowdrops, usually just as soon as the soil thaws, and because of that they’re always a special part of spring. This group is just a few feet away from a creek, and I think they do well in damp ground, but they also do just fine in a regular garden setting. Good luck finding them though, I hear the bulbs resent drying out and as a result few sellers carry them. But they’re worth a search, and even better if you can find a special form with yellow tips to the blooms or double flowers…. if you do keep me in mind! Sharing is caring 😉

The Foundation Planting

Jan22

Our latest arctic blast has got me going through old pictures, and I found a few that have been sitting around for a while. They’re all about the bed along the front of the house, and they all relate to a redesign I attempted this past spring. Let me know what you think!

The house we live in now was built by my wife’s grandparents in the late 1950’s, and is probably still considered stylish by many. Unfortunately we don’t share that retro-Italianate taste in ranches and set about to change things up while remodeling. This was our front view circa spring 2009, not long after we moved in. retro landscaping The combination of toddler, new baby, and home renovations is a fun mix, and outside changes were mostly put onto the back burner, but that summer I did manage to get out the salmon colored edging and covered the colorful red bark mulch with a more natural shade. I’m not saying it looked better, but at least it’s a little less sterile looking.If I was forced to give an answer I would probably say I hate the orangey color of our brick. We’re stuck with it though, and since there’s not much of a design flair in me the collector gene took over, and all the cuttings and divisions I collected easily found a home in the vacant mulch beds. By 2011 the mess was spreading and in an attempt to reign in the disorder I consulted with the ‘can’t beat em join em” theory. I tried to embrace the orange by entering into a red phase. I figured if I planted an even brighter scarlet then perhaps it would be bright enough to distract viewers from the orange brick…. or maybe I was trying to offend the neighbors, I don’t know- but I would like to challenge anyone out there to show me an example of red salvia used tastefully 🙂

Maybe Secretly I delighted in reds and chartreuse, and I think I still do….. just not in the front bed highlighting the orange brick. This lovely combo has been saved and moved to the tropical bed to face down the already-overwhelmingly tasteful white vinyl privacy fencing there…. I’m not sure it looks much better there, but at least I’m sparing the neighbors from this assault of color. (fyi the hummingbirds loved it)

Now what to do? The next year I had no enthusiasm for the bed without my lovely coleus and salvia. A few perennials filled in to give it a fuller look, but it still lacks something. The blue spruce was getting too big for under the window, and the Chamaecyparis too tall….. and I was getting tired of trimming the silly pompom juniper. So late that fall I laid out a bed expansion. Truth be told I over estimated the space available for tulips, so after lining out the new border I dug tulips in all around in the lawn and then left the grass for spring removal. That spring as the tulips came up through the overturned sod, I finished digging under the rest of the grass. digging under the turf

Moving the spruce was no picnic, and I almost thought it would die (considering how many roots I cut) but I think it will be much better off in the new position, and give a nice anchor to the end of the bed. Fortunately for me, just when the shrub moving started to get too back-breaking, a buddy stopped by to help.

Soooo, here’s the finished product. I moved a small paperbark maple over a few feet to be included in the bed, lined it with blues fescue divisions, and placed three tiny holly bushes where the spruce was. Against all other urges I tried to limit the plant choices and plant in groups. The curve is a little odd, but I’ll work on that during the next expansion 😉

With mulch applied and tulips blooming, it didn’t look half bad, but to be honest I still didn’t like it. (one of the reasons you rarely see pictures of this border)

I do like the yucca “color guard”. It and the blue fescue seem to be a nice fit for this border. yucca colorguard with blue fescue Blues, yellows , and greens seem to complement the house better than all the loud mixed up flower colors. For a couple weeks I didn’t mind this look, even as the tulip foliage yellowed and died off. But then boredom and excess plants struck, and I was back to my old ways of sneaking in a few new plants here and there.

Red cabbage wasn’t the worst color to add, but maybe it was just a little inappropriate for a front yard foundation planting. Coleus crept in again, and the sunflower seedlings looked so innocent in the early summer…. but the lavender with the yucca and blue fescue kept it respectable.

Sunflower explosion. Still better than my red experiment, but not yet the look I was going for.

Maybe annuals are just not a good choice for this bed. I’ll rethink it next year and maybe skip the dahlias too 🙂 For now I’ll use the excuse that they distract you from the too-small hollies planted under the window…. better to be distracted than to be downright bored I think…. By the way those hollies better get growing, I want them nice and big and prickly by the time my little daughter starts to consider things like sneaking out a window or meeting some Romeo who comes by throwing pebbles.

The border last month (before winter and winter boredom hit).

Four things: bigger plants, get rid of the grasses, remove the tall evergreen, and stick to a mellow color palette…. and of course expand the bed just a few more feet 🙂 Any other suggestions? I know there will be some good ones and I’m looking forward to hearing them as well as hearing some more criticism. I can take it, and I’m hoping it will get me back on the path that leads to me finally liking this bed!

Winding Down

Oct6

The oddly warm weather continued today and I was in no mood to do anything constructive in the sweat-inducing humidity. So I basically wasted the entire day. In my defense it’s only natural to sit outside and sip a cold beverage on a day like this, but more so in August, not October.

I think the plants agree. Most of these pictures were taken earlier in the week and it’s unsettling how quickly the dry soil, heat and cooler nights have things spiraling down into the little death of winter. My warm weather friends on the deck such as the vinca and coleus look ok, but the cool nights are making them drop leaves and get all sad and brittle.

The ones that seem just as happy as in July are the blue fanflower (scaveola), rosemary, and the chartreuse leaved geranium (pelargonium). Right now I’m imagining myself taking these into the garage to try and save something from frost. The geranium is actually a survivor from last year and to look at it now you’d never imagine how close to death it was in March.

Overwintered coleus are another plant that somehow escapes death on a windowsill and then comes back just fine when the warm weather returns. I usually plant a couple in the front bulb bed, and by summer’s end whatever’s not filled with hosta is overtaken by coleus. Hopefully the dormant bulbs that sit underground are none the wiser. front bed with coleus

The ‘hot biscuits’ amaranthus which looms over the bed is probably not the best design move here, but I had a weakness for them this spring and their weedy looking stalks are scattered throughout the yard. Plus for some reason this year’s baby tree frogs are also strangely fond of this plant. I find more baby frogs on the amaranthus than anywhere else.

I got lucky and one of the chrysanthemums on the stoop last fall must have seeded out. This little dwarf couldn’t flower more if it tried, it looks more like someone dropped a bouquet while walking in instead of a poor commitment to weeding on my part.

I’m really pleased right now with the annuals and tropicals in the front bed. The colors may not all go together but I just don’t get tired of looking at the mix of fresh flowers. Unfortunately the hydrangea flowers have gone brown due to lack of water in the couple days since I took this picture, but the coleus and profusion zinnias carry on. mixed border with coleus

It’s hard to believe all these coleus owe their existence to a water filled mug on the windowsill. Since I’ve added a few new ones this year I’m afraid I’ll have to sneak in a fourth mug this winter. I only hope the boss doesn’t pick up on it, any houseplant that requires either dirt or water or risks bringing in bugs is in not on her preferred list.

The zinnias are putting on a last stand against the shorter days. This lavender used to be my least favorite color but the hot pink I usually prefer didn’t germinate well this spring, so I’m left with these…. I don’t think either color would have had a chance of blending well with even more orange amaranthus.

Most of the annuals will be lost when the first frost hits (probably in the next two weeks) but I’m having trouble letting go of my senna alata (candlestick bush) seedling. This is one of two that germinated, and I love the oversized grayish foliage! Unfortunately our growing season is just too short and I’m just too lazy to give it an earlier start. So now I have to choose between a sure death by frost and possible death by my hand.

It’s so much easier to point the finger at winter. senna alata candlestick plant

I read somewhere that if frozen they may sprout again from the roots. To me this means I may be able to get away with overwintering the root ball in the cold yet heated garage. It may not work, but if it means I may start next year with a much larger plant I’m game! So I think I know where this will end up going….

Am I the only one contemplating all the annuals I wish I could rescue from the inevitable? Wiser gardeners have probably learned the lesson years ago, but every fall I can’t help but try and save a little of the summer gone by.

A Hawaiian Shirt

Aug30

Normally I try to give this flower bed a little respect, calling it the tropical bed instead of just “the mess”, but for whatever reason this year it really is a mess. The usual tropicals went to fill up new bed space this spring and I didn’t save enough goodies for here, plus it was planted late too…. (more excuses)…. and about half the plants are volunteers that just came up on their own, so it’s a patchwork of screaming colors.

Red salvia is loved by the hummingbirds, but the color really asserts itself. Some people have poo-pooed this pairing with the violet verbena as too “bleech”, but I think it could have been worse. The bigger view shows the weediness of the planting…..

I suppose I could have ripped out the amaranthus plants that came up (they’re the tall leafy stalks) and the squirrel ravaged sunflower is no beauty…. and the white buddleia in front of the white fence…. I could go on and on….

But it’s bright and colorful and it was meant to be vibrant. Next year I’m hoping to add a little green to calm it down and going back to more cannas to make it a little more “solid”. The white will be moved out.

The “summer poinsettia” is actually starting to grow on me, it’s the dark purple leaf which is developing the red tops. I like its lushness and maybe if I can just find some good neighbors it will really make a statement…. not that it’s keeping quiet now 🙂

A Few Good Weeds

Aug10

Somewhere way back I remember reading a comment on one of the fancier English gardens, it went something like this- “Even the compost pile was filled with treasures”. I took this to mean there were so many good things growing that even the cast-offs thrown onto the heap would have been worth keeping in most other plots. Too much of a good thing is not a problem in my garden, the compost overflows with crabgrass and thistles, bittercress and prickly lettuce, but I may be turning a corner. The birdfeeder is a big sunflower seed spreader, and rarely can I bring myself to pull out any of these weeds.

Maybe right next to the front door wasn’t a good spot (last year) but for the most part they pick pretty good spots to settle down. Here a few squeezed in between the butterfly bushes and rose of Sharon.

I’m always surprised by the range that shows up. This year I’m playing host to dark centers, yellow centers, golden flowers, brownish tones, and even one of the huge 1ft across monters. The ones here in front of the house have a bit of a rusty ring around the bloom, and give some needed height to the recently renovated foundation bed….. the rudbeckia underneath also crashed the party. I’ll be the first to admit they look better there than anything I would have thought up!

The most entertaining part of having sunflowers is still to come. Goldfinches love the seed and fly by every day now to check out how they’re doing. Once the seed are ripe we’ll have front row seats to the daily acrobatics of the little yellow parents and their greenish kids.

Rudbeckia are another plant that seeds about enough to end up on the compost pile. My fancy attempt at a red border was ruined by this invasion of gold. As usual it looks better with the surprise…. not sure about the pink phlox though… didn’t plant that either, but even if the color clashes it still looks better than crabgrass.

The vegetable garden can always use a good weeding. Persicaria orientale gets pulled each spring by the bucketful but a few always stay. It’s not a small plant and can easily top seven feet in good soil. ‘Kiss me over the garden gate’ is another name for it and I can picture this heirloom plant hanging over picket fences back in the day.Another garden invader is this ‘hopi red’ amaranth. I’m a sucker for colored leaves and couldn’t bring myself to pull this one from the middle of a row of leeks.

‘Hopi Dye’ is supposed to be the darkest red amaranth around and even though I grow it for the looks its real claim to fame is as a dye plant. This patch survived a harsh May weeding and is a little further along. You can see how it matures and I love the dark foliage and fluffy blooms, and I love the fact it grows like a……. (weed?).In all honesty the tropical bed is really just one big weed patch. That’s my excuse for the maybe-not-the -best color combos such as scarlet salvia and peachy pink dahlias. I’m hoping the big green sprout in the front turns out to be a ‘Hot Biscuits” amarathus, but there’s a strong possibility it and a few others are just well grown examples of pigweed (another amaranthus). I guess that just goes to show what a fine line there is between weed and wildflower.

Other selfsown weeds in this bed are the red salvias, purple verbena bonariensis, and all the leafy purple amaranthus in the center of the bed. This one I believe is called summer poinsettia or Joeseph’s Coat. As the summer goes on it will sprout hot pink center leaves that should really add to this tasteful composition.

I have a soft spot for the spiniest of plants, and it’s quite often that my spot gets a painful poke from growing stuff like this purple malevolence. Solanum atropurpureum is an potato/tomato relative and the dark spines just look cool. Guess what? It’s easy to grow, as is the white flowered mirabilis longiflora growing next to it. Luckily the mirabilis has no spines, it’s just kind of sticky and only blooms in the afternoon….. hence the common name four O’clock.

I’ll end this with one of my favorite (real) weeds. Bull thistle is all weed and if it wasn’t for my strange obsession with weedy spiny plants it would be a goner…. but…. it’s not that hard to kill, it only spreads by seed (unlike some really noxious thistles) and it’s really popular with wildlife. I leave the ones that sprout up along the yard edges.

Besides loving sunflowers, goldfinches love thistle seed. They love it enough that the German name for goldfinch is distelfink or thistle-finch. Around here you’ll often see the distelfink image show up on Pennsylvania Dutch artwork as a symbol of happiness and good fortune, and I’m not going to mess with that. There will always be room for a thistle or two, just watch your soft spot!

Front border update

Aug3

Looking back on the weather, I believe I picked the hottest days of the year to do my digging, transplanting and bed expanding. It’s cooled a bit recently but the strong sun and spotty rain combined with my thin skin of topsoil have left things a little tired looking. Crispy tan grass dominates the yard, but here and there is some fresh color to keep me motivated.

Here’s how the new transplants are doing. The ‘Tropicanna’ cannas love the heat and don’t look bad next to the airy fennel that’s trying to take over the mailbox. It’s been cut back a bunch due to the huge numbers of pollinating wasps drawn in to the flowers… no one needs a mailbox that buzzes.

The street side of the border isn’t nearly as well kempt as the freshly weeded, freshly planted house side, but it looks interesting with a lively mix of Russian sage (perovskia), sedum, and lamb’s ears (stachys ‘Helen von Stein’) with all kinds of self-sown volunteers such as phlox.

I’ve been busy re-taming this border after returning from our recent Florida vacation. Ten days of living the suburban dream of Disney and a tropical beach in late July, it doesn’t get any more relaxing than that. Pulling crabgrass in the blazing August sun (without a million other people) was a refreshing return.

The annual coleus and zinnia seedlings liked the heat and it also brought out blooms on the butterfly bushes and ‘Limelight’ hydrangea.

I love the hydrangea, it’s getting to be on the big side but I’m all for big plants in the garden. ‘Limelight’ is a type of hydrangea paniculata, a group that blooms in late summer (usually white or pinkish), tolerates dryer soils, welcomes full sun and flowers reliably each year. It blooms on new growth, so you could take a chainsaw to the thing in spring and still get a mass of blooms later in the year. ‘Limelight’ has a nice greenish tint to the new blooms and has stems strong enough to keep the heavy flower heads from flopping.Another all-summer bloomer is rose of Sharon (althea syriacus), they laugh at heat and drought and are nearly impossible to kill. They have some well known faults, and two of the biggest are it’s late leafing out and it’s enthusiastic reseeding habits, but I grow it anyway. ‘Diana’ is a sterile white cultivar and an awesome plant, but with all the white vinyl around here I can only fit in so many bright white flowers, so the one I grow is ‘Blue Bird’. ‘Blue Bird’ earned its spot because of the trouble free blue color of its blooms. I don’t think it’s as showy as some of the others but the color is worth a little seeding around. Every now and then I think it has a little look of weediness to it, and even though in my garden this isn’t a noticeable fault, in some more refined plantings this might stick out. I guess that’s a cross better gardeners are meant to bear.

Drought tolerance is something that everything in this street border has to deal with. Perovskia, self-sown gloriosa daisies (rudbeckia), and ornamental grasses all take it in stride. It’s a little messy, but right now I think the color holds up well to the bright sun and higher temperatures…. no room for pastels here…. The purple ‘Laura’ phlox gets extra water now and then, it handles a little dry weather and heat, but complains the whole time.

‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grass doesn’t complain about anything. A haircut in the spring is all the maintenance it needs and if you like the grassy look this is what it gives you all summer, fall, and winter. Doesn’t reseed, doesn’t need fertilizer, looks good all year…….I’m a fan.

‘Karley Rose’ fountain grass is another good one. It can get floppy after a rain, and doesn’t hold the good looks through the winter like Karl does, but makes a nice accent.

Hopefully the annuals planted last month will fill in and make an accent before frost. The newest plantings look more like a late May picture than an intro to August, but such is procrastination. At least I’ll have a few empty spots to shoehorn spring bulbs into once that planting season starts. 🙂

Best wishes for your August garden!

Hanging out on the Deck

Jul27

The deck planters are starting to look good. The tropicals love the heat and the annuals have settled in. Last year I had some big grasses in the three main planters, but the winter was too much and they didn’t make it, so this year I returned to my roots and stuffed the pots full with my favorite all summer plantings.
‘Tropicana’ canna, black sweet potatoes, million bells, and a New Guinea impatient fill this pot. Some ‘red rocket’ snapdragons fill in the back. I’ve never done the snapdragons before but right now they look great….. We’ll see how they last in the heat.

For some reason red was the color of choice this year. Usually I don’t buy most of the plantings and just use over wintered stuff, but this year I treated myself to a nursery run. 33% off helps and if you buy it all on one day I guess a red mood will give you red plantings.
This one has similar plants with the cannas replaced by a nice new coleus and burgundy fountain grass in the center.

The aloe pot here was overwintered, but the red blooms on the dipladenia are new. Not to rub it in but I think I found it for about $2 at a local greenhouse clearance and I hope to overwinter it for next year.

Here’s a new coleus, overwintered geranium, and a pot of blue fanflower/red celosia combo. The celosia is ‘new look’ celosia and I really like the bright flowers and dark foliage.

Herbs have a spot too; parsley, rosemary and a pot of annual vinca for color.

Here’s one pot that I’m not yet thrilled with. It should have a pink ‘Alice Dupont’ mandevilla climbing up the bamboo stakes, but for some reason she won’t grow…. She blooms well, but won’t grow. It was an impulse buy at a box store and looked great, but is no bigger today than it was the day I brought it home. I can’t help but wonder if it was treated with something to trigger blooming at the expense of new growth. Does anyone have an opinion on that?
There’s a chartreuse sweet potato that may step up and take over, and also an ‘Australia’ canna coming in…. But I really like mandevillas 🙂
Oh and a big basil that’s just about worn out its welcome. I never thought it would take off like that.

So that’s the news from the deck. I’ve been away for about a week so things have hopefully grown some since, but I’m pleased with the results so far. Yes, a little yellow might have brightened things up a bit, but my planting are always a little impulsive, so each year turns out a little different. Who knows, maybe next year all the grass will be back, or cannas will take over, we’ll see!

Canna Virus

Jun26

The bed expansion is coming along….. not as fast as it should but it’s progressing. The plan is to go all along the front street border, widen the bed, thin a couple things out, weed, replant, and then mulch. Each year I like to clear out a couple spots for cannas and other annuals, and since it’s almost July I better get a move on it before it’s too late.

Cannas are usually easy to grow, but in the past decade canna virus has become a serious problem due to the appearance of yellow streak virus. CaYSV is the fancy name and it does exactly what it sounds like it does. On a normally healthy green leaf it produces streaks of yellow. Here’s a canna I was looking forward to adding to the garden, instead it will end up in the trash due to virus.

I got the canna in a trade and it was supposed to be a nice healthy banana canna and reach up to 12 feet tall… but it’s not to be. I’ll get over it, but it seems like the plant you can’t have is the one you want most.

The yellow streak virus weakens the leaves and results in brown dead streaks. Most of the cannas I see for sale have the virus, and Tropicana is one of the worst with green streaks showing up instead of yellow. It’s a shame but hopefully with tissue culture and more effort in raising healthy plants we can get some healthy cannas back.

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Category Archives: annuals