A Week of Flowers-Day 7

Dec7

Congratulations to Cathy on another successful Week of Flowers, and all the flowery joy which her and other bloggers have brought to computer screens across the world! I’ve enjoyed the adventure and as expected will wrap things up with one last flowery bulb.

Colchicums!

During the late days of summer and throughout fall, colchicums(autumn crocus if you’d like, but they’re 100% not crocus relatives) bring color to the fading garden. Depending on your frame of mind they’re either the perfect end to the bulb season, or the first heralds of the new growth of fall and winter.

I’ve posted plenty on colchicums in the past, so won’t bore you with too many details, but these bulbs will sprout their hosta-like foliage in the spring, die back for the summer, and then erupt with fresh flowers in the fall just when everything else was starting to look tired.

Colchicums popping up through a groundcover of leadwort.

Even out of bone-dry, late-summer tired soil, colchicums still manage to wake up and look fresh as if everything for the new season will be perfect.

Colors range is white or pinks with single or double flowers. The whites can be really nice although here in my gray planting it might still need some developing.

And that wraps up Cathy’s Week of Flowers. I hope your early December days were brightened by the color, and your long nights refreshed with dreams of flowers past… a good type of refreshing, not a Dickenesque haunting by the ghosts of seasons past… and if you still need some more refreshing, consider it’s just two weeks until the winter solstice and lengthening days strengthening rays and then it starts all over again!

Enjoy your break while it lasts 😉

October

Oct7

September flew by and now it’s October. Autumn, and for maybe the first time in forever I’m glad to be done with summer. Maybe.

Colchicum ‘Lilac Beauty’ coming into full bloom against the blue of leadwort(Ceratostigma plumbaginoides). I think I show this scene every year, I like it.

It’s been chilly and gray and rainy and within 5 days I had my fill of autumn and started thinking about snowdrops and even colder weather. Cold I don’t really mind, it’s these depressing dark days which wear me down and I can’t imagine “living” somewhere with endlessly gloomy weather.

A colchicum speciosum which came as ‘bornmuellerii’ but might not be. The yellow next to it is a Sternbergia lutea, a fall blooming crocus look-alike which I need more of.

The gloom and rain also makes the lawn explode into growth and I’ve mowed it more times in the last month than all summer, and between that and the endless construction, and cleaning out the house next door, and making room for another person’s everything, and work, and lawyer talk, and explaining geometry and biology every night to a 14 year old, well I guess I know why September flew by. Good thing for colchicums and all those other autumn goodies, they sure make up for a less than complete daylily farm!

Colchicums by the driveway and a few 40% off goodies which I of course don’t need, but at least won’t need cramming into an already overfilled basement.

So it’s busy here and a new normal is setting in and a change of seasons might not be the worst thing to keep everyone moving along. The colchicums kicked off autumn and now hardy cyclamen and autumn flowering crocus and chrysanthemums are making it into a party.

Most of this would be fine in the open garden, but I do like having the most special of things all in one single protected space. Maybe next year I’ll evict the camellia seedlings and give them a try in the open garden.

Besides the miracle of copious rain, and its explosive effect on the lawn, the rain also performed a little miracle in the potager. It’s nothing to impress a Southerner, but having any kind of red spider lily in bloom this far north is something I did not expect to ever actually have happen but it did. Maybe there’s hope for it establishing. I wouldn’t complain if it settled in here, but knowing that the second bulb was also doing well up until it rotted last summer is giving me a few serious doubts.

Lycoris radiata, the red spider lily. Winter foliage will grow in another few weeks and then look miserable all winter as it wishes it were still south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Elsewhere in the garden the colors are all autumn and the vibe is all seedy.

Along the street the ‘Sunnyside Up’ pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) is as lovely and promiscuous as ever. Unlike everything else here it didn’t even seem to mind the heat and drought this summer.

Even after a summer of neglect and weeks of triage watering there were still plenty of things which bounced back. The front border looks full and the potager is an overgrown mess. It might not be as tusnami-of-chlorophyl as previous years but I can deal with it.

I didn’t expect Geranium ‘Rozanne’ to endure the drought like it has, but it looks great and seems to have been reborn this October.

Maybe the thousands of dollars spent watering were worth it here in the potager… things limped through the heat and then made for one last hurrah now that it’s cool and wet.

For the last two or three weeks you can’t even tell the cannas and dahlias spent all June and July in misery. Stunted plants aren’t the worst thing for a gardener who never got around to staking.

Progress on the daylily farm hasn’t been as swift as I had hoped for. My sole employee gets a list each weekend, but then when Sunday afternoon rolls around it’s like he didn’t even have a list, since it’s been mostly ignored for two days and nothing was done. Last weekend he made a good point about taking a few cuttings and carrying in a few pots instead but he really could have done a little more in the digging department on top of that. Perhaps this weekend I’ll take him out back and give him a serious talking to. Hopefully he’ll see the light, and hopefully back there no one will see me mumbling to myself again.

Ok, I distinctly remember my mother in law saying ‘I don’t care, as long as it looks nice you can plant whatever you want’ a couple months ago when I asked about planting some coleus in her planter. Maybe I took that out of context, but so far there have been zero comments about a daylily farm going in on the side of her house.

So maybe the daylily farm will be ready by next spring, and maybe it will not. Whatever happens I’m sure it will mostly complement the tropical bed which has also somewhat revived from the rain… and is also just across the property line, in my mother in law’s yard…

Not a whole lot of tropicals in the tropical bed this year, but even the tropics have their run-down, abandoned-farm kind of areas. Thankfully there’s more yellow pokeweed here weeding around and complementing the red roses and purple verbena.

While the stunted cannas here bring me down a bit, it’s my Queen of the Prairie statue which brings on the only commentary about this bed. The statue has been called creepy, and it’s been questioned as to why it faces her kitchen window but that’s just coincidence and I think she looks pensively thoughtful and pleasant.

Although no one insisted the Queen remain in our living room I don’t think anyone expected her to be evicted to the back lawn once we bought the house. Personally I think she’s enjoying her trip back to the earth.

Something else who’s days are numbered are the tropical pots. Time to start thinking about who is freezing, who is becoming a pot of cuttings, and who is getting hauled back in for the winter garden. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that things have multiplied and been added to.

Obviously this begonia needs to come inside. What soul-less heathen would let frost touch it while it’s flowering its head off?

The new angel’s trumpet in a (heavy)20 inch pot looked much less alarming as a little free cutting last fall, and a couple elephant ear divisions were never expected to fill one entire half of the garage but then it happened. Better safe than sorry is what I always like to think, so of course they’re all going to get safe winter homes.

In May I almost let spider mites kill this. “pinch off all the leaves, soap it down, and fertilize and water the sh!t out of it and it will be fine” was the excellent advice I received. It would look even better if i didn’t forget to fertilize the last few weeks and missed a few waterings…

Other things are also finding their way in for the winter. If it’s an early freeze things might be easier, but if it’s a late freeze I’ll have way too much time to soften up and say what’s the harm in one more?

I hope this red mandevilla can survive the winter with me. Previous attempts have failed but how can I not try?

There’s always room for one more and it’s good to have all these things going on to carry us through the next month. Each month has it’s own surprises, and even if I didn’t need the surprise water heater replacement yesterday, having hot water again is almost as nice as a house packed full of somewhat appreciative houseplants and a garage full of sleeping bulbs and tubers.

Hmmm. I didn’t even think about digging things yet. That might be a November, as the snow flies, kind of project and I’ll wait until then to worry about it. One month at a time, right?

Bulbs Can’t Freeze

Jan21

Freezing seem like as good enough topic as anything because that’s all we seem to have in the forecast. This is like the third week of real winter temperatures and after a bunch of warm years it seems so…. endless. Realistically three or four months of winter wouldn’t be anything surprising in this zone, so with two more months to go there is no reason to complain. It’s just the warmer years of late had me kind of enjoying witch hazel in January and snowdrops throughout. Toughen up I say! Truthfully I should be grateful for the nice solid cold, and the way it freezes up the soil and tells the bulbs to hold on, don’t be fooled, February and March will be early enough to start your growing plans.

Colchicum x byzantinum bulbs are big, and my soil is shallow, and often they just push themselves up and practically sit on top of the soil. Obviously in this position and with temperatures down to 0F (-18C) the bulb and new growth will freeze

Some of the top spring disasters (off a quite lengthy list) have been the result of warm winters which bring things up way before their time. Hellebores in particular must be an unusually optimistic plant which falls for this fake spring followed by a hard freeze every time, but snowdrops can be fooled as well. Often I’m surprised by how well tender growth can survive brutal freezes but it’s not always a happy ending. Right now a better gardener would be covering some of these goodies to keep the worst of the weather off of them.

We will see how well ‘Godfrey Owen’ tolerates the rest of winter after having already come nearly into bloom. Tonight will be cold, next week looks colder.

I guess that brings me around to the title of this post. I often see claims that hardy bulbs need to be protected from freezing, especially those in pots. I disagree. I used to pot up bulbs and throw them into an unheated shed where they would freeze solid for months without ill effect. I’ve dropped bulbs in the fall and had them root into the surface, survive winter exposed and also do just fine. There’s more to it of course but without exposing my own ignorance I’ll just point out a few ‘excepts’ which I’ve come across. Bulbs need to begin rooting before they freeze. Potted bulbs should be on the dry side before freezing. Exposed pots which freeze and thaw repeatedly will suffer. -and the one which I can’t figure out is that potted bulbs will rot when snow melts and then re-freezes on the surface of a pot of bulbs, especially later in the year. My balcony gardening year was always off to a tragic start when a big pot full of tulip and crocus sprouts would all just stop growing after a cold spell hit with snow or rain freezing on top of the pot. Weeks later I would finally give up and pull the still green and solid sprouts out, leaving a rotted bulb behind. 😦

Well that ended on a sad note. If anyone has some thoughts on this let me know. I find the easiest way around this is to just cover planted pots with autumn leaves and then uncover them as soon as temperatures warm, but you know how greedy I am with my autumn leaves! Maybe a board on top to keep the snow and rain off would be good enough, I just have to remember to try that (again) and make a note of how it works out.

In the meantime stay warm and consider that (here at least) the daylength is getting longer by about two minutes each day and we’ve added about 30 minutes since the shortest day of the year. I’m sure we’ll be in flip flops before you know it 😉

179

Sep26

179 isn’t the default setting for blog titles, it’s the harsh reality of autumn. Saturday afternoon I made a tour of the grounds and counted up 179 pots scattered about. All of these will require some kind of attention before autumn winds down and winter settles in, and all of them seem to have appeared out of nowhere this year. Another frightening statistic is that I didn’t even count any pots smaller than six inches, and I also didn’t count the dozen stewartia seedling which were potted up Saturday evening… just in case, you know? Stewartia are special little things, and now if I need a dozen potted seedlings next year, it’s reassuring to know I’m prepared.

The early autumn show of Heterotheca(aka Chrysopsis) villosa ‘Ruth Baumgardner’. I love it more each year.

But I wish I was mentally prepared to deal with these pots. Maybe buying a box of 100 drip emitters and more tubing for the watering system was not as good an idea as it seemed, but for the moment I’m trying to move on and I’ve started grouping some of the stuff which will get the same treatment.

You turn your back once and suddenly a dozen amaryllis (Hippeastrum) show up. I probably don’t need a dozen, but better safe than sorry is what I said some cold December afternoon…

I’m sure it’s just the caladiums which are making things look bad. They make up around forty of the pots, and yesterday I shut off their water to give them a couple of weeks to dry out and come to terms with the cooler nights. Soon they’ll collapse and go dormant and I can toss them in the furnace room, but instead of things shutting down, lets talk Colchicums!

Some kind of Colchicum speciosum. I don’t know if it’s a cultivar or not, but it’s a favorite regardless.

We are into the middle of Colchicum season now. I’m loving it.

colchicum aggripinum duncecap orostachys iwarenge

A late Colchicum xaggripinum surrounded by the flower stalks of Orostachys iwarenge. The Orystachys really appreciated the mild winter and has never looked like it actually wanted to live let alone thrive like this.

Plenty of other colchicum are popping up here and there. I shouldn’t want more, but I kind of do, if only for mental health reasons as they carry me through to the fall snowdrop season 😉

Another unknown Colchicum speciosum, actually this was my very first one… also not true to the name it was purchased under…

My new colchicum book describes ‘Harlekijn’ as having “little appeal except to those keen to amass a full collection of cultivars”. Oops. I was hoping that wasn’t the direction I was going.

Colchicum ‘The Giant’. Big, robust, floppy, and a scene stealer.

Colchicum speciosum ‘Atrorubens’ on the left, and ‘Album’ on the right. Two of my current favorites.

This one came to me as white… but most will agree it’s not, and eventually the company where I purchased it from also agreed and sent me a refund. I believe it is Colchicum ‘Pink Star’.

‘Lilac Wonder’ has been swamped by the yellow woodland salvia, Salvia Koyamae. Normally the salvia is half dead by the time it blooms since whoever planted it put it in a dry, full sun location, not the the moist woodland which this plant wants.

So autumn, pots, and colchicums. Not a bad week at all. To top it off I’ll wax poetically about the beauty in death of my beloved cardoon plants. The seedheads are ripe, and now they’re opening up to scatter their children across the landscape.

Cardoon seed heads. The bottom of the stalk is quite ugly, but if you focus on the top…

Ugly dead thistles might be one poetic interpretation but I prefer to ignore the possibility of a cardoon superspreader event and think that some goldfinch might fly over and find these to be the motherload of tasty thistle seed. Thats the hope at least, but for now I haven’t seen them give it a try. They’re still focused on the sunflowers so maybe they’re saving these?

I suspect that’s a lot of Cardoon seedlings…

No matter. Cardoons sprouting all over might be just what my garden needed, and as long as they don’t crowd out the snowdrops I’m willing to give it a try!

Enjoy the last days of September 🙂

A First Day of Autumn Tour

Sep22

Who says you can’t change your ways? I know a guy who’s been passionately anti-autumn for decades, and has actually been know to get hostile and crabby, short-tempered and moody as the day length shortens and a cool crispness taints the summertime air. That person is changing. He might even have said “Fall isn’t all that bad”, and smiled at a dewy morning lawn and a river valley full of mist as he sat on the back deck and had already sipped through at least half his morning coffee. Prior to the coffee he was still kind of luke-warm about the change in season, but at least he was out there enjoying it rather than mumbling about the frigid ten day forecast.

Ripe berries and a touch of autumn colors on the dogwood

“Maybe it will kill some of the mosquitoes” was the delusional hope

The front border is looking exceptionally neat and well-groomed

No, the mosquitoes aren’t going anywhere, but fortunately they weren’t completely rabid the weekend before last when the local garden club, the Backmountain Bloomers, paid a visit to the Sorta Suburbia gardens.

‘Bengal Tiger’ cannas with the yellow daisies of Heterotheca villosa ‘Ruth Baumgardner’. I like this plant more and more every year.

I was absolutely thrilled that the club came by, and even more thrilled that a few more showed up than I had expected. A muggy, buggy, September afternoon isn’t exactly prime garden visiting season so even a group of four felt-bad-for-you-so-we-came visitors would have been something special. There were more visitors than that, so I hope I didn’t come across as too desperately excited 🙂 (I don’t often get visitors you know)

Purple hyacinth bean (Dolichos lablab) seedpods in the front border. I threw a few seedlings in amongst the fennel forest, and I think they looked nice enough.

So that was the big excitement. It was a nice balance to the insane cursing and swatting I experience every other day as I try to beat back the bugs and not catch West Nile while everyone else is getting Covid. That would be just about right, I’m never any good at following the trends.

Colchicum cilicicum and some Colchicum ‘Disraeli’ coming up nicely through a few floppy chrysanthemums

With all that said, the garden does look nice. There’s been enough (actually way more than enough) rain and I really gave the garden a once over of weeding and trimming. Plus now there are more fall-bloomers than ever, and it’s really given me something to look forward to as everything else crumbles and dies prior to winter’s kiss of death… -ok i said I didn’t hate fall as much as I used to, I never went as far as to say I actually liked it-

Colchicum ‘Autumn Herald’ coming up through the creeping thyme.

Colchicums are a big part of what’s become good about fall. The earliest ones help distract me from the earlier and earlier sunsets, and then I have the mid and late season ones to look forward to. Right now the Mid season ones are just hitting their stride.

Colchicum ‘Glory of Heemstede’ according to my label… love the darker color and checkering!

Let me just share a couple pictures and talk less 😉

Colchicum ‘Jochem Hof’ is the name I have for this one. For some reason colchicum names and IDs are notoriously muddled, and even a good source may give you a misnamed bulb.

‘Faberge Silver’ is a newer variety with a nice blend of white and pink

‘Nancy Lindsay’ is a favorite and also a great grower here. I have a few bigger patches of it and still feel like I could use more 🙂

‘World’s Champion Cup’ has large goblets of bloom, often with a white highlight.

Colchicums aside (for just a minute), the backyard was also looking decent in its late summer colors.

The edge of the tropical bed always looks good with a few cannas, but for the most part it’s been neglected this year. What a shame considering how lush it could have been with all the rain (as demonstrated by the lush green of the lawn)

The potager was also looking nice, even if it was mostly out of control. Ten foot tall Kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate (Persicaria orientalis) has a way of demanding attention, and although no one asked for seeds, I guess in MY garden they liked it.

The pergola has almost disappeared under the vines and overgrowth of September

I of course liked showing off the castor beans and complaining about my dumpy seed-grown dahlias. The black eyed susan vine was also something to be admired, but maybe my visitors know there are cooler colors out there, so plain old orange wasn’t so impressive.

My hiding spot in the now mosquito-infested potager. Hopefully with long sleeve weather approaching I can safely hang out here again without losing a pint of blood.

Thankfully no one asked the awkward question of why there weren’t more vegetables.

The Japanese morning glory Ipomea nil ‘Fuji no Murasaki’ has reseeded mildly enough that it doesn’t scare me like regular morning glories. Let’s hope it stays that way.

One last part of the garden which I was proud to show off was the nearly completed sand path which now runs around the back side of the house. I think my visitors might have appreciated it more if it weren’t so overgrown, but if they only knew what a muddy mess this path was just three weeks ago I think they would have been more appreciative of this solid and dry passage.

The finished path. There’s still plans afoot for this end so we will see…

My friend Lisa asked about the sand, and in the nicest way I think she was trying to figure out what if any thought process there was behind this decision. Sand is nice at the beach, but anyone who has slogged a couple hundred feet through it knows there might be better path options out there, so let me point out this is the crushed sand usually used as a paver base, and it actually packs down fairly well as a path. When I went to check out the ‘crusher run’ which is a rougher mix often used for paths, I saw this and thought it might be worth a try. So far so good I think. It has a nice clean look and is mostly crushed Pennsylvania bluestone so I like the mellow color as well.

Recycled retaining wall blocks on the right, recycled composite decking as an edging on the left.

Even with a bit of a slope there were no washouts after our six inches in two days rain event.

You can see some of the slope here. The grass looks crappier than usual because I had to raise the lawn about four inches to meet the edge. I’ve been filling in this part of the yard for years to bring it up.

Actually there was more erosion in the caladium sand bed than there was in the sloped walkway. I suspect there was just an extreme amount of runoff from the concrete, so hopefully that’s a one time deal.

It’s still ‘Year of the Caladium’ along this side of the house

Here’s yet another gratuitous caladium picture. They haven’t liked the cold spell we had, and then all the rain didn’t help, but they’re still awesome 🙂

Mixed caladiums in need of a winter home.

Cooler weather had me thinking about what to do with the caladiums and also where to go with all the other pots which have accumulated around the garden. I started to hear an echo in my head of ‘Oh, that just goes into the garage over winter’ because I think I said it dozens of times as an answer to wintering over questions. It started to make me wonder…

‘Alice DuPont’ still looks great. In general most of the deck still looks decent, and I really don’t need fall to come by.

So will it really all fit into the garage? A quick count of pots quickly went over 100, and that wasn’t even counting anything under six inches or anything on the deck. That’s a lot of overwintering, and that’s almost even stressful, and when I deal with stress I take cuttings. So on Sunday I added another two flats full of little potted cuttings to bring in. Maybe they won’t all make it. Maybe I’ll find some kind of other space… doubtful… but with a suspicious box on the porch this afternoon and vague memories of bulb orders, I think a few pots of caladium tubers are the least of my worries.

Have a great week 😉

Yay. Fall.

Sep4

The colchicum are coming and that could mean that fall is approaching. I say ‘could’ because these “autumn crocus” also come in forms which bloom in the winter and early spring, but most normal people are satisfied with the fall bloomers, and most of the named hybrids with the largest blooms come up at this time of year. I of course am quite the normal person so shouldn’t have been surprised to come across the first clump of Colchicum x byzantinum shrugging off all the rain and coming into full bloom yesterday afternoon. It was inspiring. Instead of sitting on the porch all afternoon thinking about things which should be done, I found a garden fork and started lifting and dividing colchicum clumps.

Colchicum byzantinum coming up through the foliage of a floppy clump of little bluestem

Less-normal people might listen to experts who know better, and divide their colchicum in early summer after the foliage dies down, but those experts clearly need more tulips to dig and caladiums to transplant because they obviously have too much time on their hands in July. I do it now and even if the bulbs (corms actually) have begun to send out roots it’s not the end of the world to disturb them and get them into the spots which are not yet planted up with colchicum. Actually, as long as I’m confessing faults I might as well admit I’m downright careless with the process and don’t even water in moved bulbs… even if it’s bone dry and fresh roots are sprouting… they don’t seem to mind at all. I wish more plants were as forgiving.

Colchicum byzantinum ‘Innocence’ just starting into growth with no roots present yet.

Honestly I far prefer moving them now. It’s instant gratification and you can see how the flowers work with the neighbors, and most importantly you know they’re in a spot where you can see the blooms. A lot can happen between July and September and usually it involves other plants covering the spot where you thought the colchicums would look perfect.

‘Innocence’ with a little more room to spread out. Better gardeners would add a short groundcover of sedum to better show off the blooms, but one thing at a time please.

The colchicum bulbs looked great btw so I’m hoping for a good show this fall. Fair warning: you might have to come with me to look at them all in bloom, since a quick review of last year’s posts show less than ten colchicum photos. Unacceptable! I need to refocus on my blog’s tagline of “more than you ever wanted to know about my garden”.

Speaking of ‘more than you wanted to know’, last Christmas I did get the new book on colchicums (titled ‘Colchicum: The Complete Guide’, just in case you’re struggling) and after going through it once last winter, I may now take a refresher weekend to brush up on a few things. I say this to prepare you for all the smart-sounding observations I’ll be peppering my colchicum posts with over the next few weeks, things like why is it ‘x byzantinum’ and not just Colchicum byzantinum… well it’s because the plant is believed to be a hybrid (hence the x) and not a true species, as writing C. byzantinum would indicate. Wow. You’re welcome, and please feel free to correct me as I overconfidently bumble my way through botany.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Fall

Oct9

So here I am, finally forced to use the new block editor for WordPress. I don’t like it. Everything is adrift in a sea of white and I can’t fix how the photos and captions are displayed. There is no desire in me to be a web designer, I just want to post a couple pictures and write a few comments and since I’m struggling with that I’ll just assume it’s too smart for me.

Feather reed grass along the street. Things are looking autumnal.

I just want to complain. I don’t like it. I want menus and boxes and structure, not symbols and icons and dots that I somehow have to know to click on… or double click on… or whatever alt hold and click combo I’m supposed to just know or remember or whatever.

The front border from the other side. I’m quite pleased, but this is all the beginning of the end, as things color up, dry up, and die off…

Why the heck does everything need to be in stupid blocks!? I don’t like it. I just want it to be intuitive and let me write and I can throw in a picture whenever I want. Now I have to add a stupid photo block and then start a paragraph block and then go on to the next block. I seriously had less trouble editing html code than I do with this cloud of one size fits all.

chrysopsis Heterotheca villosa ruth baumgardner — Heterotheca(aka Chrysopsis) villosa ‘Ruth Baumgardner’. Still glowing brightly from the end of the front border.

I’ll stop now. I don’t like it. Maybe what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, but that’s not exactly the kind of win-win scenario I strive for either so… on to the fall garden. It’s here. It’s winding down. Still colorful, but fading fast. All the smarter plants are packing it in for the winter they know is coming, but the foolish tropicals are still carrying on like there’s always a tomorrow.

dahlia happy single flame — Dahlia happy single flame. This one always seems at its best during the last weeks of fall.

The tropicals were saved at the last minute by some rain and an almost-but-not quite-frost. The rain was just in time, but late September would have been tragically early for a frost date. Only a few things were touched though so I’ll count my blessings, especially since others North and South of us were not as lucky.

white cactus dahlia — The last big hurrah for dahlias and the red rose ‘Black Forest’ isn’t doing too bad either.

I’m enjoying the final flowers, but I’m afraid sometimes the impression is that everything is an overflowing wonder of color and interest in this garden. Angles and cropping make a big difference. The photo above vs the photo below shows how the full clump of big white dahlias looks much thinner and poorly staked from a different angle.

autumn dahlia garden — Things look a lot gappier from the back. Honestly everything is too close to the path and a mess, but at this time of year who really cares? I’m just enjoying the color.

The lack of big tropicals in the tropical border this year bothered me for a little bit, but I’m not going to miss all the canna root digging and elephant ear lugging that normally happens in October. It still looks fake-tropical lush with grasses and pokeweed, but my big plant of happiness is the non-tropical ‘Michigan hardy’ cardoon seedling which will hopefully prove to be more hardy than previous seedlings. It’s become a monster and I wonder if I’ll ever hope that winter takes this one out like it has all my others.

hardy cardoon — This is another really nice camera angle. All year I hated how this combo worked (or didn’t work), but here at just the right angle the cardoon is nestled in perfectly between grasses, pokeweed and dahlias.

I reeeeaaaallly like the cardoon although again it’s one of those spiny, pokey, too-big, weedy looking, things that takes up all the room that a peony could shine in, but… let’s just move on. The potager still looks respectable even if a few too many ‘Hopi Red Dye’ amaranthus were allowed to grow in all the wrong places.

the potager pergola — Parts of the potager are still neat and weed free. Let’s hope I can keep this up for a second year!

We’re still picking a few things such as eggplant and tomatoes but for me the chrysanthemums and gourds are so much more entertaining. Now that fall transplanting season is upon us it will take resolve of steel to keep from filling all the beds with tulips and transplants of everything which would likely do better in more cultivated soil.

diy pergola — The raised beds are nice, but my favorite spot is the pergola. Already I’m wondering what to do with the four corners next year!

A bed or two of phlox, multiple beds filled with tulips, a few for chrysanthemums, maybe just a few coleus here and there 🙂

hardy chrysanthemums — Last year annual salvia dominated, this year the dry weather stunted the salvia seedlings and left an opening for mums and verbena.

Just is case you’re wondering how my feelings towards the new editor are going… I don’t like it…. but what I do like are colchicums. And just typing the word immediately lowered my blood pressure a bit and made the three days I’ve been screwing around with this post seem just a little less wasted.

colchicum flowers — The last of the colchicum with a leaner sister of the big lusty cardoon that’s growing in the tropical bed. I think this is mostly ‘Nancy Lindsay’ and maybe ‘Lilac Wonder’?

I really try to avoid showing the same plant again and again, but the dry, cool weather has the colchicums lasting and lasting. So here again is my group of C. speciosum giganteum group.

colchicum speciosum gigantea group — Colchicum giganteum still looking good after two weeks.

And although my friend Cathy grows this one much better than I do, Colchicum autumnale album plenum is slowly spreading into a small clump that will hopefully some day become a small drift of white.

And one more. C. speciosum ‘Atrorubens’ came up pale but has now darkened down to a rich color which bleeds onto the stem almost to the ground.

colchicum speciosum atrorubens — Colchicum speciosum ‘Atrorubens’

Oh and one other announcement. After about ten years of holding onto an old shower door, two years of thinking I should use it for a coldframe, and four weekends of staring and planning and considering, the coldframe is finally done. “What took so long?” you ask… well I don’t know. I’ve just been lazy.

diy coldframe — It took forever for me to figure out how to use the hoarded door, wood scraps, and salvaged pink marble to build… but once the last screw was in it took me about 15 minutes to fill it with plants.

In case you’re wondering, the door slides flat in order to cover the plants, it’s just folded up right now to enjoy the sun and breezes of autumn… and since I look at it multiple times a day, I might as well leave it open anyway. I like it. I’m happy it’s done, and with that albatross off my neck I’m free to do more fun-erer things until the next simple project weighs me down.

homegrown gourd harvest — As soon as I finished basking in the glow of a project done, and congratulated myself one last time, it was time to harvest the gourds. An excellent haul me thinks!

I noticed the pink marble of the coldframe isn’t quite as pink as it could be and what’s the sense of a marble coldframe if everyone doesn’t realize it’s marble? I worry that garden tours will pass by and think it’s just fieldstone or any old stone block or something, and that could be embarrassing… especially after they’ve experienced the fancy that is our potager. Perhaps this weekend’s to-do list will have to start with some powerwashing. I’m sure in the grand scheme of gardening tasks which I neglect, powerwashing the blocks under a crusty little coldframe is the most effective use of my gardening energies. On a side note, it’s obvious why I could never do this professionally.

new england aster alma — “Alma Potschke” New England aster along the runoff path for the gutters. I should call it the ‘rain garden’, that has a nicer ring to it.

Honestly there are so many more important things to do, such as replanting a couple hundred daffodils or bringing in dozens of potted plants or doing all the other fall prep, but I suspect I’ll start the weekend off with powerwashing. Ok, full honesty means that I also looked at the birch trees and decided they should be whiter and cleaner as well. If you never see another photo with the birch trees in it you’ll know how that went.

Hope your weekend turns out more productive, but even if it’s not have a great one! -btw I think I survived the new editor…

A Case of the Lazies

Sep27

You would think that with all the hand sanitizer, distancing, staying at home, and hand washing, that there would have a sterile cloud surrounding me, but somehow I’ve still managed to catch a case of the lazies. What a surprise, right? I’ve never really shown much immunity, so all it really takes is a cloud across the sun, a temperature slightly too cool, or a day with a nice breeze to trigger a relapse. I guess that happened. My wife will tell me I should have worn a coat. My son will ask if I want another donut. It’s easy to see the struggle.

The front border as we roll into October. Heterotheca villosa ‘Ruth Baumgardner’ is the yellow daisy in front.

A coffee and a donut make for a nice morning stroll around the garden. Fancy people do scones and jam, but scones are crumbly, and I’d hate to waste a trail of jammy crumbles behind me as I take in the dewy garden. As I walk, the dew and change to fall colors make it really obvious summer is over and I’m surprisingly ok with that. The garden right now is a mix of summer lingerers and autumn bloomers, and although I spent last weekend leveling my mother inlaw’s garden and putting nails in the coffin of her 2020 season, here it’s a different story. Cool things like the Heterotheca villosa are only now just coming into full flower. This plant was shared with me a few years back by Kathy Purdy of Cold Climate Gardening fame, and it’s a native daisy which I cut back by half each June to keep bushy. From what I’ve heard, ‘Ruth Baumgardner’ is named after a past president of the Perennial Plant Association, and was selected as a shorter form of the species, but that’s still relatively tall, hence the early summer chop.

Lingering rebloom on the red hot poker. The bright color looks as good now as it did in July

If I weren’t so under the weather with my laziness I would be taking advantage of the more relaxed pace of pre-October and building that coldframe I’ve been mulling over for the last three weekends. Unlike the last four years that I’ve been thinking about it, this is the year it has to happen. I’ve already lined up a few plants to go in (all my projects are usually the result of me painting myself into a corner plantwise), pulled out materials, piled them into the garage (where the car can’t go until this in done…), and now I just have to commit to a design. ***spoiler alert** it’s based on an old shower door and leftover 2x4s so don’t set your hopes too high…

Admiring colchicums is an excellent lazy day activity. Here’s ‘Lilac Wonder’ flopping its way through the blue of leadwort.

Even just talking about a future coldframe has me exhausted, so let’s take one more look around the garden. The mums are coming, the colchicum are here, and in spite of a slight touch of disgustingly early frost, the garden still looks nice.

The former rock garden turned colchicum bed has been overrun with chrysanthemum seedlings. Not for the worse though. Colchicum ‘Innocence’ still found enough of an opening to show off.

A few early chrysanthemums. I’ve killed off many (honestly it’s closer to most) of the larger flowered ones, but they’re my favorites. Someday I dream of fussing and nurturing them enough to have those big show-worthy blooms, but this year just getting them staked them was a big first step.

I believe this is ‘Cheerleader’. Even under less than perfect conditions he tops out at 3+feet and requires some kind of support.

With the chrysanthemums starting in the potager I was happy to see that even with all the new beds and strict paths, there was still a nice crescendo of late summer chaos. Verbena bonariensis and ‘Hopi Red Dye’ amaranthus still found their loopholes and there’s more than just dried tomato vines and over the hill zucchini filling the beds.

An overgrown mess is what I expect in October. Fall veggies would be nice too, but there’s always the farmstand for that.

One veggie which I do want to show off is the sword bean (Canavalia gladiata) which has managed to grow up the pergola and put out a few pods in spite of the shortening days. I admit to checking it every day as the foot long pods get fatter and fatter, and if anyone gets even remotely close to the potager I insist on showing them off. At the suggestion of a friend I usually do it with a little “argh, these be my sword beans, argh”, but the magic of my humor is often met with an uncomfortably blank stare.

The sword bean. It’s grown as a vegetable through India and SE Asia but I’m not sure if it’s edible here in Umrika.

Now colchicums. I looked and saw only three pictures were posted on this blog last year, so you’re welcome, but even after I killed half the ones I transplanted during the potager construction (leaving them out to dry in 97F full sun was not really as good an idea as I thought), there are still a few nice ones to show.

Colchicum ‘The Giant’. I think this is the real thing, and it’s worth it to find.

The cooler, dry weather has made for an excellent season.

Colchicum ‘Sparticus’ was too pale for me at first, but as the single bulb has turned into a bunching of blooms I’ve become a fan

Colchicum ‘Harlekijn’. Love it or hate it you have to admit it’s unusual.

Colchicum ‘Zephyr’. The nerd in me enjoys this gathering of Cotinus, Colchicum, and Cardoon (Cynara cardunculus). That’s a lot of Cs.

Colchicum cilicium. Maybe Colchicum cilicium ‘Purpureum’ according to the most recent buzz, but regardless I really like this little guy.

Colchicum giganteum… another one which might be getting a more correct naming of Colchicum speciosum giganteum group.

‘Lilac Wonder’ in the lawn between the swingset and trampoline. I wonder if the kids will ever question why there were so many poisonous plants so close to their play areas…. although I like to think of the whole garden as their play area.

Colchicum speciosum (I don’t think it’s ‘The Giant’) in need of dividing. A whole border filled with these might not be a terrible idea… hmmmm…

I’m surprised by how many colchicums this garden has acquired. I blame thoughtful friends and the evils of social networking, but seriously if a yard full of colchicum is the worst viral pictures bring on then I’m all for it. Unfortunately that’s not always the case. In the meantime I’m looking for more, and I’m also obsessing about a new book. Colchicum: The Complete Guide has recently come out as the definitive guide on species and many cultivars and I keep thinking what’s a full on obsession without a guidebook to follow? It’s item number one on the Christmas list 😉

Still Not the Worst

Oct13

Ok, so I think I have to admit I’m halfway liking fall this year. Those who know me are shocked. I’m shocked, but to be honest the weather has been decent, there’s been free time to work in the garden, and just enough rain has come down to make planting and projects a pleasure, so it’s kind of an ideal autumn. Gnats though, that’s one thing I can complain about. They’re all over, but as long as I keep my head covered and don’t sit around too much it’s still tolerable… usually… until they get so thick I inhale a few, and then I’m done and back in the house.

‘Pink Cadillac’ chrysanthemum just starting in the front border alongside some floppy little bluestem and perovskia.

Once the clouds of bugs thin a little, I sneak out a different door and try for a few more minutes in the garden. October is chrysanthemums, and surprisingly enough a few have survived all the summertime neglect to now look bright and fresh in an otherwise tired looking garden. One of these years I will really give them the springtime attention they deserve, but they don’t seem to be pining away waiting for me to come through for them, and look good anyway. I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

A nice orange chrysanthemum which was discovered after the Rosa glauca was cut back mid summer. It’s been blooming for at least a month and the flowers get to be almost four inches across, so I’m good with that!

Although I’ve been enjoying the finale of the garden more than usual this year, I’ve also managed to squeeze in some actual work and projects. One such project has been building up some of the flower beds which drowned last year in the endless rain we had. A load of topsoil was ordered and delivered, and slowly found its way around the house and into the backyard, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, and will hopefully help in keeping plants up and out of the swamp… just in case we ever end up in another repeating loop of rainstorm after rainstorm after flood.

Drowned hydrangeas and rhododendrons are gone, and this bed’s been raised about two or three inches. Also a nice walk out of salvaged stones makes this bed look promising again.

Although I am entirely against hard labor, at least the delivered topsoil is root and rock-free and easy to dig… as long as it’s only slightly wet, and hasn’t crusted yet or turned into rock solid dirt clods. Hopefully it makes for easy planting and good growing next year with a minimum of weeds, but experience suggests otherwise and I should probably get a plan together as far as mulching and groundcovers.

The bog garden is looking quite nice now that the pitchers have grown a little and some spagnum moss has been moved in. Now if I only knew what to do with it for the winter.

I had planned on ordering a load of shredded bark mulch to follow up on the topsoil, but yesterday discovered my source is closed for the season. Easy come easy go I guess, and I’ve taken that as a sign to not bother, save the money, and instead find something else (preferably free) to cover up the newly bare and exposed real estate for the winter. My friend Paula mentioned her frequent trips for free township compost and that sounded like an excellent plan. A little research on my part and I discovered there may be free compost available from my town as well, and maybe just maybe I can squeeze a few loads into the back of my less than three month old suv without making a muddy mess. We’ll see. It’s about time I broke it in anyway.

The topsoil ran out and so did the gardener, so this is how I left things. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have the energy to redo the stone path and set the last of my stones… but I still need more soil to raise the bed and all of that is gone…

Oh and by the way in between dirt moving and stone setting, I weed wacked the entire industrial park berm. Ok so it took three days and it was before the dirt was delivered, but I’m glad it’s done and I have to admit it does look nicer… even if I almost broke a leg a couple times as I lost my footing or tried to reach just a little too far down the slope…

The berm stretching back from my mother in law’s to the end of my yard. The spruce are at least ten feet tall, so it’s a big area and a lot of work to clear. Imagine my two word response when someone said “I wish you would have done that all summer”.

The boring neatness of a cut berm is far less interesting than the front yard, so it’s out there that I go to enjoy some color. We had a bit of frost last Saturday, but overall it’s still fairly colorful with a few late bloomers and a bunch of lingerers.

After ten years a few of my conifers have finally grown big enough to become noticeable. Oh my gosh this might qualify as winter interest!

The lingerers are mostly annuals and dahlias holding on until frost, and the late bloomers are mostly mums and asters, but there is one star which always makes me happy to see. ‘Sunnyside Up’ pokeberry (Phytolacca americana) has been lighting up the street side of the border all summer and as I found out this past week has been stirring up the neighborhood as well. While cleaning the last of the dirt from the driveway a neighbor stopped by to tell me about the ‘invasive’ he saw growing out there. “Those weeds are all over my backyard” he started with, and then continued to go on about how they spread and how fast they grew, but not much further before I cut him off with the offer of another beer. Problem solved.

At this time of year I love the red stems and purple berries alongside the yellow foliage of “Sunnyside Up” pokeweed. I get a little thrill every time the mockingbird swoops down to snatch another berry or two and spread the joy of this lovely native far and wide. As long as you’re going to have pokeweed might as well have a lovely yellow leaved strain.

Once the subject changed I didn’t even mention the masses of mugwort and the forest of bradford pear seedlings which lined the road behind him. Or the bittersweet which went from just a sprig to a tree-strangling mass in five years… or the Japanese knotweed, stiltgrass, honeysuckle, garlic mustard in the woods… or the purple loosestrife growing in his foundation beds. Hmmmmm. Plenty for another post. We should enjoy just a few more autumn flowers instead 🙂

One of the last of the colchicums, C. autumnale album plenum. Just as a note I’ve tried to refrain from posting too many colchicum photos this year, so fair warning that 2020 will be a rebound year.

I’m thinking the reason I’m finally enjoying autumn is the new ‘I don’t care’ attitude which has developed out of my previous ‘because I can’ attitude. At first it was actually a little hard to leave the lawn uncut and let weeds grow, but unless it was really necessary I let a bunch of the tedious labor slide this year in favor of stuff I’d still be enjoying years from now. New shrubs. New beds. New paths. Lower maintenance plantings. Simplification. Last year to keep the garden perfect meant continuous mowing, trimming, and weeding that went around the yard and then started all over as soon as it was done. Thats no fun, and it’s also only appreciated by myself. So I let it go.

The hardy cyclamen (C. hederifolium) alongside the driveway are flowering well this fall. About half rotted out from the rain last year, but the survivors seem to have recovered and are seeding about.

Or… maybe I’ve just reached critical mass for fall flowers and this is the first year in three that every day doesn’t start with gloomy, rainy grayness, but I think it’s the flowers. Better get to the nursery this afternoon to make sure I haven’t missed any fall blooming plants that can still go in 🙂

My bougainvillea has greeted cooler weather with a second flush of flowers. The colors scream summer, but the blooms are welcome regardless even if they do look a little out of place in October.

Or maybe I’m overthinking all of this. The truth is I have new snowdrops, and some are already sprouting and in bloom and that makes me think of spring. I love spring. Maybe all this talk of autumn is really just a very very early spring.

Have a great week 🙂

It Could Be Worse

Sep19

Things have entered ‘don’t care’ mode around here. The gnats are swarming, the days are warm, the soil is dry, and the nights are cool enough that everyone (plants and gardener included) is thinking about wrapping things up for the year and calling it autumn.

The red onion harvest drying under the back porch overhang.

I make no secret of the fact I dislike autumn. Letting go of the growing season is tough and I try to put it off for as long as possible, but for some reason this year it’s a little different. This year I’m almost looking forward to a few autumnal things, and I barely mind seeing summer 2019 fade into the the history books.

The potager has made its annual transition into an over the hill, flower filled and vegetable-free weedy mess. I love it, and I love all the late season bugs, bees and butterflies.Fall has suddenly become an easier transition, and I think it’s got a lot to do with my super formal program of planting more things that reach their peak after summer takes a step back. In case you don’t know, my ‘super formal program’ translates into going to the nursery each week in autumn and planting whatever looks nice.

The strong carmine color of what’s left of aster ‘Alma Potschke’ is the only reason I grow this plant. To me most of the asters don’t seem to bloom for any great length of time and I’ve actually gotten rid of a few… or I just resent the fact they grow well all along the highways yet struggle in my garden beds.

One fall-bloomer which I don’t ever give enough credit to is the variegated obedient plant which has been bravely plodding along for a few years now in the dry, rooty shade of the north end of the yard. I was given a warning when my friend dropped it off, but apparently the spot where it’s been planted is so terrible it hasn’t even considered trying to spread.

Physostegia virginiana 'Variegata' obedient plant

Variegated obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana ‘Variegata’) bringing a little color to the shade garden.

Other plants giving fall color now are the colchicums. The earliest ones are in full stride, but the mid-season ones are starting up now as well. The heat rushes them along, but they’re still a welcome flush of fresh color amongst all the other fading and yellowing summer things.

Colchicum ‘Nancy Lindsay’ just outside the smothering leaves of a verbascum seedling. Nancy is one of the most reliable colchicums I grow, and quite the looker as well.

A newer colchicum is ‘World Champion’s Cup’ which is officially the largest flowering colchicum in the garden. Although the photo doesn’t do the size justice, the blooms probably span six inches when open in the sun, and of course I love it.

Colchicum ‘World Champion’s Cup’. Not many blooms yet, but if size matters then this is the colchicum for you. The heat seems to have bleached parts of the flower, but that’s a big improvement compared to what the skunks did to them last year.

Fall blooming bulbs aside, the tropical garden is earning its keep as the season winds down. It looks lush enough but it also looks like my complaining last year about digging so many roots and tubers fell on deaf ears. In another month when non-hardy things get cut back and stuffed into winter storage I’m not sure who or what I’ll be complaining about, but I’m sure it will be quite vocal. Only the gnats will be listening though, and their fake concern will only be a cover used to get close enough for an ear canal dive or yet another stealth attack to the legs.

As usual the pathway is nearly impassable due to plants growing just as big as they were supposed to. That doesn’t matter though. What I get a kick out of is the huge goldenrod growing up past the kitchen window of the person who obsesses about dandelions and crabgrass in the lawn.

I can’t take in all the cannas. I already thought I had too many and then planted seeds for even more, and of course they grew even better than they should have. As seed grown plants they’re all a little bit different, so now the struggle is deciding which of my babies is so wonderfully different that I need to dig it as well. Obviously one of the things I’ll be complaining about this fall is my own lack of common sense.

Cannova ‘Mango’ seedlings. Do I save the shorter ones… the ones with a more mango color… the heaviest bloomers…

Common sense also will not apply to the elephant ears. I suspect the tubers will weigh in at close to a ton, and someone said they might want to try one next spring so obviously I should dig another hundred just in case they want more. It should be fun, but I’m not sure if this is really what people who claim to enjoy autumn do to enjoy the season.

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Category Archives: colchicums