Thursday’s Feature: Allium flavum ssp. tauricum

Jul8

This week’s feature is a mouthful, one unlikely to be spoken while browsing the plant racks at Home Depot or even on the tables of your better nurseries. It’s not particularly showy or amazing, but all the same it’s showy and amazing and I’m glad to have it here in the garden.

Allium flavum ssp tauricum, a range of pastel flower colors as well as a range of foliage colors, from straight green to blue-gray.

This small, summer blooming allium is one of those onions which may surprise gardeners who typically think of flowering onions as mostly purple, and mostly late spring bloomers, but here it is in all its early summer, pastel tones. Mine came via the North American Rock Garden Society seed exchange (another mouthful) and were labeled “ex McDonough”. For those of you not in the onion know, Mark McDonough is the onion man, essentially a global authority on all things allium and if you’re interested he hosts a website called PlantBuzz to which I heartily recommend a visit. If you can’t find anything interesting on his site I’m going to guess you stopped reading my post after the first few sentences, but if you’re still with me give it a click… if only to look at wonder upon the different forms of even something as simple as chives!

Another view, same clump…. Allium flavum ssp tauricum ex McDonough. I feel like my onions have quite the pedigree 🙂

Regular plain old Allium flavum (yellow onion) doesn’t have the range of pale, pink, and rusty tones which the subspecies tauricum shows, but I think they’re both equally easy to grow. Mine were planted in February of 2013, the pot went outdoors and the seeds came up that spring. The first flowers showed the year after and other than digging and spreading the clump out a bit two years ago they’ve been plugging along in a full sun spot ever since with no help from me.

Last year’s seedlings blooming for the first time… less diverse, but still nice!

For as easy to grow as they are you would think they could be a pest, but I have yet to see a single seedling come up on its own. They just politely do their thing and all I do is clean up a few dead leaves and flower stems once flowering is finished… they are an evergreen onion, so there’s some foliage all year even after things die down a bit in August.

Keep your eyes open for A. flavum ssp tauricum and grab it if you have the chance. Also if you have the chance, give Cosmos and Cleome a visit to see what Kimberly and other bloggers are featuring this Thursday. Each week she encourages us to focus on a single plant and it’s fun seeing which favorites show up on other gardener’s blogs You’re more than welcome to join, and if you do leave a link on Kimberley’s blog so we can come find you!

Tuesday View: The Tropics 6.28.16

Jun28

Two of my favorite bloggers are bringing back a meme which I’ve always enjoyed. Cathy of Words and Herbs and Kimberley of Cosmos and Cleome both highlight a longer view each Tuesday and we get to see it develop and change as the year passes. I’m no expert on the meme but I think Cathy sticks to a specific viewpoint and time while Kimberly varies the perspective and location depending on what’s going on in the garden. Myself on the other hand am barely capable of getting any post up in a given week, so to keep it simple I’m going to follow Cathy’s lead and go with one view, same bed, same point each week and see if I can handle that. Also since the tropical bed went in last week (about time since it’s already past the solstice and well into summer) I’m going to highlight this bed as my view, and (hopefully) watch as it grows up.

My fingers are crossed that over the next few weeks this bed will become an explosion of color and foliage and maybe bring a taste of the tropics to this end of NE Pennsylvania.

I’ll try to keep this short, since assuming things grow I want to save a little material for future posts, but besides the thrill of actually getting most of the plants in last week I always get a little excited checking this patch each day to see how quickly things progress. All season bloomers which sit as a lump of color and put out the same old flowers each week bore me a little, and even though I can appreciate someone wanting low maintenance, neat color, I want something that sneaks up on you and then overwhelms you, like a horticultural tsunami! Hence the tropical garden, and anything bright and big and leafy is more than welcome.

The papyrus was not happy last year and I suspect it didn’t get nearly as much water as it wanted so instead of planting it in the ground again I placed it in a pot submerged in a second pot full of water. Green water. So far the reviews of this planting have not been 100% favorable.

You can’t really tell from the tiny sprigs, twigs, and tubers, but this year’s theme is orange and purple. That’s not a solid theme, it’s more my mood when I’m out picking up annuals or choosing which dahlias to put here versus in other parts of the garden… or finding a flat of orange zinnias on sale and liking zinnias. So until the oranges fill in, hot pink and purple will have to do for a theme. Besides the annuals, perennials have a way of sneaking in everywhere, and although I pulled a wheelbarrow full of daisies and transplanted dozens of chrysanthemums, there are still a few things such as this knockout rose and purple ‘Caradonna’ salvia which are just too colorful to stand up to. Maybe next year will be the year I follow through on my threats to remove the salvias.

The ultra rare and uncommon ‘Knockout’ rose tastefully complimented with orange zinnias at its feet and scavenged lawn clippings as mulch. This Tuesday view already promises to reek of class each week 🙂

So there you have it. By next week I hope to have a few cannas sprouting and a few more zinnias assaulting your color senses and overall I really hope things don’t end up requiring a rototiller and a fresh start by August.

Think about joining in with the view and if you do leave a link at either Cathy‘s or Kimberley’s blog so we can find you. Not to put words in their mouths but I’m sure both will agree “the more the merrier” and I always enjoy watching another garden grow throughout the season… even if it does turn into a trashy mess of too much color and chaos!

One word…. Dichelostemma

Jun20

I inherited my mother’s habit of randomly picking up and trying out just about any odd, looks-like-it-might-be-nice bulb that shows up in the garden center’s bins. Together we’ve failed at freesia, ranunculus, ixia… but every now and then something gives a surprise, and lately it’s been Dichelostemma.

Dichelostemma ‘Pink Diamond’ out in the meadow garden

The first one which made its way into the garden was a selected form of the naturally occurring hybrid ‘Pink Diamond’. I love the totally tubular pink flowers and the waxy thickness of the blooms and was surprised it actually grew since the bulbs came via a November closeout sale, and late planting into a cold, wet clayish soil is typically not a recipe for success for drought tolerant bulbs from the western reaches of North America. But they came up fine the next spring and when the wiry flower stalks matured to bright pink clusters of bloom in June I was hooked.

Daisies and Dichelostemma in front of a worse for wear Queen of the Prairie. The Queen still presides over the back forty, but between acidic rainfall and wayward groundhog nibbling her reign may soon be coming to an end.

‘Pink Diamond’ may or may not become a permanent resident in the meadow. The first planting returned to bloom the second year but has not put up flowers in the third. I blame rabbits for nibbling too much of the spring foliage, but we will see what happens next year, as this spring with all the new crocus flowers to chose from the rabbits didn’t quite get to the Dichelostemma foliage before moving on to freshly planted lettuce and broccoli in the vegetable garden.

The ‘other’ Dichelostemma (D. congestum) has been going strong though, putting up its beautiful lilac-purple flower clusters for three years now… in spite of also being nibbled.

Dichelostemma congestum has the common name of fork toothed Ookow. When you get tired of introducing guests to your dichelostemma I’m sure switching to the common name will clear things up.

I love how these plants look among the weeds and grass of the meadow. I can imagine this isn’t entirely unlike their native habitat in the Western edges of the continent and from a gardeners point of view the yellowing foliage is completely disguised by the surrounding greenery. Not to get distracted, but I wonder how alliums would work out back here since many of those also share the trick of letting their foliage go to pot just as the blooms reach their peak.

Dichelostemma ida-maia is my last of the D’s and I suppose ‘firecracker plant’ is a decent common name for this one…. although it’s no Ookow.

Dichelostemma ida-maia. The shape and color of this flower has ‘hummingbird plant’ written all over it.

Besides adding more ‘Pink Diamond’ last fall, I also put in a few D. ida-maia… in spite of my thoughts that I wouldn’t like them. I was completely wrong in my lack of enthusiasm. The sad anemic version I saw a few years ago is nothing like the group I now have swaying in the dappled light amongst the grass. I’m far too greedy a collector to commit large spaces to a single plant but I would have no problem adding another hundred or two (versus the 10 I started with) to this end of the meadow, which is entirely do-able since these small bulb are relatively cheap even when not on clearance.

I trimmed up the lower limbs of the aspen and love the Rocky Mountain glade effect it has given. Add a Western NA native Dichelostemma ida-maia and we may be on to something here 😉

I’m not sure what the hardiness on these plants (both species and their hybrid daughter) is. To be honest I didn’t think they would make it through their first careless planting (really careless… cold November fingers so one shovel swipe into the turf, dump bag contents into hole and stomp sod clod down again on top), but they did survive, and it was a winter where our lows reached -6F (-21C) with a solidly frozen soil for months. So they’re at least that hardy, and I think the extreme summer dryness of the meadow also helps them return in spite of any issues with poorly drained, wet winter soils.

Dichelostemma. Think about it. I think they’re pretty cool.

GBFD Finishing August

Aug24

Yesterday was the 22nd, today the 23rd, and by the time this post is finished the date will probably flip on to the 24th, which will make me two full days late in joining Christina in the celebration of Garden Blogger’s Foliage Day. I’m sure she’s fine with my tardiness but I’m also sure I didn’t want to miss this month’s opportunity to look past flowers and recognize all the contributions foliage makes in the garden.

In the vegetable garden the broad leaves of late planted summer squash threaten to swamp their less edible neighbors. I love how fast they grow in the heat.

I’m a big fan of large leaves and whether they’re squash or cannas or elephant ears, the more enthusiastic a grower the better! While some plants did not enjoy the recent spell of hot weather, a newer resident of the garden did.

One of the larger elephant ears, Alocasia ‘Borneo Giant’, is finally putting out some more enthusiastic growth. The leaf is still barely larger than my hand but the giant part of the name gives me hope for the future!

Summer is when I really enjoy the potted plants on the deck. Not only can they be enjoyed from the window, they can be enjoyed as you walk by, as you sit in a comfy seat, or from below. It’s as if you’re multitasking your enjoyment!

The rich foliage pattern of this coleus sometimes gets lost in a planting, but against the white railings the colors really come through.

Besides showcasing my favorite plants close up, the deck is also a great place to show off the little things which get lost out in the garden.

Little cacti and succulents which don’t mind a few missed waterings or weekend road trips. They’re all foliage and make great deck plants… which look even better if the gardener finally repots them into roomier quarters (as I did this spring, although one of this bunch already needs a bigger home).

As I was walking about trying to focus on foliage, I realized this collection at the end of the deck steps doesn’t rely on a single flower to bring in the color.

More succulents as well as ‘Alabama Sunset’ coleus, ‘purple flash’ pepper, and my belovedly spiny porcupine tomato.

It’s really way past time to do a catch-up post on this year’s deck planters (and hopefully I can come clean soon) but there’s only so much time tonight, and there’s still plenty of other foliage to consider in the garden. For as exciting as flowers and color are, sometimes the eye needs to rest on a little green. For me chrysanthemums are a nearly indestructible planting for some of the hotter, dryer, tougher-to-fill spots which could use a soft mound of green.

Usually the iris in the back has nothing but sad, browning and yellowing leaves, but this year the rain has been enough to keep it growing strong. The chrysanthemum on the other hand looks respectable for the entire summer, even when the crabgrass gives up.

Dry sun is bad, but dry shade is worse, and this year I’ve been surprised at how well variegated obedient plant, (Physostegia virginiana ‘Variegata’) has done. In moist soil it may spread a little too enthusiastically, but here it seems downright demure, and I wonder if the straight green type would be as restrained.

Physostegia virginiana ‘Variegata’ lighting up the shade. It’s a dry spot full of maple roots, but the foliage on this plant still looks great.

In my only bit of non-rooty shade I can always count on the calm contrasts of foliage form and color via evergreens and hostas. Although things are beginning to get crowded here, I won’t mess with this planting until it starts to look desperate.

Along the porch the hostas cover the spring bulb plantings and dwarf conifers shelter the porch without overwhelming it. They’re all slow growing plants, but not too long ago I remember being able to easily plant between these shrubs.

The calm of the shade garden is always appreciated in summer, but in sunnier spots August means flowers, and I do try for plenty of that as well. Even with all the flowers though, a good foliage background can make a world of difference.

The rich red flowers of dahlia ‘Mathew Allen’ set off even brighter next to the solid mass of the red-leaved cannas.

I’m all for the masses of flowers but you sometimes need a rest here and there and a mass of foliage can be just the ticket. For next year I’m already nursing along a few new bananas and elephant ears and I think things will look a little different in this border. If worse comes to worse though I can always replant sunflowers 🙂

More cannas trying to keep their chin up against the tide of sunflowers which still swirls around the tropical garden. In my opinion this bed could have used a few more masses of foliage to balance out all the bloom.

So there are some August musings on foliage from my neck of the woods. If you’d like to dabble a little deeper give Creating my own garden of the Hesperides a visit. Each month on the 22nd Christina provides the platform there to host a foliage review, and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed by the foliage musings of bloggers from around the world!

Wordless Wednesday: Lilium formosanum, two years from seed :)

Aug19

Down on the farm

Aug19

Late August is bathing us in heat this year and the steady rains have brought on the harvest. We modestly refer to our garden as “the farm” or “potager” and this is the time of year when it shines. Produce begins to trickle in and suddenly there’s a little more interest in the backyard.

The picnic table is the place to be for drying off and cleaning up before the kitchen. Garlic, potatoes, and the first of the onions started the month off.

Eggplant and peppers have been going out, onions are always popular, tomatoes are on their way, and beans are yet to come. The harvest is late due to planter’s procrastination but who out there hasn’t ever fallen behind? At this time of year even I fix up a plate of veggies, and they aren’t even deep fried 🙂

I grow red cabbage just for the looks, but there’s a good chance these heads will disappear soon and show up again later as rotkraut. Fine by me, but in the meantime they look nice with the verbena, eggplant, and marigolds.

I admire a neat garden with raised, raked beds and straight rows of perfect plantings, but that’s nowhere even close to my garden. The potager is tumbledown mix of flowers, crops, and all kinds of odds and ends that found an open spot of soil and made it their home. Phlox are never turned away, and earlier in the month they started their summertime concerto and the music still plays on through the heat. For this I consider myself lucky, since earlier in the spring between spidermites and drought I got the feeling it would be a down year for the tall garden phlox (Phlox paniculata).

Phlox paniculata ‘Dorffreude’ (Karl Foerster introduction, 1939) making a good argument that newer isn’t always better.

The phlox make me happy, but the other flowers which add to the non-agricultural chaos also make me smile, and the tall Verbena bonariensis leads the way with their bee and butterfly attracting bloom heads.

Now’s the time when the verbena becomes too attractive to pull. It’s a fair trade-off since the flowers draw in nearly every passing butterfly.

One area of responsible neatness is the boxwood hedge which edges the two forward sides of the garden. After three years the small plants have finally begun to look nearly respectable. To celebrate this milestone I spent way too much money on what I hope will be a set of premium hedge shears. The electric trimmer has been shelved and I took the quieter, more contemplative path of manual trimming. For me it’s relaxing and I think I’m one of the few who actually enjoys this job.

Slowly the boxwood hedge fills in. I can still remember the summer day way back when me, a bucket of boxwood clippings, a few trays of potting mix, and a couple beers started this all.

Besides boxwood and phlox, chrysanthemums (ok, new name dendranthema) are starting to make a serious play for potager real estate. This spring I added even more of the larger flowered football types, trying to stick with anything which might be hardy through the winter. I’d try to explain this growing obsession with mums but honestly after just admitting I enjoy hedge trimming I’m not sure there’s much I can say to defend this last quirk.

Hardy (hopefully) football mum. If the mood strikes next year I may even try disbudding a few of these to see if I can force all the plant’s energy into one single, perfectly large, perfectly perfect, bloom.

Dahlias. I like dahlias. I think I’ve already confessed to that. Of course a late planting gives late flowers, and you know me and late.

Dahlia ‘Moonstruck’. This is its third year and it has yet to let me down, although I suspect it carries a virus which causes the leaves to yellow and die way too early in the season.

Sometimes late isn’t anyone’s fault. For the second year in a row I’ve had these gladiolus bulbs overwinter in the open garden. Against better advice I even transplanted them in June and look at that, the clump still managed to send up two bloom stalks. If this keeps up I’ll need to divide the clumps next year since the other clump is up to 8 flower stalks!

Just your average hellebore-gladiolus-rudbeckia-tomato planting. I don’t think you’ll find this combo anywhere else… probably for good reason 🙂

But procrastination does have its down side. Although the persicaria and rudbeckia have never looked better next to the potager, the light green ‘turf’ in the bed is 100% weeds…. and this is still supposed to be a red border, which rudbeckia is not. Also the trellis never received a solid footing, and was never officially planted. I guess that’s what the plans for next season are made of!

persicaria red border

Enjoy your own harvest, whether it be fruits or flowers, contentment or excitement. The season is here and as long as the heat doesn’t kill you first you can shelve these moments away in your mind for those dark days in January.

Spare the rod

Aug14

My nemesis the sunflower.

Self sown sunflowers from birdseed backed up by variegated giant reed grass (Arundo donax ‘gold chain’).

Harmless and full of promise is how they appear in the spring, now two months later they’re acting more like closing time at the bar. Sloppy drunks hang all over one another, sprawl across the beds, and smother the other sober little plants which have yet to grow. If it weren’t for their summertime good looks and the goldfinches they pull in I would compost them all!

Future birdfood.

It doesn’t take many sunflower seedlings to overtake a bed and between the extra mulching and copious rainfall they’ve had everything they needed to explode. It’s like a lovely tsunami of sun looming over the plantings.

The sunflowers do look pretty with the purple verbena bonariensis, striped leaves of ‘tropicanna’ canna, and the first of the peach colored salvia splendens.

From the top of the bed it still looks pretty but only after I cut down two of the sunflower trees and chopped the rest back in order to clear the pool path again.

The tropical border looking colorful, but as usual not very tropical.

The inner depths of the tropical bed are beyond reach, I’ll have to wait for frost before I can get in there again. Fortunately it’s well mulched and doesn’t need much of anything for most of the summer, so as long as the cannas and reed grass don’t get completely swamped I guess I can turn the other cheek and let chaos rule.

There’s a giant thistle in there as well, I see a steady trail of goldfinches flying in and out feasting on the seed.

Really. Next year will be the year when this whole mess gets back under control. The sunflowers will have to go as well as the chrysanthemums which never did get moved like they were supposed to. In spite of the overwhelming agricultural look of the sunflowers (and I have to admit I really love the show right now) there are a few tropical highlights which have flickered on. The cannas may not be as big as in years past, but I would never go without them.

Healthy ‘Tropicanna’ canna leaves in a sea of green with only a touch of gold.

They’ve still got a good two months of growing before frost threatens and hopefully everything will still have plenty of time to fill in. While other parts of the garden might be taking on a weary look this time of year, these tropicals are just going from good to better, and it’s not just the cannas. The dahlias are beginning to come on as well. The flowers are what I’m waiting for, but on a few the foliage show is even better.

Dahlia ‘happy single flame’ with the dark purple spires of ‘Lighthouse purple’ salvia behind. I wish those salvia were just a tiny bit taller, right now this low planting looks closer to Victorian bedding than tropicalismo!

Although the foliage is fantastic, I wish I could say the same for the blooms of dahlia ‘happy single flame’. They don’t last long and never really make the ‘wow’ impression most of the other dahlias do. The color is great though and I’ll try to hold on to this one for another year or two, even as the others bloom their heads off in comparison.

Peak bloom on dahlia ‘happy single flame’.

One plant which I had high hopes for but is now slightly underwhelming is the Brazilian button. New this year from the HPS Mid Atlantic seed exchange, the buttons are nice enough but there could be more flowering at one time and most importantly have a color less like the verbena which I already have filling in all over. You just don’t notice them in the mix.

Brazilian button (Centratherum punctatum)

But I’m being too negative. The sunflowers are awesome and the patch is full of flowery interest, and whenever I get the chance I sit (with a drink preferably) and watch the comings and goings of the goldfinches, hummingbirds, and bees.

The pink salvia splendens are only now starting to flower having spent most of the summer putting on weight. The large leafy bushes should put on a great show for me and the hummingbirds.

I’m sure there will be more to come from the tropical garden, and if I can only keep a firm hand next year it might even look tropical-ish as well. Right now I’m just happy enough it’s mulched and weeded from the topside all the way down to the low end. Last year the low end was pathetic with its drought crisped annuals and struggling heucheras (is that the correct plural for heuchera?) This year it’s much improved and I can see this becoming a nice transition to the pond garden…. once I get a non-leaky pond in!

Next year the new divisions will fill in and there should be a wall of panicum ‘northwind’ separating the tropics on the left from the heucheras and pond garden on the right.

In the photo above you can barely make out the blue mist of Browallia Americana hovering above the hosta. It’s an easy enough annual (native to Central and South America and across the Caribbean isles) and each year I like it’s nearly true-blue flowers even more. Too bad I can’t get the camera to agree on the color, it always washes it out to a violet.

Browallia americana

So summer is still in full swing here, and for someone who prefers to ignore the calendar there’s not even a hint of the season winding down yet. I like this sense of denial and will hang on to it for as long as I can…. but if pushed I will admit to thinking about next year already. Ok, so I don’t even need a push. I stumbled upon a summer sale at the nursery and took home a cool little banana plant. It’s been a couple years since my banana growing days but I can feel the itch again and who knows what this means for next year’s plantings 🙂

The sputtering tropics

Jul17

Again I’m trying to recapture the tropical gardens of years past, but again I’m falling short. The fault is entirely my own though and I know that, but in NE Pennsylvania tropical plantings mean around six months of empty planting area and I just don’t have enough self control to keep them perennial and bulb-free. Really… in October how bad can it be to slip in an extra daffodil or lily?

First year blooms on ‘Liberty Hyde Bailey’. Photo credits for this artistic shot go to the wife, to tell the truth I wasn’t so sure she even knew where the garden was, let alone was interested in taking any pictures 😉

To my credit serious mulching with every scrap of mulched leaves and any garden debris I could send through the mower has substantially reduced last year’s problem. The problem was that this bed was overrun with sunflowers, and if we ignore the fact that the gardener himself was responsible with planting them we can pretend that only having a half dozen or so of the plants this year is an improvement. Still a few self seeded anyway and hopefully this more manageable patch won’t again overshadow the ‘tropical’ look with ‘overgrown agricultural’. -and for the record I did rip out at least another dozen healthy sunflower seedlings, and nearly drove myself to drink over the guilt (but after a hard day of work what gardener doesn’t deserve a cool drink?)

A few sunflowers coming up but hopefully enough bright color and big leaves to make it look tropical. I only had enough bark mulch for the outer edge, the rest is lawn clippings.

Mulching has been an obsession lately. I raided the neighborhood woods again and brought home a few wheelbarrows of stinky dumped grass clippings which I used to cover the inner reaches of the bed. It was just in time to smother tons of baby weeds but most importantly the rotting grass was a solid dose of fertilizer for all the little goodies coming up. Within a few days everything turned a lush green and started putting out new growth. It was amazing what a difference the grass made and I’m sure the earthworms are pleased as well. In order to keep it more presentable I robbed some leftover wood mulch from next door and tidied up the edges of the bed with a few shovelfuls of that. It’s the dyed mulch which I’m not crazy about, but it being free really appealed to my budget sense.

I also leveled and set the mismatched stone and paver bits which pave the shortcut between our yard and grandma’s pool. It looks halfway decent now and is much less of an ankle twister.

Even with plants in and mulch applied, the bed is still not out of the woods. There’s always a problem child or two. First it’s the chrysanthemums which I planted and meant to transplant once spring rolled around. That didn’t happen and to add insult to injury they are coming into bloom now…. just when I don’t need fall color.

‘Mammoth yellow quill’ chrysanthemum looking good in July. I guess next year I’ll pinch in May and try to delay bloom, mums in September would have been nicer!

Another problem are the two cannas I bought. They were from a reputable online nursery and were listed as showing no signs of virus, but the first leaves tell a different story. A refund is already on my account but I really wanted to add a healthy canna ‘Musifolia’ and ‘Pretoria’ to the bed. the leaf streaking and yellowing/browning patches are sure signs of canna virus so these have regrettably been thrown to the trash.

These leaves should have a lush, solid green, but instead are showing the streaks and mottling of canna virus.

As usual the third problem child is me. How could I pull out this lusty little bull thistle?

An excellent example of a weed. The goldfinches will appreciate the seed heads of this thistle, and surprisingly enough I don’t get many seedlings even when I let them grow. They seem to need open soil to sprout which is not easy to find around here.

As the tropical garden puts on some weight and gets ready for August I’m going to see if my tidying and weeding streak can finally extend next door to the not-so-red-border. It needs the help, but so far all I’ve managed is the start of an access path which will circle around through the back of the border. I’ve been eliminating the weedy campanulas and moving out other plants but still have a long way to go.

The start of a new path through the back of the red border. Unfortunately that was as far as my free mulch would take me….

What is summer without a few projects? Hopefully my neighbors will oblige me with more grass clippings, maybe temperatures will stay low, and maybe I can blaze a path through the thicket which is beginning to take over. I won’t even mention the water filled hole which has formed where the pond used to be. All the rain we had has made this area into a soggy mess!

hemerocallis altisima and raspberry wine monarda

Topping out at around 5 and a half feet, this daylily (hemerocallis altisima) looks cool with the dark blooms of ‘Raspberry Wine’ monarda and a few other leftovers from back when this bed was loved. The tall grass (Miscanthus giganteus) is thriving on all the extra rain and is at least two feet over the neighbor’s six foot privacy fence.

I guess it’s a start, and time will tell if it’s also an end. With two weeks of vacation coming up and plenty of weekend trips in between, I may just sit back and enjoy summer rather than sweat out another bed re-do. The wooliness doesn’t seem to bother anyone other than myself and digging is always more pleasant in September!

Hello dahlias :)

Aug10

I’ve always dabbled a little in dahlias, but last year I treated myself to a few named ones from Swan Island Dahlias. Last year they did great, this year even better!

Dahlia “moonstruck” would look great in a border, it’s got a nice height and really puts out the flowers.

I did lose a couple (my overwintering technique is sloppy at best) but I like to think of it as natural selection. Eventually I’ll be left with only the dahlias that can tolerate my abuse! Right now if I can only keep them watered and possibly fertilized once more they should put on a great show until frost cuts them down.

Dahlia “Tanjoh” barely bloomed last year, this year it’s in a much better spot and is really starting to put on a nice show.

I consider dahlias to be as easy to grow as a cabbage. Maybe that’s why some people look down on them, they grow so lush and showy that there’s little room for subtlety and finesse…. which is just fine with me. I grow them best amongst the vegetables where they can be fussed over and freely cut for the house, and they relish the easy life amongst the tomatoes and beans.

This was supposed to be my favorite from last year “Plum Pretty”, but apparently it’s dahlia “Mathew Alan’. He’s a nice enough dahlia, but this means it was the plum that died over winter and went onto the compost pile….

I love all kinds of dahlias, but seem to be stuck on the quilled ‘cactus’ types. A six inch wide cactus bloom and a height of about four feet seem just right for my taste, but a look through any dahlia offering will show plants from a half a foot to six with blooms from one inch to twelve…. and daisies, pom poms, dinnerplates, waterlilies, collarettes and more and more in the way of bloom types.

With a generic white flower name such as ‘Bride to Be’ I would guess this one would be perfect for a wedding arrangement. It’s a waterlily type, with broad, perfectly arranged, rounded petals.

Water, rich soil, and full sun are all these ask of me. They should be staked, but I’m the sort who waits until a storm knocks them all down before I do anything….. I should really reconsider that plan, especially since I just picked up some suitable wood at the DIY store (no excuses!)

Slugs, earwigs and Japanese beetles are the only troublemakers I get in the dahlia patch. They’re never much of a problem, I just dispense punishment, clip the bloom, and wait for a new one to come up in its place. This is dahlia “Groovy”, a darker leaved variety.

I’ve been through dahlia phases before and usually after a couple seasons of digging and replanting I either get bored or end up losing them all to bad winter storage. We’ll see. This latest phase is still burning hot and fierce, and I’m tempted to turn over the entire vegetable patch and fill it with dahlias!

My oldest dahlia. This unidentified one from the box store has been surviving the in and outs of winter storage for at least 9 years…. practically a record in responsibility for me! (If it was taller it could be the 1963 dahlia “Alfred Grille”, but named or nameless still a nice one)

So we’ll see what happens. Dahlia season is just starting and there are more to come, but opinions may change when the temperatures drop. Digging soggy dahlia roots on a cold windy October weekend can really kill a plant lust and I’m far too frugal to just buy new tubers each spring.

Do you bother with dahlias?

Resist temptation

Jul24

Summertime DIY projects are an awful thing, and not just for their interference with pool time. This beautiful time of year with its warmth and sunshine is also the time when nurseries and box stores try and clear out their inventory, and as long as I’m at the store picking up lumber and sandpaper I might as well take a stroll through the plants to see what’s going on. So far an oleander and golden arborvitae have joined the screw and hinge purchases, and under the relentless strain of repeated returns to the store it’s no surprise my resistance wears thin and a small eucalyptus or succulent falls in the cart too. Some people buy chocolate, I buy plants, and at a midsummer 50% off sale I run the risk of getting fat.

The DIY store is not a nursery. The plants are not well cared for and are right in there with washing machines, pipe, and soda coolers…… but sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you don’t though, and it bothers me that they sell diseased and dying plants such as these ‘Tropicana’ cannas.

Canna ‘Tropicana’ should be a gaudy blend of yellow, pink, and red stripes on a purple leaf, without breaks and mottling of color. You’re looking at canna virus.

I would guess the store doesn’t know and doesn’t much care to know but the grower should, and to send out plants looking this bad (and to then sell them for nearly $15!) seems irresponsible. Reputation must not matter much as long as the bottom line keeps looking good.

Back in the day people went crazy over the wild colors which would show up in virused tulips….. but they learned the lesson and dumped the plants. ‘Tropicana’ growers didn’t get the memo, and each year I see these deformed offerings.

I would think if it’s your business you would want to send out the healthiest plants possible, and I’ve seen several online sources openly discuss the canna virus struggle, but some don’t seem to care. ‘Tropicana’ can be a really cool plant…. if not entirely tasteful 🙂

Tropicana out by the mailbox last year. Maybe not virus-free (I’m back and forth on whether or not it’s clean) but it sure looks better than the store version.

I like my cannas and try to toss anything that looks suspicious, but I hate to see the pros doing a worse job than me.

I’d also hate to leave on a down note so here’s another lapse in judgment that you might enjoy. Santa Rosa is an excellent online source for plants, and they run some amazing sales, here are the goodies which arrived last month after I fell victim to their online summer clearance.

I wasn’t even aware of my heuchera addiction until this showed up. My collection of one plant just increased by a dozen more….

The sale is still going on by the way, and if you use the coupon code of JULY10 when checking out, another $10 will come off your $35 minimum order… that’s practically giving plants away and I’m not going to go there (but I would never judge others who lack my amazing will power!)

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Category Archives: summer bulbs