GBFD October ’16

Oct22

Christina at Creating my own Garden of the Hesperides is the host of a monthly look at the importance of foliage in the garden, and for some reason this celebration always sneaks up on me. Fortunately this month it falls on a weekend, and a rainy one at that, so rather than start projects inside and waste the weekend doing all those boring things which end up on a to-do list, I’m going to sit and relax with a coffee while reviewing the beautiful week that was.

The view out the back door. My camera must be an optimist since it really is much rainier and gloomier than this photo would suggest.

We were back in shorts and T-shirts this week as summer returned for a few days. The ground is on the dry side but it was still perfect for just puttering around and thinking about getting ready for winter. I should be doing more than just thinking though since each year I seem to add more and more stuff which needs winter protection. Fortunately the first step was taken and all the succulents have moved up under the back porch for a quick look-over before moving on. A few go into the garage, a few go near a window in the basement, but they all go into a cool spot which won’t freeze over the next several months.

Succulents can be dangerous. They come in cute tiny pots and many root off the smallest bit of stem or leaf, so before you know it there’s a collection.

I kill plenty of these each winter and these survivors can all handle the conditions which I put them through. Cool, dry, and dimly lit… although I would give them more light if I could… A little shot of water maybe once every two months (if I remember) and if they make it good. These do, and in the low autumn light I love the way their various foliage shapes and colors go together.

Again I need to replant, they never seem to change yet suddenly all have grown!

The light of autumn has also been very kind to the foliage and flowers of the grasses. Their colors just fit at this time of year and it’s kind of a sunset of the season with all their reds and pinks and yellows.

I moved this ‘Peppermint stick’ Arundo donax this spring and it’s been much happier in this more open, better watered spot. Next year I’ll pull out the floppy Miscanthus from its right and hopefully figure out how best to complement the strong variegation of this grass.

Another grass which is doing well is this spiteful clump of pink muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris). It’s been doing particularly well this year and I bet it’s because I evicted its two lazy neighbors and told this clump it would be next if it doesn’t shape up. They always look miserable for months and then only flower just in time to get killed by frost. I think they’re just not well-suited to this latitude and I’m trying out a selection called ‘Fast forward’ which is supposed to bloom earlier… but so far it’s been on exactly the same time table. Maybe next year after it’s become better established, but this spring I was just happy enough it survived its late autumn planting.

Pink muhly grass flowering in the last few days of frost free weather. It will still be nice enough after the cold comes, but the pink color will fade to white.

The foliage on the muhly grass does absolutely nothing for me and even with this late season show I already had plans to replace it. To this end I bought another grass, a giant bluestem (Andropogon gerardii ‘Red October’) with purple summer foliage and bright red autumn color. My fingers are crossed and so far so good, but I’ve heard stories that it’s a bit difficult to establish from a later planting.

A close-up of the pink muhly grass with a few blades of ‘Red October’ coming up behind. I love it so far!

Autumn foliage is showing up all along the street as well. The summer lushness has faded and things are beginning to call it a year.

The dogwoods have taken on their russet red shades, and there’s no more pristine white on the ‘Limelight’ hydrangea. Such a nice pink tint on the hydrangea is something I haven’t experienced before, usually the flowers just brown off in the dry heat of late summer.

Also calling it a year is the front border bed. Because of the dry summer I gave up on it in July but it still looks fine even without the annuals I usually add for some extra color. Less work is always a good thing, so maybe just maybe I’ll do the same thing next year…. unless I dig it all up and replant everything. Why keep things simple?

A calming border of blue fescue grass and a jolt of autumn color from the ‘Tiger Eyes’ sumac. I wish I had a hedge or wall blocking out the rest of the neighborhood, but that’s just not how we roll here in suburbia.

I better stop here. The sun is out again yet there’s a bitter wind blowing until tomorrow morning. I suppose I can take today off from the garden but tomorrow if the sun shines I’m sure I’ll be out there again. In the meantime please consider giving Christina a visit to see what others around the globe are enjoying in their gardens. Enjoy!

Agriculture in Suburbia

Oct1

This post was mostly finished last weekend but for some reason I never got around to publishing. I wish I had a good excuse, but it might have just been one of those Sunday evening get ready for the workweek make lunches and clean the kids off from the weekend kind of things. In any case here it is and to be honest I have little idea what I was talking about back then with all the design comments and self reflection. Sometimes I really wonder where this stuff comes from, but regardless the pictures have me thinking of last June when the garden looked ready to die so let me just start off with a photo from then 🙂

The beauty of the garden in June. Roadside daisies and dead grass. Fortunately the rains came back in August, but not until all July passed and I reached the “wordless Wednesday: I hate gardening” stage.

It’s always nice to hear compliments about your garden, and I am one who by reflex nearly always shrugs them off or dismisses them. I’m sure there’s some childhood trauma involved which has long been forgotten, but it’s my way and it’s a rare day when I can just accept with a thank you. Now I’m not saying I get a lot of compliments, but I do get a comment every now and then about a nice design touch or a combination which actually worked out. Those are the compliments I always downplay since I rarely (unless I’m doing it subconsciously) put a whole lot of thought into what goes where. With few exceptions my design process revolves around having a new favorite plant in hand and then desperately needing a spot in which to cram it. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t.

The front border in mid September. If I had to put a name to this year’s design theory it might be something like ‘neglected agricultural’.

The front border along the street may not look brilliant, but it does look colorful, and with five months of winter breathing down my neck colorful is perfect. Colorful and agricultural I suppose, since this years feature plant seems to be ‘Hot Biscuits’ amaranthus and in my opinion it either looks sort of farmyard weedy or like a particularly bright sorghum crop. Ornamental or not I just can’t look away. It’s big and bright and grainy and between it and the wheat-like feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’) and the sugarcane-like giant reed (Arundo Donax) I feel like it’s almost harvest time out there.

The view from the street side. The purple perovskia has seeded around a bit and put out a few runners, the purple coneflowers as well, but I’ve done essentially nothing here since March and I kind of like that.

I owe this year’s crop of ‘Hot Biscuits’ to my friend Paula who surprised me one afternoon with a packet of seeds in the mailbox. I had grown it before and ended up losing it, but fortunately she had a few seeds to spare and sent them my way. That was last year, and I efficiently killed all the seedlings which sprouted, but this year was a different story and I ended up with a few clumps of healthy seedlings.

Just the first of many amaranthus close-ups which will pepper this post. No one could plan this combo since I’m sure it violates numerous design principles, but I just love it.

The amaranthus shows up here and there all along the border, which is probably a good thing since even the simplest design theorist will tell you it repeats and unifies a theme. Repetition is important since this bed frequently suffers from “I always start from the driveway end and use up all the best plants there” syndrome. The far end of the bed gets less weeding, less watering, less tending… it basically gets less of everything, so carrying the amaranthus theme all the way through helps hide the sparseness of the neglected end.

Here in the preferred end of the bed are well tended seedlings of Benary’s Giant wine zinnias and the pink gomphrena ‘fireworks’. These were the seedlings I was most excited about this year, so in they went first 🙂

I did have a few too many zinnias this spring so was pretty generous about placing them in the border, but when the Brenary’s Giant scarlet began to open next to the pink gomphrena I immediately cringed. For about a week I thought it looked awful but now I quite like it. It reminded me of the first time I saw pictures of some of the late Christopher Lloyd’s magenta and pink plantings at Great Dixter. They also bothered me at first and I think my first thought was “grow up Chris and plant some lavender and white and pink instead of that mess”… but look at me now.

Scarlet zinnia with ‘fireworks’ gomphrena. Am I suffering from retinal fatigue or does it actually look nice together?

Maybe the green lawn and the parchment color of the feather reed grass tames it a bit but between this and the orange of the amaranthus I’m just plain pleased.

A very technicolor look with the yellow of the ‘Tiger Eyes’ sumac across the lawn.

Here’s another amaranthus photo-bomb.

Looking down towards the ‘less interesting’ end of the border.

Ok. One last amaranthus photo.

From the neglected, far end of the border, more amaranthus 🙂

You may have noticed a bright golden patch of marigolds in the border. The fall smack dab in the middle of my newfound love for the most offensively bright colors and I’m not sure I can resist planting a whole border of them next year. I had to smuggle these seeds out of my stingy older brother’s garden last year and was lucky that a few sprouted and survived July’s dry spell. He’s been letting them reseed for a couple years now and they still come up in a good range of colors on relatively short and large flowered plants.

A few marigolds putting on a nice end of summer show. More might be nicer, and by more I mean a whole border.

What to plant them with? I think they’ll go at the far end of the border, alongside the bright gold of a juniper, but other than that I have no plans. Should I back them up with some darker foliage plants?

Korean feather grass (Calamagrostis brachytricha) in front and pennisetum ‘Karley Rose’ towards the back. With the ‘Limelight’ hydrangea it all looks very calm and refined, but I think a nice border of marigolds will give it a good jolt of color!

We will see what happens. There’s a good chance it will all come down to whatever seeds sprout the best next spring, but in the meantime it’s nice to dream about having a more plan-comes-together kind of garden. That is until the snowdrops bloom. Once that happens my brain goes to mush and I’m lucky if I get anything planted 😉

Thursday’s Feature: Colchicums!

Sep23

As one considers the winding down of summer and the general decay of the growing season… as I suppose one should on this first day of autumn… there do seem to be a few positive notes which make the changing of the seasons more bearable. While other things die or flee in response to cooler temperatures and weakened sunshine, a few plants spring to life, and if you count yourself among the optimists you could almost consider this to be the start of a new growing season with flushes of new foliage for the cooler weather, healthy root growth and spring buds forming below ground, and the first of the autumn flowers. “Good for you” I say since I am not a lover of fall and its frosty death, but even I will admit colchicums make it easier to cope, and the fresh blooms at this time of year make it all seem a little less final.

With those cheery thoughts in mind I’m again joining Kimberley at Cosmos and Cleome for her Thursday Feature, and the flowers of the autumn crocus or naked ladies (Colchicums) are what stand out in my garden this week.

A reliable Colchicum with smaller flowers and colored flower stems, Colchicum ‘Nancy Lindsay’ would be on the short list of favorites.

As a good blogger I should take this opportunity to discuss the various details of researched growing conditions and also cover the finer points of colchicum cultivation but as you may have already guessed from previous posts I bore easily and tend to laziness, so to be honest I’d recommend getting that book learnin’ elsewhere. I’m more of a stick it in the ground and see if it grows kind of guy, so if you don’t mind, click on >this link< and you’ll find a few of Kathy’s posts over at Cold Climate Gardening which should do very nicely to fill the void I leave. She’s like a crazy cat lady of colchicums, and in addition to growing, showing, sharing, and speaking on colchicums, she also does an excellent job of putting that information online. She’s also a wonderful person, so I hope she finds neither ‘crazy’ nor ‘cat lady’ offensive since I would hate to offend her good nature.

Colchicum run a range of pink shades from dark to light, but the odd white form really lights up an autumn bed. Here’s Colchicum ‘Innocence’. Decent sized blooms, slight pink tint when you look for it, and a good grower.

Better sources of information aside, I guess I should mention some of the barest essentials of Colchicums. They bloom bare, without foliage, hence the common name of naked ladies. Their bloom shape resembles that of crocus, hence the name autumn crocus -although they share no family relation whatsoever. Of course being unrelated to crocus is not the worst thing since wildlife love the crocus around here yet completely avoid the poisonous parts of colchicums.

In the early spring, colchicums quickly grow leafy, hosta-like foliage but then yellow and disappear once the weather heats up. Decent, well drained soil, sun or part shade (the more sun in spring the better), and hope for the best.

Spring species tulips and the springtime foliage of colchicums growing in the lawn.

With their fall blooms, colchicum are a bit of an oddity when compared to the regular spring and summer flowers of most bulb catalogs. Maybe this is why they seem expensive when compared to the mass produced spring bulbs, but don’t let it fool you. They might require some special handling and storing, but overall it’s an easy group to grow. If I have one bit of advice which may be helpful it’s to plant shallowly in heavy soils. The flowers seem to struggle when sprouting up out of hard-packed soil, and if they can’t make it up chances are the spring foliage won’t make it either, and your special new bulb will die. Cover loosely I say, and if the bulbs (actually corms btw) are already flowering, do not cover the flowers with dirt and expect them to rise up out of the soil. The flowers, and foliage as well, seem to take advantage of the old, dried floral tubes and follow these paths up out of the soil. When newly planted, the tunnels from last year no longer exist, so to get around this plant shallowly and cover with some mulch once flowering is finished and you should be in good shape.

Colchicum ‘Lilac Wonder’ planted in grass. If planting in lawns, be prepared to hold back on mowing until the foliage has yellowed off. I like a field of gone-to-seed grass swaying in the breeze in June. You may not.

Over the last two years I’ve been adding colchicums to the meadow garden, and so far have been pleased enough to want to add more this fall. I’m hoping they do well enough amongst the root completion of the grass and so far so good on that. Another plus is I prefer the flowers when set off by the green grass, even though in most years this area usually has more of a brown grass look to it.

More Colchicum ‘Lilac Wonder’ planted in the meadow garden. This is my favorite colchicum right now, it really does well here.

A more sparse planting of an unknown colchicum. This one will sulk if the spring is too short or dry, or isn’t exactly to its liking. I’d blame the lawn, but the same lack of blooming happens in my flower beds as well.

I’m going to wrap it up here since although I can stare at and talk colchicums for hours in the garden, I am way past the limits of my attention span here at the computer. But before ending I have to show Colchicum x aggripinum and the remarkable pattern of its blooms. Many colchicums show tessellation in their flowers and of the ones I grow this one shows it best.

The smaller, shorter foliage and flowers of colchicum x aggripinum still show up very well in the garden. This clump liked being divided last summer, but didn’t like the late freeze and short spring we had, so I hope it fills in better next year.

Tessellation on a flower of colchicum x aggripinum. I love this patterning.

If you’ve made it this far I might as well apologize while I still have your attention. There are still a few weeks left in the colchicum season and it’s very likely you’ll see more of them at some point or another as I try to work my way through this otherwise miserable new season. In the meantime though, please consider giving Kimberley a visit to see what she and others are posting about this Thursday. Perhaps they have a higher opinion of autumn.

Not a bad morning.

Aug28

It’s beautiful out this morning and I can’t even see problems in the garden. The lawn is relatively under control, some staking and weeding was done yesterday, the soil is damp enough that watering is not an issue, and other than some chipmunk issues the wildlife of the garden is behaving in an entirely picturesque and harmless manner. This feeling may fade quickly but while it lasts I’ll just sip my coffee quietly and hope the kids don’t find me.

Datura metel. I expected an annual but this one re-appeared out of nowhere once the rains came and the soil heated up. It’s doing so much better than last year.

The light is often perfect in my garden but my photos rarely show this. Even with a better half who loves expensive electronics and insisted on a fancy camera there’s still a skill component missing and I often look at what shows up on the computer screen and wonder what happened. Fortunately this morning things just came together and it’s as good as it’s going to get.

Light and shadows on a Datura flower. Even a few dew drops to make it glisten.

Last fall a friend gave me a few seedheads of what is probably Gomphrena ‘fireworks’. It’s supposed to be in the same species as the regular globe gomphrena (G. globosa) but I don’t see it, and even though it loves the same heat and full sun, the flowers are more like yellow tipped pink brushes rather than tight globes.

Gomphrena ‘fireworks?’ in the morning light. Easy from seed (needs warmth and bright light) and loves the heat.

Another annual which catches the light perfectly is amaranthus ‘Hot Biscuits’. Practically a weed, it just shot up when the rain started falling and the humidity shot up. This is another one which came via friend…. thanks Paula!

Amaranthus ‘hot biscuits’ in the front border.

I would have laughed if you told me I’d ever grow (and like) a brown flower but here it is.

A nice late summer show of amaranthus coming up among the butterfly bushes (Buddleia)

I do buy a few seeds here and there and zinnias are one which I like to keep in good supply. Brenary’s Giants ‘Lime’ does NOT show well in the garden but it’s just too interesting to leave out.

Benary’s Giants ‘lime’ zinnia from Fedco Seed. I bet a good designer could do great things with this color… but me, not so much. I think it’s cool regardless.

The birds and bees get the credit for this sunflower as well as whatever religious deity you believe protected it from my weed bucket. I swore up and down I would not allow sunflowers in the tropical bed but there you have it.

A little doubling and a darkly rich center, I’m quite pleased to have this sunflower sharing space with the cannas and bananas.

The Formosa lilies (Lilium formosum) were stunted by weeks of drought back in the no-man’s land which I tend to ignore, but are still forgiving enough to fill the garden with their sweet summer perfume.

Lilium formosum. For some reason I thought planting them where they’d grow up into the branches of a pear tree would be a good idea… but then again why would I think my little seedlings would ever amount to anything?

The meadow got its mowing just in time. The first colchicum blooms were beheaded, but now the others can come up nicely in the short (and for once green) grass.

cochicum in lawn

Back in July we didn’t even remember what rain looked like. Then something happened. August was warm and humid with perfectly spaced rain showers and this blessing from above even resurrected (most) of the phlox bed. If you look closely the damage is still there, but on a beautiful Sunday morning it’s easy to see past that.

Phlox paniculata in the late August light.

Please click on “I hate gardening” to see what this bed looked like a month ago. You could call the change miraculous and I don’t think that’s an exaggeration.

Just in time for Monarch migration, the garden phlox and Verbena bonariensis are again filled with flowers and this bed is a very busy place.

I do love my phlox.

Back from the dead, random phlox paniculata seedlings.

Have a great Sunday and all the best for the upcoming week. I’m going back outside now and suspect nothing will get done other than a second cup of coffee.

GBFD August ’16

Aug25

They say better late than never, but according to that theory just about everything I do should be better… and I know that’s not the case, so I’ll let you be the judge.

I’ve let a few too many of Christina’s Garden Blogger Foliage Days pass by without a decent post, and that’s a shame since I really enjoy her prodding us to take a monthly step back to look past all the flowers. The flash of flowers often catches the eye and as a result foliage often fades into the periphery of subconscious thought, so on the 22nd of each month it’s not the worst idea to look around and consider what the leafiness of your garden is doing for the bigger picture.

The bed-which-I-can’t-decide-what-to-do-with just before we left on our camping trip.

I showed the above picture just a few days ago and although I knew there were a few weeds sprouting I just didn’t get to them before we left. Let me just insert here that this is not going to be the “decent post” which GBFD deserved this month because it’s a post on only one type of foliage, and that’s the quick growing green of crabgrass and other uninvited leafy pests.

The same bed exactly one week later. A bounty of rain, heat, and sunshine plus a fertile soil (the dumping spot for our rabbit’s used bedding) have greened up everything. Even the clover and creeping Charlie have filled in any last remaining dead patches in the “lawn”.

I spent a recent afternoon clearing out all the lush growth. The bed is empty again but this time I stuck a few stray cuttings here and there and with a little luck perhaps I’ll have some more varied foliage for September’s GBFD. At the very least it might give the weeds a little competition since apparently there’s not much slowing them down now.

Thanks for humoring me with this ‘foliage’ post and if you haven’t already been over please consider giving Christina a visit to see what others have done this month with their posts. You won’t be disappointed.

The containers. Meh.

Aug14

Planting the deck always starts out innocently enough but then degenerates into a huge project. This year was no different in that respect, and to even get started with the ritual power washing all the winter debris of kid-play and kitchen remodel-scraps had to be dragged off first.

The entire covered part of the deck is filled with debris and scaffolding in addition to the furniture and terracotta pots which need to be stored under cover for winter (they’ll crack if they freeze while still wet and filled with wet soil). btw the dark gray object is the old kitchen sink, so even that is out here…

So hauling off trash is the first project, then the cleaning, then the decision that all the mishmash of geriatric plastic planters should match, so off for a paintbrush and some leftover paint.

No more black nursery pots, or old teal and faded gray, all the plastic was painted with my trusty mocha-tinted, all surface Sherwin Williams paint.

Our last frost date is around the 15th of May, but most planting jobs are usually procrastinated way beyond that. This year the big deck planting was pushed off until June 8th, which meant a lot of sitting around for the earliest purchases but it also meant clearance sales were in full swing.

I tend to spread out while setting the deck up. There’s a mess everywhere 🙂

So this is where the ‘meh’ comes in, and since the weather is kind of ‘meh’ today as well it might be the best day to discuss… I usually go out with little to no idea or plan and as a result come home with whatever catches my eye. Usually it works out, but this year I just feel like something’s missing. Maybe I need yellow, maybe it’s the lack of sweet potato vines, maybe there’s too much red, maybe it’s the pink… I’m not much of a ‘pink’ person.

One purple fountain grass is nice, three might have been overkill, still the rosemary enjoyed its division and replanting, and most other plantings are hanging in there. You may notice my amaryllis bulbs tucked in here and there. The strappy leaves don’t look half bad in my opinion.

I should be giving things a nice liquid feeding each week and part of the ‘meh’ might be that things are underfed. A rich diet for these flashy annuals is what they thrive on, and upon thinking back it’s possible I’ve missed four out of the last five feedings. As usual I’m my own worst enemy.

I do like how the creepers, in this case cascading geraniums (pelargoniums), work their way through the railing. They’re very popular with the hummingbirds even if the color might be a little too orangey for the companion plantings.

Some other disappointments have been the underperforming vines. My three little babies, the Chilean Glory vines (Eccremocarpus scaber) did not take off as planned. Apparently they are foolproof but this fool will challenge that label since my plants (nurtured along from tiny seedlings) made a go at it but then died off one by one. I did get to see one single bloom cluster of amazing little orange lipstick tubes of color but that was it, and I think if I was brave enough to beat back the grasses, I would find my last glory vine has also passed over. That’s too bad but I’m already excited to grow this plant again next year since I’m sure things will go differently even if I do everything exactly the same… but in the meantime at least my snapdragon vine (Asarina scandens) is coming along.

Snapdragon vine (Asarina Scandens) growing up into the purple fountain grass. At least this one has been a forgiving grower and easy bloomer.

While many of the plantings leave me uninspired, a few things are doing great. The oleander and overgrown spikes are back for another year and the canna ‘cannaova rose’ is again putting on a nice show. The canna just hit a lull (probably lack of fertilizer induced) but I’m sure will return to glory shortly and I’ve divided last year’s roots up between a few spots so it’s likely you’ll see these showing up elsewhere as well.

Those little dracaena spikes which show up in nearly every pre-made container planting seem to turn into something a little more interesting given a few years of growth. My goal is to have a small grove of these some day soon 🙂

There are a few new things this year which did beat the ‘meh-ness’. Gazania are a plant which although they don’t grow consistently for me, do look great when they feel like it.

The unusual colors of Gazania really don’t blend well with any look I’m going for but who cares, they just look cool when opened up for the sun. (just keep in mind that they close when the sun goes away…)

By the way I forgot about the elephant ears and the new crape myrtle, both of which are not ‘meh’. The two are just soaking up the rain and heat and humidity and picking up where the petunias and million bells drop off, but before I begin to sound too positive let me point two things out. First I have too much red, and since the obviously red myrtle was labeled purple I’m innocent there. Second there’s a plant missing out of the small terra cotta pot in the front of the photo. There’s a cute little b***ard chipmunk who decided it would be fun to end my three year relationship with a slowly growing clump of lithops (living stones). After a few days searching I found the chewed up corpse under a nearby shrub. Time will tell if the shriveled bits can recover, my only hope is that they were poisonous.

Blood red crape myrtle and geraniums, pink ‘bubblegum’ petunias, elephant ear (Alocasia calidora?)… an ‘interesting’ look I suppose.

I still need to mention the digiplexis which just came into bloom this week. It’s a inter-species cross between a foxglove (digitalis) and an Isoplexis (Canary Island foxglove) and when it first hit the market in 2012 it immediately went on to many ‘must have’ lists. My must have list is always a few years behind but I was finally able to try it out this year when I found it for a reasonable price.

Digiplexis ‘Canary Berry?’. It’s nice enough but I’m not overwhelmed yet. It’s one of the foxgloves, and I love a nice foxglove, but this non-hardy version might be something left for those everything-grows-for-me San Francisco gardeners who have super mild winters and cool nights which bring on stronger colors.

So there’s good and not-so-good out there and to be honest no matter how it looks it always beats the deck in January. January seems to keep all gardening outcomes in perspective and as I check things out every day and multiple times a day I’m still happy with it. Now if only I could get out there and fertilize, but the lawn needs mowing too and I’m not doing both until things cool off a bit.

Thursday’s Feature: Eucomis ‘Freckles’

Aug11

Eucomis ‘Freckles’ sounds more like a health condition than a cool plant, but I can assure you when it grows on you there’s no need for a doctor’s visit. Mine was an impulse buy a few years ago and the fact it’s still with me should say something about its ease of growing. Dormant and dry in a frost free spot for the winter, plant outside when it gets warm. It forms a bulb, it likes it sunny, and it does just fine in regular garden soil.

Eucomis ‘Freckles’ in a pot on top of another pot. I can water both at the same time which is so much more efficient than single pots 🙂

I don’t think anyone can accuse me of overcomplicating this post with over-the-top growing instructions but it really is that easy to grow. ‘Freckles’ is a hybrid version of the Eucomis species E. vandermerwei and as you might guess from the flower heads these plants are part of the group commonly referred to as pineapple lilies. I keep mine potted, but you don’t have to, they grow just fine in the open garden. ‘Freckles’ is a little on the small size and would likely get lost in the mess around here but someday the open garden might be worth a try, since rumor has it these are much hardier than you might think. Some reports even have them overwintering with no problem up into zone 6.

As a regular reader might guess I’ve got a few seedlings coming along as well since they’re relatively easy from seed. I’ll spare you the pictures but there’s a good chance you’ll see more and more pineapple lilies in the years to come 🙂

So there you have it, a short and sweet Thursday’s feature. Kimberley at Cosmos and Cleome hosts each week and it’s always nice to focus on one of the plants making you happiest each week.

Thursday’s Feature: Standing Cypress

Aug4

It’s Thursday and that means joining up with Kimberley of Cosmos and Cleome to take a closer look at something which caught your eye in the garden this week. Hopefully you’re ready for color because his week the bright red of standing cypress (Ipomopsis rubra) is our subject.

Ipomopsis rubra close up. Love the speckles and the intense scarlet color. Bright red is what you need this time of year to stand up to the strong summer sun.

Standing cypress is a showy wildflower native to southeastern North America and just one of many garden-worthy Ipomopsis which can be found across the Americas (at least they look garden worthy, this is the only one I’ve ever grown). These members of the phlox family are tough, drought resistant, and easy to grow and I’m surprised they’re not seen more often. This is one plant which didn’t even blink when the rain stopped and its neighbors curled up into a drought induced fetal position.

Ipomopsis Rubra has a habit which I would call “lax”. At anywhere from two to five feet tall they don’t typically flop, but they lean and stretch and carry so many blooms and seed pods that understandably it can get heavy for a little plant.

It took me years to finally find seed but admittedly I wasn’t out there every week trying to run down new sources. I received my seed via the Mid Atlantic Hardy Plant Society seed exchange but now I’ve been seeing them more frequently sold in wildflower mixes or for hummingbird plantings. The mix I planted was supposed to show a blend of red to oranges to yellows, but the speckled scarlet color is the only one I’ve seen come up.

The tubular flower shape and bright red color of these blooms has ‘hummingbird flower’ written all over it, and sure enough I often see hummers flying by for a meal.

It’s my suspicion that the natural variation across this species makes for different growing habits based on where one gets their seed from. My plants which have been selfseeding around for several years now seem to be strictly annuals but from what I found they also grow as biennials and short lived perennials in areas across the United States as far up as zone 4. Since mine have never overwintered I’m thinking it’s an annual form I’m growing.

Other confusing comments on this plant include it having a taproot (mine don’t) and it needing sandy or gravelly, well drained soil (mine tolerate heavier soil) in order to do well. I suspect some of this is from people who’s knowledge is based less on experience and more on internet searches, but since I’m not a botanist either I’ll let you decide.

The ferny basal rosettes of standing cypress will pop up in any barren, neglected area which grows weeds well. They do not compete against more perennial plantings, but in disturbed soil they can make a quick show before other opportunists jump in.

The hummingbirds and I will enjoy the blooms of this wildflower for several weeks now and when things slow down I’ll just trim off the upper end of the stalk and the smaller side shoots should carry on for a few more weeks.

Standing cypress. Consider it. If your garden can handle a shot of red I think you’ll enjoy it, and I also think you’ll enjoy giving Cosmos and Cleome a visit to see what Kimberley and others bloggers are featuring this week. Enjoy!

Tuesday View: The Tropics 8.2.16

Aug3

Finally I’m back for a real visit with Kathy’s Tuesday View meme. After two weeks away the tropics have taken off here and the heat (and now rain!) have really brought everything to life.

In the view today is damp soil, overcast skies and plenty of humidity. The cannas have exploded along with just about everything else and exuberance is the word of the day. How do you like the ferny green lump of kochia (summer cypress) just in front and to the left of the olive-green planter? I love it btw

My biggest fear when I left was that my new bananas and precious castor beans would just pine away waiting for rain, so two days before we left I added an extra line to the drip irrigation system and set up a few drip emitters to some of the most precious plants. Good thing I did since this bed was the only part of the garden where lush greenery welcomed me back from our midsummer vacation.

I have blooms on my ‘Carmencita’ castor bean plant. I love the bright red seed pods and I hope they stay that way for a while… and the leaves aren’t too shabby either!

I’ll try not to go on too much about every single plant. Here’s an overview of the farther side of the bed, beyond the path to grandma’s pool 🙂

The purple of Verbena bonariensis has nearly taken over large swaths of the bed. I’m fine with that but the old flower stalks on the salvia ‘Caradonna’ just irritate me to no end. I’m sure no one but myself notices them, but there’s a good chance I snap this week and pull them all out!

The old red leaved cannas are nearly as tall as me now and will likely break the six foot mark by next week and I love that. In no time this will be a garden you look up to 🙂

My poor planning skills are often saved by horticultural volunteers. Here the chartreuse froth of blooming fennel mixes in with a pale green nicotina and of course more Verbena bonariensis. You can’t even see the dahlias which are supposed to fill this space.

You may have noticed a few of the sunflowers which peek out of the far corners of the border. After relentlessly weeding them out through the spring I finally let a few of the latest sprouts in the hard to reach spots go on with their lives. I love them of course, and I’ve already seen the goldfinches stopping by to check on the seeds.

Sunflower with a few long-horned bees making themselves at home.

New to me this year are the bees which can be found on each sunflower bloom. I’m sure they’ve been there every year but after I found the long antenna interesting I realized they’re not the regular honeybees. According to this face book group >click here< they are either a type of sunflower bee or most likely a type of long-horned bee, both of which belong to the solitary bee group which includes some of the hardest working and most effective pollinators out there.

I’m leaning towards long-horned bee for these two, since they both share the almost comically long antenna, but I have no clue as to which species. Apparently there are more than a few!

Something new to me which I came across while investigating bees is that these solitary bees are much less aggressive than their colony-forming cousins due to the fact they have no hive to defend. They only sting when handled roughly and are considered more docile… although I’m not sure who did this investigation of insect manhandling. I’ll take their word for it though and skip starting my own investigative bee-bullying program.

Oh and one more thing. Solitary bees are fine feeding on nectar from a wide range of flowers but the individual bee species is much more specific in where its pollen comes from. It’s called oligolecty, and if you want to add that one to the vocab list it describes bees which specialize in collecting pollen from a limited palette of flowers, often only one species.

A usual I’m as surprised as to where this Tuesday view went but it’s been an interesting ride for me and I hope it’s at least been somewhat interesting to you as well. If you’d like to expand on the visit stop over at Words and Herbs and check in with Cathy to see what the other Tuesday views are up to. There’s always plenty to explore!

Wordless Wednesday: I hate gardening

Jul27

All the phlox are fried in the potager. The grass is NOT green.

The hellebores WERE lush after a cool spring.

But I did get to see the last of lily ‘Pizzaz’ in bloom

…and drip irrigation kept the containers watered.

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

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