Dog Days of ... June?

It has been just scorchingly hot here for the last few weeks, as if I needed another hurdle to get out and garden! On the plus side, I have my new bed installed! Yay! Hoping that the plants I got from Plant Delights nursery turn out ok... it can be really hit and miss there, but I've had some real winners, and they do have a great selection of hard to find beauties. I planted a few tropical plants that i'm hoping will do well... Perennial Hidden Cone Ginger, 'Jack's Giant' Elephant Ear and what I think is an alocasia, but I can't seem to find the name, and my memory is failing me. Whoops! There's also some gladiolus, some calla lilies (wishful thinking there, no doubt), cannas and a flowering quince. And since I had no place else to put em, I planted my tomatoes and basil in the bed.



I'm finally getting blooms on this hydrangea and I just couldn't be more pleased. I lost the blooms off this plant for 2 years in a row, the first year, it was just not doing too well after I saved it from the clearance rack, I think I paid 2 dollars for it. Second year, the lawn crew weed whacked the one stem with buds on it!! This year, it is rewarding my patience with beautiful pearly buds that turn to a soft blue and open lovely magenta blooms. I just absolutely am over the moon about them!



My coneflowers are doing so much better than last year, when I got almost all yucky mutant flowers.



Lastly, I'm loving this combination of the geraniums, zebra grass and artemsia in 2 pots on my deck. I love these geranium colors, they are so bright and perky.

checklist!

So, it is a very, very dangerous thing to go to Lowes for a carpentry project on a spectacularly warm spring day. First of all, it will trick you into buying plants you know you are going to have to babysit constantly through the frosts for the next month or so. Second of all, you will wind up spending roughly 10 times what you were planning on, because of all the bulbs that mysteriously fall into your cart.

On the plus side, I have accomplished several things on my checklist! Yay me! I planted my MAC roses (yayyyyyyyy) AND the Miss Kim Lilacs I bought, oh, about a year ago. Haha. In fact, one has blooms on it already, just little buds. I have agonized for months on where to put these plants, but today I just had enough and plopped them down in a couple of spots in the yard. If I hate it, I can always move them, and now they are in the ground and getting healthy and bigger. Off the list, I also planted some new plants I picked up at the Lowes. A Nelly Moser Clematis, which I planted by the deck, some SUPER charming Amaryllis that is a candy pink with white stripes, which is going in the cottage garden. Sowed some Cosmos over there as well.

I bought Peegee Hydrangea which is super tiny, like 6 inches high, and I planted it by the garden shed. I'm worried it won't make it there.... in fact now that I'm typing this, I'm thinking maybe I should go move it to a better place. I want to put some shrubs and other plants in that area, because right now its just a bunch of pine trees. Any recommendations for some plants for the area are welcome! I bought some Christmas fern .. bulbs? They aren't bulbs, but I don't know what to call them. They can't be corms or anything else... rhizomes? Anyways those are also for near the garden shed, but they aren't in the ground yet.. which brings me to my next train of thought...

2 steps forward, 6 steps back, as I bought quite a few bulbs/corms/whathaveyou that need to be planted. Cannas, Caladiums, the aforementioned Christmas ferns. In addition to that, I foolishly bought some geraniums. Why did I do that?! I have a baby to ... well... baby! I can't be babying plants too! Oh well, We'll see how they do. They are quite pretty, I just couldn't resist.

mini update

So mini I shouldn't even consider posting it, but it beats keeping the seed packets on my computer desk for weeks on end. The following plants were 'winter' sowed, but really they were more like 'at the very end of January' sowed.

California Poppy 'Mikado' -- taking a closer look at this it looks like I may have sowed this at the wrong time. Oops.

Flax Blue Lewisii

Old Fashioned Garden Mix -- hollyhock, foxglove, calendula, pinks, stocks. This was an ancient seed packet that my stepfather gave me. Will it come up? Will any of this come up? Will I manage not to pull it up thinking they are weeds if they do actually come up? Only time will tell. Sorry for the lack of pictures with this post!

update: wow, Rock Rose put up a great post for a noob like me, pictures of all her sprouting winter sown plants! This is SO helpful, now maybe I won't pull up any future plants that sprout up... fingers crossed that I see some of these friends in my garden!

still alive!

Still alive, and hoping my plants will be able to say the same thing -- I'm worried about the borderline plants I planted -- the jasmine, angel trumpets, hardy ginger and the gardenias. Its been an unbelievably chilly winter, with the most snow I can remember in the 20 years I've lived here. Things have calmed down (for NOW) long enough for me to actually think about future plans for my garden.

To do:
1) plant daffodils. I might actually just go to box stores after a bit and see about getting any discounted plants that are no longer blooming. I really wanted to have this done last year, and didn't, because I was tooooo pregnant and then tooooo distracted with a baby!

2) plant the tulips that have been sitting in my fridge for the better part of a year.

3) come to think of it, plant all the other bulbs that I have sitting in the garage.

4) get the MAC roses in the ground!

5) Is it to late to winter sow seeds? I hope not. After the ice thaws, I'd like to do that.


Well I can think of a lot more I want to do, but I suppose I should be realistic and stick with a manageable list for now.

end of season wrap up

Well, its almost the end of the summer, and while living in the wonderful world of zone 7 means I'll still have time to grow more plants, the stork is due in 2 weeks (!!!!!) so I am sure I'll be occupied for a while, and I don't currently have a lot of fall plants in my garden, as its still young.

What worked well, what didn't, and what I might try for next year.

Worked well: All the Hibsicus were fabulous! I am in love with the Fireball hibiscus, which went dormant for maybe a week or 2 during the worst summer weather, but now is completely loaded with blooms. No supplemental water needed for it or the Fantasia Hibsicus pictured here, which somehow managed to survive the death bed (AKA Jen's big noobie mistake of putting almost all compost in the bed, because compost is better then soil, right?) Both Hibsicus were in their 2nd year in my garden:


The Narrow Leaf Zinnias were also great plants. I am not surprised, because this is a Felder Rushing recommendation, from his book "Tough Plants for Southern Gardens" but its still important to note, once I got this established, no problems at all ignoring it in the garden. This is an annual, so I'll have to get it again, or try it from seed. Maybe it will show up in my garden as reseeds! I didn't have to dead head it or water it at all.

Snowflurry Verbena had all the same attributes as the Zinnias, with the added benefit that it is a perennial! This is its first year, so hopefully there will be no issues with it overwintering, as I really don't want to pay the high PDN costs again for this plant. It did great though! I love Verbenas, they are just gorgeous. I picked up some Aztec Cherry Verbena on a whim on the markdown section, and they are also incredible. I gotta get these next year at the beginning of the season, so cheery and bright and undemanding.

Perennial Heilotrope also did great, no need to water, and spread like crazy. I think it looks lovely next to my butterfly bush. I need to come up with a good color to mix with that light lavender, though. I have a pretty boring bed of just white and purple right now, it just needs a little more excitement. Not sure what to do with it. This is also the first year for the Heilotrope in my garden.

FAILBOAT PLANTS!


Man, I had a lot of plants that didn't do well. This is 100% due to the fact that it was survival of the fittest for them, and probably not due to them being bad plants. I just couldn't bring myself to do a lot in the garden, especially as hot and miserable as this summer was. I did manage to keep up with the weeds (mostly) and that is an impressive feat when you factor in that I was 6 months along in June!

All my Coneflowers did terrible almost all summer. The ones that performed best were the Kim's Knee High. Most of the species had ugly mutant flowers, and weird diseased flowers. What went wrong, Coneflowers? You were my favorite plants last year! I thought the beds had good enough drainage, and come to think of it, the Agastaches in the same beds did GREAT, so it can't be that. I think the varieties I planted must have just been bad. Maybe I'll pull them all up and move the Kim's to a better place, right now they are close to the pine trees, so they are way more thirsty than they should be. Second year for all my Coneflowers, all of which did miserable.

My Nepeta were sulky and puny, and I don't know what could be causing it, unless its that they are too close to the pine trees as well. They hardly bloomed, they didn't grow. Right now my plan is to move around some stuff in that bed and pull some other plants in the fall. Hopefully they will be happy somewhere else.... maybe they should go in a different bed all together. This was their second year in the bed.

Well, that's enough details for me. I had some annuals that didn't perform well, but they are annuals, and probably it was my neglect more than anything. Oh and my Cherokee Purple tomatoes are still going strong, had table ready tomatoes by July 19th. Definitely will keep growing these next year.

captains log

Not a big update, but I wanted to log this before I forget. Just planted 3 clematis, two Barbara Jackman and one Nelly Moser. Also picked up a Salvia Nemorosa at Lowes for a dollar, going to try and overwinter it in a pot until I can figure out where I want to put it. I love those purple Salvias! I haven't gotten around to taking too many pictures, but the garden is just too hot for me right now, and not looking its best anyways. Here's one from earlier in the summer as my Fireball Hibiscus started really blooming. It was spectacular, I can't believe how big it got when I had just bought a 6 inch pot last year.

Pollinators!!

Nothing makes a garden feel more alive than having critters working the flowers. Up until recently, I have seen very few pollinators visiting my little patches, which made me really sad. I love watching fat bumblebees nosing around blooms, and who doesn't like seeing butterflies flutter in the air? However, once the Obedient Plant started blooming, it seemed like all the other plants finally started being noticed. I have Phlox, Yarrow, Foxgloves, Salvia and Veronica Speedwell, Coneflowers, etc, so no shortage of pollinator friendly plants here! Well, I'm just happy to see them finally visiting me.





Then today, I finally saw my first hummingbird, and actually had my camera on hand! I didn't get too close, because I didn't want to scare her away, but she was hitting the Agastache (also known as Hummingbird Mint) like crazy. I was thrilled, I bought this in Lowes last year (discount again, lol) because every time I was in the store, the hummingbirds were practically elbowing you out of the way to get to these flowers. They were nuts for them! This flower is one of my favorites in the garden, although it doesn't photograph well for me, it has beautiful flowers and is aromatic when brushed even slightly.