Additions For the Spring

As garden madness approaches fever pitch, I though I'd mention the 'upgrades' to the garden this year.   Hardscape, I got nothing.   Softscape, I went and bit the bullet and got myself all underdirt strung up with soaker hoses.  I am going to do my best to avoid powdery mildew and outrageous water bills this summer.  Granted, if it ever chose to rain during the summer that would help. (hint, hint Mother Nature).

But of course the new additions of note are the plants.

Image Courtesy of Antique Rose Emporium

I have added another antique rose to my collection.  Rosa "Ballerina," which is a single with appleblossom like flowers, and a heavy repeat bloomer.  Or so they say.  Also a nice fragrance.   It is a hybrid musk from 1937, chosen because it is not in a full sunlight situation.  It will get about 4 hours of direct sun, and another 5-6 of very bright indirect/reflective sun.   I'll be keeping you updated on how this 'shade tolerant' varietal does.

I purchased 2 additional Blue Storm Agapanthus to join the other 3 clumps I already have.  This varietal is shorter, by a good foot than the ones I dug and replanted from my Mom's garden, though it is the same traditional color.  I have had good success with getting these to bloom profusely and immediately, and I do it by literally planting them directly beside each other with zero 'room'.  Works like a charm.  Some times indeed you should listen to your mother.

I couldn't help but buy this tiny miniature rose from Lowe's with its perfect pink color.  It was labeled as 'Rosa'.  I can't tell you how obnoxious that is to me.  Come on now, you are telling me the person who planted this rose didn't know what type it was?   I will probably have to spend the next 20 years trying to figure out what it is.  I guess this is their solution to their terrible mislabeling of plants!  Before long everything there will just be labeled "Plant" or "Your guess is as good as mine."

I have bought two more urn style pots to plant the remaining $2.25 knockout roses I was able to acquire last November! (4 gallon sized roses for 9 bucks, steal of the century).  They are already blooming in their nursery pots they've been stranded in since last year.  I am really bad about this.  Its amazing that I actually don't kill stuff more often.  I know this whole urn potted rose thing works because I have a red knockout from last year that managed to become a 4 foot tall bush in one.  Knockout Roses are tough as nails and would probably qualify as a weed if people didn't like them so much.  They'll grow in anything!

After last years crazy tropical look in the shade corner, I'm going to try for a little different look this year, and acquired a couple of double impatiens to make the area a little less tropical looking.   It was cool and different but really not my cup of tea, particularly set against the sunny rest of the garden.  I'm not sure what else I'm going to do with this section... particularly if the persian shields come back.  And they might, it wasn't a particularly cold winter here.

As an aside, guess who I saw out today??  My little guy doesn't get sun at all til mid February due to the massive garage next door and the angle of the sun.  Now he's in the sun full time but my guess is he's going to be a few weeks later than your average Lady Banks.

Brugmansia Mania

Most of you who have read my blog for more than a post or two know I live in an area that can support tropicals for the most part, but that growing up north of here, I don't really have an affinity for the vast majority of them.    We all have our likes and dislikes, and some of my favorite bloggers *gasp* hate coneflowers, which is as difficult to comprehend as the infinite space of the universe for me.    Aside from houseplants which can grow back each year without coming inside, I only have one tropical love: the Brugmansia. 

It actually started in Charleston, when I was walking around one September and came upon this small tree literally coated in foot long tubular blooms.  The thing looked exactly like a Dr. Seuss tree in Seussville.   I wish I had taken a picture of it, but I didn't.  It looked something like this.

I somehow can also see each of the tubes playing like trumpets ala Alice in Wonderland.  I had to have one.

I bought the very first one I ran across, about 1 foot tall, and a tiny sprig of a tree, in April.   By May it was 4 feet tall, straight as an arrow, looking like a 4 foot tall woody weed.   A few cuttings were taken off for relatives, which also rooted easily, but no flowers, and no branches.   Then came July.  The base had sprouted out a new limb, and the main stalk, now over 5 feet tall had V'd.  Or more correctly W'd, and within a week of this happening I had 13 blooms on the thing in quick succession.

Mine was growing in the middle of my patio until early July when I decided that it had to move into some shade.   It was flowering, yes, but the leaves were also burning and turning a not right very light shade of green, despite DAILY watering.  So he's been moved until the end of September to the spot I have reserved for my statue that only exists in my imagination.    Now I only have to water him every other day, and the leaves are turning green again.

Here's a picture of a 4 month old Brugmansia (ignore burnt leaves please).  I can't wait til next season when I move him up a pot size and he becomes a real tree.

 

MIA but not DOA

Well?????, you say...where the heck have you been?

I have been MIA, since June, I know.  I apologize to all those who wrote me and I have yet to get back to.   I am back now.  I have had a #*!$) of a summer.   New job, new relationship, massive family in town, out of town on vacation and I don't know what other excuses I can throw at you, but please add in any others you can think of.

The good news is, despite blog neglect, and moderate garden neglect, the garden is doing really quite well.  Particularly since it hasn't been below 90 degrees during the day since the last time I wrote in May, and I refuse to water regularly when I should because I've been so exhausted every day when I get home.  Plus its still 90 degrees out with a dew point of 85, and even 5 seconds out there with the hose equals a total sweatbath.   It apparently still doesn't matter, they are all still alive save for 1 pot which for a few weeks failed to drain adequately, and boom.  Everything dead.  Yet another example that overwatering can kill something 8.7x as fast as underwatering can.

I have learned some more from my first hot season as a gardener in the south.
1)Do not plant stuff that only blooms in the summer.  You *might* see it from your window but you will never get to enjoy it.   I am going to spend next spring and this fall replacing some of these plants. 
2)Beebalm is really mildewy.
3)David Phlox is awesomely NOT mildewy.  Even though it is right beside the beebalm, it is perfectly fine.  I am buying more next spring.
4)I have a major ivy problem.  If I were to leave the garden untended for 2 years, I am 100% sure that it would be entirely, ENTIRELY covered and coated with ivy.    I also have a passionflower vine and some other vine problem.   Oh, and the jasmines, which I actually planted, are slowly trying to permanently shut the gate.  Vines do really well here.
5)Full sun, in this climate, means death to most things. (not vines) Full Sun plants need partial shade.  The prettiest part of my garden this spring is the hardest part to keep looking 'alive'.  Angelonia seems to be thriving, but even the knockout roses are looking parched constantly.   There will be a lot more angelonia in my garden in those spots. 
6)While I haven't purchased any new roses, when they go on sale here in October, I'm getting some more.  They really are awesome plants.  My MAC rose (Madame Alfred Carrere) which was one stick and 4 leaves when I mail ordered it from Antique Rose Emporium in May, actually bloomed.  It is in a spot which I frequently ahem, forget, to water, and though it looks wilty during the day, it still is growing like a weed with rosebuds on it.  I have yet to: a)fertilize it, b)train it, c)spray it for any pests, or d)do anything really at all to it, and yet it is thriving.  It has grown 4 feet in 2 months of intense neglect.
7)It pays to pay attention to your plants, and when you take 2 weeks off because you are so busy you don't even have time to go to the bathroom, things like 'tiny bugs coating 100% of both sides of your elephant ear plants' happen with disastrous effects.   Then, probably too late, you go to spray them with something, anything that will get rid of the bugs that are now crawling up your arm, and you find that some neighbor has decided your insecticide was too good to pass up from the backyard potting bench, and stole it.  While leaving a $50 ceramic pot sitting there.   I guess when ya gotta have bug spray, ya gotta have it.  Anyhow.  My elephant ear (colocasia) is looking a bit compromised.  Its only been a week since this happened, so hopefully there will be recovery.

Okay, well here's a pic of the garden :)  I'll be writing more regularly again because my schedule has returned to 'somewhat' normal.   And I'll be visiting everyone's blogs again with my new found time.  I started last night! Missed ya'll.

Yarrow Flop House

About a week ago, without pausing to look at any note I might have made to myself on, lets say, plants that should not be fertilized, I went and fertilized the entire garden.    Even the roses got their own special fertilizer.  

Before, when I still looked good

Within 20 minutes, the 'Appleblossom' yarrow grew an additional six inches and promptly flopped all over the place, sprawled over every plant near and far.  

Still looking good....on May 5th

Somewhere deep in the back of my mind, when I planted this stuff, I knew that it liked lean soil.   But until the great flop this week, I had quickly failed to be bothered with remembering.   Now reading the likes and dislikes of this plant again, I am recalling all sorts of stuff.  Like it is going to be huge.   I am not joking here either.  I planted this mid to late March and it was a 5 inch round 1 inch tall mat of fernlike bristles.  I planted two of them because there is some gardening compulsion to never buy just one of anything.    Following the directions properly I did plant them about 2.5 feet apart, so I must have had some inkling at the time.   Today each of them are probably about 24 inches tall (ahem, long) and about a 20 inch round wild floppy mat.   And growing.   5 weeks old and they are monsters. 

Today...not so good :(

See how small I was in March?

I must stop and say I do love the look of the flowerheads.  They are exactly like the picture of them in the magazines.  The colors are great.  But this sprawl.  I am not liking this.  It isn't a pretty let me just intermingle with your flowers and leaves kind of messiness.  I love that look, but no,  it looks like a dog laid on it and had a full night of running dreams.

Okay, so what to do?  Can I stake it somehow?  It looked much better before the great fertilizing event, but its a little late now to reverse that.    

Wordless Wednesday: Pretty Shots

Into The Garden Gate

More Coneflowers Coming

Double Knockout

The Yarrow Is Growing (a lot)

Star Jasmine With Or Without You

Great Griefous, I have been working like a maniac.  It's out of control.  I've checked on the garden each day for about 2.4 seconds, and fortunately it seems to be growing just fine without me.

My kitty, Siggy, who has decided that she'd rather run away then never see me if I was going to be at work all the time, took off one night this week out into the streets of Charleston, and after a full 10 hour day of work, half a second to eat something and 2.5 hours of trying to find her and finally succeeding, I have had enough for one week.

She really really wants to be a garden cat.

During the week without me, the star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) went from half bloomed to fully bloomed, with the heavenly smell so strong that I can smell it inside when the doors and windows are closed.  This might potentially be because my house has the R-value of a pasta strainer.  It IS the most smelliferous at night though really all the time its just pretty fabulous.    The night bugs also came out this week.  Yay, night bugs.   You can tell they are still a little trigger shy, like "Oh crap? Am I the only one out here? chirrrrrrrp. Dang. This would suck." But they are starting up bit by bit.

Last fall I planted a small stick of star jasmine by the gate not realizing that the anemic looking vine on the other part of the fence, with most its leaves fallen off due to scale, was also a star jasmine.  A few treatments last fall, and a good dose of neem oil in February and what do you know, healthy and happy and blooming back wall.  And the real treat is over on the other side where my parking area is.  (ignore trashbin area please).  

They are also blooming everywhere in town.  I'm not sure how this can be because I feel like the banksia roses are also everywhere, like there could not possibly be enough fences in the city to support such populations.  When one fades the next seems to take over the city.  I wonder what will be on those (same fences?) come July?

PS. for those of you considering this plant, its hardy to about 40F (5C),  but seemed to handle a few below 30 nights we had this past year.  The ground never freezes here, so thats probably a consideration.  Also, mine blooms in both shade and sun.  Its says its a sun plant, and certainly its more bountiful on the sun side, but it has plenty of blooms in what I would call a full light shade situation.  Evergreen too, if you don't have scale all over it!

Foxg-Love and Bloggy-Love

I got the best compliment a few hours ago from a neighbor and friend who was sharing a glass of wine out back in my garden. (Btw city gardens do have one single advantage over country and suburban gardens who have all the space, lack of noise, tons of sun, blah blah blah, everything everything.....we have neighbors all up and down the street who stop by because they are dying to see what is going on behind the white picket fence!  It kicks butt, I have a bottle of wine on the chill for just such occasions which happen about once a week.  They bring stuff too.  I just got a jar of homemade preserves out of this, last week I got a vase full of roses from a neighbor who has to be away the entire month of May and picked all the roses on the bush for me!)

Ok, back to the compliment.  (I have been drinking wine, as mentioned,  so plan on this being incredibly verbose with lots of parentheticals and no editing - as you suggested I do IG, eat your heart out).    She said, "Wow.  This garden looks like an English country garden!"  Cha-ching.  She can come back forever anytime she wants and camp in the backyard too!    I was so self-proud I was almost rendered speechless but due to the two point five glasses of wine before the comment I was, in actuality, rendered nothing of the sort.   I haven't shut up for a moment since.

After I got finished blabbing how it was nothing, and anyone could do it, and no I really haven't spent 40 hours a week working on this garden (lies, all of em), I honed in on what exactly she meant.   We actually have a style of garden here, outrageously known as "Charleston Style" which 90% of gardens around here adhere to.  First, it looks 'right' (semi formal) and second the things in them tend to be no brainers here and make for beautiful easy gardens.    People love Charleston gardens around here, myself included.  My front garden, if I should ever actually get the wild onions out, will eventually look like that too.   I've got tourists to impress, after all.    I cringe at what they must think now, but hey, my house is Carribean pink, that has to count for something.   Ps. for those of you who are curious what a double porch style house or the front garden looks like (flowergardengirl), its coming, its coming, I just have to actually plant something out front so I am not embarrassed on the internet here by the 800 wild onions, unlevel dirt, and ugly hedges.  Its one thing to talk about them, its another to display.

Okay, so I'm off topic again.  What she (my friend with the wine and jam) was talking about, really, that made my garden so English?  The Foxglove.    It is starting to bloom and it is majestic.    In my garden most of them get about 3 hours of sun, and would be happy to be in a lot less I'd say, judging by what they look like at 1pm.   But once the sun is off of them they look divine.  One of them, a Camelot Cream (the white one), isn't really totally bloomed yet and is already around 3.5 feet tall.  He is going to be a giant when fully bloomed.

So anyhow also now that I am typing typsy, and I have your attention and I continue to go off topic, cheers to you, all my loyal readers, my new readers, and of course, Jean, who adopted me when I was two days old.  I would bring you some jam and come and visit your garden too if I could.  Meredith, when I go camping this summer out that way,  I might just be lurking in your yard.... (not in a creepy way though, I'd ask first.)

Love, Jess (with an english country garden hehe, probably until July when it all goes into heat shock)

(next post will include no parentheticals I promise)

The Gift Plant

O, I got me some free plants!   Doin' the little jig of free plant joy.  Unlike plants that I have bought or seeded, of course, I don't have much basic knowledge on these, which I can imagine can lead to danger.  I am sure none are invasive weeds, but I have a little research work to do on some of them.

Free plant #1.  Its a good thing this one is so unusual looking because even after asking twice, I couldn't remember the common name given me, and I kept wanting to call in Jacob's Ladder, even though I knew that wasn't right.  Don't you hate that, when something gets into your head that you know isn't right yet it seems to short circuit your brain from any other neural pathway?

This is Alternathera "Party Time" or Joseph's Coat.

Next up a variety of coleus, I'm not exactly sure which.

Then I have received a double red knockout rose, which is going to join my single red one.   I have quickly gone from zero roses to 3 roses.  And I'm thinking about getting one more.   Well, truthfully I just bought another one from the Antique Rose Emporium.  A Madame Alfred Carriere to climb up the side of my house out back.  Sigh.  That didn't last very long.  0-4 rose bushes in 1 month.   My house smells so ridiculously lovely though.  

Let's see, what else is in my haul: a couple of sprigs of Bridal Veil (Gibasis Geniculata).  Three achimenes bulbs started in little blue pots.  A couple of Wandering Jews, as replacements for the ones I accidentally froze to death this January.    Not so bad for trading away 6 Hostas, huh.

 

Time Travel Without the Hot Tub

Clearly, I can't seem to get it together to do a post for GBBD on actual bloom day.   Next month, I keep telling myself.  But then I'm buried in work, family, laziness or some other excuse each 15th it seems.

So, lets just pretend it is the 15th.  I'm making that funny sound and your vision is blurring just like in old "I Dream of Jeannie" reruns.   There, its the 15th, just like that.  No WABAC machine or small ultra heated pool needed, and everyone looks slightly younger and has a 'dated' hairstyle from 5 days ago.

Here's what is blooming in my garden.  These flowers might never ever bloom together again, but this April, I have representatives from early spring, late spring, summer and late summer, through combination of crazy weather and nursery plants.

Truly A Garden To Die For

In my quest to read 100+ books this year, as inspired by ChickenFreak, I have read a few Agatha Christie novels since January.  They are short, entertaining, and bring back really good memories, filled with lush country mansions and the idle rich of a bygone era.   

Have you noticed that Agatha loved to kill off everybody with poison?  AND, no matter who did it, they either got the poison out of the gardening shed or grabbed some leaves from that rambling estate garden on the Devon coast, and threw it in the port.  Or the afternoon tea.

Some met their death through peach cultivars (prunus) from whose pits come the famous cyanide.  Others choked on their last words with a good gulp of something from the Nightshade family.  Digitalis, arsenic and morphine all found their way from garden to dead person in her novels.

I did a quick inventory of my murderous potential growing outside today, just for fun of course, and really...  Nobody better mess with me.  Just saying.

First there is the common foxgloves I have poking out of various places.  In medical circles this is known as Digitalis, and its either a heart medication, or a heart stopper, depending on how much you take.

Next stop, the Easter Lilies I picked up at the grocery store after Easter.  Its not terribly harmful to me, but deadly poisonous to my cat, Siggy, who has already used up 7 of her 9 lives in less than a year as it is.  They aren't in the house anymore.  And pretty much all lilies are bad for cats, though squirrels don't seem to mind them.

Back behind my little parking area: the oleander.  Now this is a seriously poisonous plant, can easily kill children and pets, and it is everywhere in this fair city.   I bet there are more than 30 planted on my block alone; they line the streets.  I think I have always known it was poisonous, but folks it is knock your socks of deadly in small amounts. All parts too.

Right smack in the middle of the patio is my one tropical love, the Brugmansia, which if you listen to everything that is said on the internet, is poisonous to even smell.  I'm pretty sure thats an exaggeration,  however, it, along with Datura is the prime candidate for poisoning by the Deadly Nightshade family.    I have no issues handling it, but it is one of those that cannot under any circumstances be ingested.   The potato is a relative and this is why for years people were scared to eat them.   I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been jumping at the chance either.  I mean if you really look at a potato objectively, not like a future french fry, doesn't it look kind of poisonous?

I've got a few delphiniums growing from seed in the sunny border.  Yep, poisonous too.  They contain delphinine, which causes gastrointestinal issues and has felled many a cow.  Delphiniums and larkspurs near fields and meadows = bad plan.

And finally my lantana, which is about as native naturalized as you can get here, disrupts the mucus lining of stomach membranes, and to some people is even irritating to touch.

So that's just in my tiny yard.  There are so many more out there.  Autumn Crocus ingestion can cause massive multi-system failures, Lily of the Valley, theoretically you shouldn't even touch without handwashing, as it can cause cardiac arrest.    Yews, azaleas, poppies, dieffenbachia, daffodils, hyacinths, iris, wisteria, jasmine, bleeding heart, daphne, wolfsbane, and sago palms.  All poisonous.  Some very deadly poisonous.  (i.e. don't go eating your azaleas).

All of this and we haven't even gotten into whatever the heck is in Miracle Gro.  No wonder the British gentry of the 30's could pull this off so easily, right?

The Ever Blooming Garden - All At Once

ABC News the other night was remarking on the astronomically high pollen counts this year in the southeast.   This is to the tune of 5000+ (parts per whatever), instead of a normal very high of 120.    Sitting at my brother's house on Easter we could actually see puffs of pollen coming off of a tree in the breeze, like he had pulled out a cigar for a post meal boys club card game.

The bottom line is, this is true, as my meals now consist primarily of Claritin.

The cause of all this pollen, says the News, is that everything is blooming at once, thanks to an usually cool late winter in the south east followed up by the 3 week spell of summer we've just had with minimal rain.     And unfortunately this is true too.

In my garden right now, I have old-fashioned Bleeding Heart (Dicentra Alba) blooming with woodland phlox (Phlox Divaricata), which all makes sense, but what also is blooming are the coneflowers (Echinacea Purpurea), Cleome, and Agapanthas.  What the heck are they doing here in early April!!?    What is this going to mean for my mid and late summer garden?  I am having trouble believing that the coneflowers are going to bloom for 6 months, as great a plant as they are.

Some of this issue is of course, that some of these flowers were raised until weeks ago at a nursery, and combined with the summer weather they were just ready.  But that doesn't explain the agapanthas - I planted that last October from a clump dug up in Va, and because of the cooler weather in February it was actually late to come up!     Same for the cleome.  Those were seeds.

Its interesting which plants are getting mixed up by all of this.   The sedum, for instance, looks exactly like it should and is a long way from blooming.   The star jasmine, which should be blooming next month, hasn't even put buds out yet, so I'm guessing he is on schedule too.   The Lavender looks to be on schedule, the Catmint.   The Rose of Sharon and the Callicarpa bush are acting like its still winter, and haven't even noticed anything awry.  Both are still mainly sticks, which as I understand it, is normal for them.

I Think I Can, I Think I Can

The Lady Banks roses are blooming all over town.  White ones, yellow ones, why even the Food Lion has one (that's a grocery store).   Until I decided to get one I just never realized how many of them there are.  Everywhere.

My Lady Banks, who was planted a few weeks ago, and came home looking like a tiny bundle of straggly sticks, still is looking rather pathetic and small, but she knows what she is supposed to be doing.  She knows that she should be covered in blooms all over the place and be plotting world domination like the rest of her brethren.   So last night, with all of her might she willed herself to bloom. 

This is what we got.

Pretty cute right, in that Charlie Brown Christmas Tree sort of way!

Carjacking By A Lady Named Banks

Last year, while visiting dozens of houses, looking for the perfect one to buy, I happened upon so many lovely arbors, trellises and fences covered in white, pink or yellow blooms cascading all over the place.    They perched from atop thorny limbs woven into many a gate I tried to peer through, and they climbed up columns holding up centuries old double porches (piazzas in Charleston-speak).  They called softly to me from unseen gardens, their fragrance mixed with the humid air for hundreds of steps.   Ah, so rosey.

But I am a beginning gardener.  One with a love of many sun loving flowers and limited space in which to grow them.   A quick reading about basic rose care, and it was settled.  No thorny, mildewy, buggy, flower wilting, fertilizer sucking temperamental roses for me.  Nope, I don't love them that much. 

Then something happened today when I stopped by to get some potting soil to fill up my two monster patio pots.  This Lady Banks Rose ended up in my passenger side car seat.  I swear I didn't put her there.  She tried to hide herself under my jacket, and frankly I wouldn't have even noticed her there except in an effort to make it safely home she put her seatbelt on, and well, I was suspicious.  My jacket is one of those wild children - never uses his seatbelt.

So her cover blown, she pulled out a water pistol and said "Drive, or you'll have root rot where the sun don't shine." I'm sure you all can imagine my utter shock.  At the next light, I nervously glanced around elsewhere in the car to see if any other secret passengers were about.  Sure enough, an entire bag of caladium bulbs were hiding on the floorboard!   The outrageous audacity of some plants, right?

For all of you who are now a bit concerned for me, no worries, I made it home totally dry, albeit with a new found understanding of the southern magazine, "Garden & Gun."

You might be a WEED if...

There is an oft commented saying about weeds that goes something like, "A weed is just a plant or flower in a place that you don't want it to be." 

YOU might call a stray cosmos or 4 o'clock a weed all you like my friends, but they are not WEEDS, with all capital letters.  There is a distinct difference between a WEED and a misguided flower, and to help everyone clarify this difference, I though we could use the Jeff Foxworthy identification process.

So.
You might be a WEED if...you are totally indifferent if its cold, hot, muddy, dry, sandy, clayish, sunny, dark, windy, humid, gritty, lacking oxygen, lacking nitrogen, the place is on fire and it's hailing -  all at the same time.

If you feel pretty certain you have a fighting chance of establishing roots on a rolling bowling ball in the trunk of a 1985 Cutlass Sierra...you just might be a WEED.

You might be a WEED if you can overwinter 128 years in a row waiting for that one day when someone makes the error of uncovering you and 85,000 of your closest friends.

You might also be a WEED if you tend to grow a 5 inch by 10 inch root ball before actually sprouting anything lest someone might see you.

And if you can grow this rootball and sprout your first leaf in the time it takes the average person to use the bathroom, you just might be a WEED.

If you can see your entire family tree when you stand on your tippy-stems, and as a matter of fact you're still connected to them, then you might be a redneck...er.. and a WEED.

And finally, you might be a WEED if you can have your starter leaves look, at any single moment, like every single other kind of plant that is lovingly planted in the garden until you grow more than 5-6 leaves, and which point you sprout out of that 'fake' plants stomach like an Aliens baby and eat all the actual garden plants in sight.  You are definitely a WEED if  you keep doing this.  Face it.

Instead of trying to feel better about weeds by calling them misplaced flowers, I think Doug Larson has done them justice in saying:

A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows.

Now THAT is true.

Plant Spree

Last weekend was a great time to gather up annuals and a few perennials and stick them in the dirt.  Plants have finally made it to the garden centers, though they tell me they are missing quite a few things that would normally be available.  I also planted in ground or pot those seedlings I started in late January which have made it through the process and the twice weekly cat maulings.     

Here's what I brought home from the garden center, seeded myself, or planted last fall after stealing from my mom's garden:
Annuals: Alyssum "Easter Basket", Bacopa (50cents!!!) "Snowstorm Blue", Verbena "Lanai Blush White", Nemesia "Innocent Compact Pink", Cosmos, Delphinium, Torenia "Summer Wave Blue," Nastursium "Empress of India" and some sweet basil which did incredibly well, even inside.
Perennials: Yarrow "Appleblossom," Star Jasmine, Trailing Lantana, Butterfly Bush "Unknown," Sedum "Autumn Joy," Hydrangea "Forever Pink", red and purple Beebalm, Elephant Ear "Unknown Lowe's Variety," an Autumn fern and a Lavender plant I just had to have.

I also planted some agapanthas and a rose of sharon last fall but they don't look like they are returning as of yet.

So thats the scoop so far, and this weekend is planning on being just as nice out there.  Time to go back to the nurseries!

First Plant Of The Season

My fingers are crossed that the weather stays out of the freezing zone.   We are still unnaturally cold, but the nighttime temps are hovering in the high 30s, and forecasted to remain there til after the last frost date.

Sooooo..... Plant number one is officially planted, bought as a replacement for the many lantana I dug out of the front garden.

It is a medium purple trailing lantana (lantana montevidensis), and it SHOULD remain on the short side, less than 18-20 inches, which would be a great improvement over the 5 foot tall ones I uprooted in the fall.  I like the plant because it is a constant bloomer and I like the color.  Its downsides are that it can be invasive and the smell is not appealing to me.   Regardless, it is in!

And as a side note, you see, I am not kidding about the amount of cement in the soil.  That little pile is just from the hole I dug to place the lantana in.  Its nuts.

Poo+Crappy Soil=Crappy Soil With Some Poo On It

The future weather forecast, though certainly not seasonal (grumble grumble), doesn't call for a deluge of rain, 40 mph winds, or snow (first time in 20 years) so it is time to put some money where my mouth has been recently complaining: crappy soil.

How do I know it's crappy soil?  Well truth be told, I don't KNOW exactly... I merely rather strongly guess.  It can rain 5 inches in 5 hours and within 24 hours the soil looks like its in cahoots with tumbleweeds.  There is also the disturbing fact that the soil just doesn't look like soil.  And finally there's the possibility that it could have spent the greater part of 5 years covered by magnolia leaves.  It bears mention that there weren't even weeds growing back there.  What would you think?

Well, I'm sure we're both right, however, we must be scientific about all this here at Chez Children of the Corm, so its time to bring out: (dum dum dah dummmm) THE VIALS OF TRUTH.  Apparently, if there's one thing I like spending money on, its gadgets and chemistry kits that will tell me what else I need to spend money on.

I followed the directions, something I am really good at doing.  It's too bad gardening isn't like cooking, where 95x out of 100 if you follow the directions you come up with something good.  Or at least edible...some wilted up dead husk with bugs all over it generally does not show up in the pan.

But, I digress.  It was time to know for sure, so I gathered my dirt, did my little chemistry magic and voila, all the secrets of my crappy soil were sort of revealed, in that 1991 home pregnancy test kit kind-of way.   I'm pretty sure I know what colors those were, however, it would have been easier if the test tube had just called me up on my cellphone and told me "Yes, your soil is crappy."

Here are the results.  The good news: my PH is pretty close to neutral.  The bad news: the soil has absolutely no appreciable level of Nitrogen or Phosphorous.  It does have some Potassium, however the test kits variation between low, medium, and high are not discernible to the naked eye so I'm not exactly sure how much potassium.  It is definitely more than very low or none though.

So, with those facts confirming my suspicions I went directly to big box store and bought my first soil amendment: cow poo.   When cow poo is put in a bag and allowed to sit for enough time it, of course, is then known as manure compost, a marketing term which is working dandy for me.   I have never lifted as heavy or unwieldy an item as a bag of manure compost after a month of rain.  Holy cow.

Now, 200 pounds of cow poo is still out there waiting in the car since yesterday, and its time to get amending.  I wonder how many years of this will have to go on before I can say, "I have loamy, nutrient rich soil?" 

And on an aside, I have to ask, where is Blotanical? This is also highly disturbing.

Japanese Holly Fern

As I cleared all the tons of leaves from my back garden, and fought with roots emanating from where? I did delight in having found a low growing very tropical looking plant that seemed to be thriving.   No bugs, no brown burned up spots, no rotting looking, no keeled over in a sun laden death knell.   I had a lot of them too - 7 distinct frond bottoms (I'm sure there's a word for these I don't know but thats what I'm calling them).  They are about 8 inches tall to maybe a foot and half.  But the combined seven of them are about 8 feet wide by 3 or 4 feet deep.  Thats a lot of ferns.

A quick look through my favorite gardening book of all times (so far) Easy Gardens For The South, by Cotton, Crawford and Pleasant, and I had identified it at a Japanese Holly Fern (Cyrtomium falcatum).    From everything I read in my books and on the internet these plants like shade and moisture.   I'm here to tell you they are growing in 8b (humid all the time, with an occasional freeze) in crappy non nutrient rich soil, which holds absolutely no water and they get a few hours of blazing sun between about 12-2, and they are thriving.  So my gut feeling is that this is one of those plants that can be grown outside of its 'recommended values'.

Because these things looked so insanely healthy, and they were pretty, and because they were better looking and fuller than most pictures I saw on the internet of them, I had the dilemma of what to do with these.  Given that my gardening space isn't endless, having 30 sq feet of holly fern just doesn't make sense.    So I had to get rid of a few, and I decided about 2 weeks ago that I would give the butterfly bush (aka 2 straggly sticks and a dream from my moms garden) I had moved in October a better shot at life.  I dug up the 2 closest to the bush, and boy oh boy was it a job.

They were all closely planted together, and though they don't have large roots, they have many many many deep roots.    I'm sure I cut half of their roots off in the process, and some of the roots of the neighbor plants too.    But, I took the two of them and threw them in some medium sized pots with a little potting soil and hoped for the best.   Sure, the pots were way too small, but I wasn't about to give away one of my prized monster pots that would have been appropriate.    It worked!

This has been in this smaller pot for 2 weeks now and is looking just as healthy as he did in the ground. First transplanting mission accomplished.   And maybe of interest to any of you that live a little farther north than me, the plants in the pots survived several below freezing nights and didn't even sniff.   The well established ones I inherited made it through 13 days, nearly all in the hard freeze area without a brown leaf to be seen.   I bet these would probably make it in at least zones 7 as an evergreen.  I believe at some point they get more deciduous in nature in zone 7, but even if it loses its leaves it comes back.

Here's my new clump, looking a little smaller.  They are none the worse for wear either:

Details:

Japanese Holly Fern (Cyrtomium falcatum)
USDA Hardiness Zone 7-10
Pests: Rare
Water: Medium (whatever, mine seem fine in drought, flood)
Soil: Fertile well drained (again, my soil is far from fertile)
Light: Shade, morning sun okay (mine is in part shade)
Growth: Slow
Propagation: Division
Fertilization: Medium (has been fine for 5+ years here with no fertilization)

Little Peat Pots

As is probably obvious by now, I haven't grown a lot of things from seed in my life.   I did have quite a cute herb garden hanging in from the windowsill of one of my kitchen windows in NYC, but thats about the extent of it.

This year, in my gardening RIGHT NOW wishing fervor, I decided to start some seeds in the small upstairs room which is blindingly bright with its south and west exposures.    I chose a lot of seeds which are late spring bloomers in most of the country, primarily because those can be tough here, so I hear, and need to get out as early as possible.   The >80 degrees heat and humidity hit around May, and the sun at that point can melt lead.  Okay, so maybe it can't, but plants don't like it. There was a 90 degree day here this past October after I moved in, and my Wandering Jew looked almost as bad as when I accidently froze it to death this January.  Oops.  I forgot him. Now he's very dead.  I feel bad about it.

This seed extravaganza took place about 2 weeks ago, as the first plant date is the 2nd week of March around here (little jig of joy for living in the South), and I wanted these little plants ready to leave the nest by then.

I read the directions.  I did what I was supposed to.  Some seeds needed light, they got light. Some seeds needed dark, they got cardboard covers.

So here's the result after about 17 days.   Look hard... What is wrong in this picture?

Well, actually there are two things wrong.   First, the 4 o'clock seeds aren't coming up.   These are home grown from my Mom's garden so I'm suspecting its not the seeds, its me.  They just keep sitting there, looking like little grenades half buried in the soil.

But the big wrong thing?  You see how every other plant in the tray is between .5 inches and 2 inches tall, like one would expect after 2 weeks?  Now you see those Nastursiums that are 6 inches tall?  What the heck?  They would have many more leaves too if my cat would stop eating them.   4-6 weeks my (behind!)*  What am I going to do with these things?  They can't go out now!

*(paraphrased for public audiences)

Plants Inherited

The previous owner actually rented my house out for the 5 years, which explains to a large degree the state of the gardens (and the house). College kids are not known for their neat and appreciative style of living. I am still cleaning up the college compost of cigarette butts and bottle caps all over the place, after nearly 4 months! That said, some things are indeed alive and well despite absolutely no care.

In October, while moving in, my green thumb Mom looked on in horror when she saw one of the vines living on the back fence (and trees, and into the lirope, up the light pole etc). Passion flower! It too is very invasive here, which was somewhat self evident, BUT the flowers, which I had never seen before that I could remember, were so pretty and purple and well, pretty and purple. I did end up ripping all of it out I could find with a heavy heart.

One day I was making up the guest bedroom and I looked out of the window towards the back garden at one of the evergreen trees which I don't know the name of, and what did I see? A canopy of purple flowers intermixed with the dense leaves! It was stunning!

So I am keeping it. Every time I walk out to the car, I rip any of it down that I see has overstepped its bounds (the tree), as it has climbed back down onto the fence and into the lirope and can do so overnight even in the dead of winter, but I love it just the same. I know the lantana is jealous. It helps that it doesn't smell like cat pee.