State Of The Blog Address

Before I really dig down into the garden this year, I thought it would be fun to do a little state of blog post.  I think it's always fun to see the numbers and comings and goings behind things and blogs are no different. Statistics and trends can be fascinating I think, and I'm often surprised at what turns out popular and what does not.

The majority of my site traffic comes from Google.  No shock there. Because Charleston is a tourist town I get a decent amount of traffic from that word alone.  Charleston, Charleston, Charleston.  Just adding it a few more times for the Googlebot!  It works too.  Many times I've seen visitors come by looking for "Charleston Gardens" and stay long enough to check out half the pages on my site.  These types of visits are very obvious to the blogger and make us feel so good!

So starting with the basics, Children of the Corm, on an average non-post day gets about 50 visits, if you don't count the mad bombing hits from Pakistan and the like.  On a post day, and the day after, it can vary dramatically from 100-250 visits.  Nothing stupendous, but not terrible either, considering my very first month of blogging Jan 2010, I had an entire 9 visits. Also I only post 2-3 times a month on average.  I have noticed that if I post 4-6 times a month my traffic increases dramatically, about 3 fold.  But realistically, I'm really not capable of keeping that up on an every month basis.   The very best day on my blog statistically speaking was the day it was linked in Apartment Therapy, also not surprisingly.  I was famous for a day!

Besides from not posting on a Friday, I have given up trying to figure out when 'best' to post a blog to maximize readership.  Because it is a garden blog it can be extremely weather dependent.  If the weather is clement in the USA, UK, Australia, and Canada its going to be crickets on the blog, particularly on a weekend.  If the weather is crappy over most of those land masses, its going to be a high traffic Saturday and Sunday.  I have also noticed that posting the day before a holiday or the holiday itself will ensure light visits, however, the day after a holiday seems to be a high traffic day.  I guess all that turkey in the belly is keeping people on the couch 'surfing.'

I don't mind people downloading my photos, and as I have yet to have someone hijack my blog content, at this point I take it as a sort of compliment.  That said it is very surprising what people really are interested in saving. Despite that this picture was posted in reference to its ugly side, this is the #1 currently downloaded picture, and #2 overall:

In 2012 alone, 21 people have decided they needed to keep
 a permanent copy!

The current #2 (and #1 overall):

Followed closely by another from the same post:

Next up are a pair of my cat, Siggy:

So it basically takes til pictures #s 6 and 7 to get to something mildly garden related, also both from the same post:

And just a quick jump back to Geography, about 50% of my visitors come from the USA, 10% from the UK, 5% each from Australia, Canada, and Germany, and the other 25% from everywhere else in the world.  Except for China.  I have only had one lone visit from non-Hong Kong China. Apparently I must be blacklisted over there. In the USA state-wise, Texas leads the way with a whopping 11%, followed by North Carolina at 8%, South Carolina at 7%, Georgia at 4% and with New York at 3% rounding out the top 5.  Come on home State!  Texas is beating you!

My top 5 posts are:
1)"You Might Be A Weed If..."
2)"10 Shade Tolerant Roses"
3)"Brugmania Mania" 
4)"How To Age A Brand New Cement Statue"
5)"When Wildlife Won't Stay Put"

My least popular post was my very first one :( which I thought pretty good.  Check it out sometime if you want to make me feel better about it :)!
For The Love Of 4 O'clock

My top Google search terms are: "shade tolerant roses", "how to build a trellis", "white garden", "brugmansia" "Charleston gardens" and the persistent "ballerina rose" coming in at #1.

On the live and learn column, one thing I wish I hadn't done was put the word naked in a post along with lady in the same post, as well as children in the name of the blog.  Some of these searches that I get are amusing, i.e. "Naked neighbor lady in my garden", but others are downright sicko. I don't want those people even looking at my blog!  I'll just say that there are bad people out there.

I am very fortunate to average about 15 individual comments on each of my posts, and I am very very grateful for them.  I have quite a few frequent commenters, Grace, Masha, Holley, Kyna, Deb, Marguerite, Casa M, Phillip, Clare, Catmint, Ursula, Donna, Gina, Daracia, Carolyn, Jim, Heidi, Christine, Jean, and I'm sure more, plus I've had some new commenters recently that I hope will continue to stop by! Thank you all very much.

Also, in the thanks giving, my top referrers are:
"The Idiot Gardener"
"Charleston Daily Photo"
"Compost In My Shoe"

...but I get so many referrals from so many of you, so again, thanks so much.

Well, that about sums it up! One housekeeping issue: I finally got around to creating myself a blog facebook page, so for those that prefer to follow on facebook, you now can.  There's a link in the sidebar.

Cheers to another year of fun blogging, blog reading, and gardening adventures (with plenty of mishaps by you all because those make amusing post!)  I have made it into the beginning of my 3rd year, so maybe I'll be a long-timer after all!

Jess

Camellia "Pink Perfection"

For a Charlestonian I have a shocking disregard of the local popular plants.  I hate canna's, I don't grow meyer lemon trees or tea olives (yet), I dug up all the lantana kicking and screaming, and I own only one straggly camellia, a sasanqua, that while beautiful as can be, has scale so bad that I cannot get rid of it...after trying for three years.  I even broke down and used the evil stuff after the soakings in neem had no effect.  No dice there either... scale can get to such proportions that it can never be eradicated.  Sasanqua's are known for it.

Sasanqua off of the front porch in December.... lots of bloom almost no leaves!
Sorry for crappy quality...apparently I couldn't be bothered to open screened door.

The camellia, unfortunately, is going to die from this, and I think this is the year I'm going to put it out of its misery.  I already have 2 cuttings going so that I can keep the mystery cultivar though, because it is a very early bloomer (October) and blooms the same time the roses do in the fall, which is fantastic.   I actually prefer sasanquas in form, truth be told.

Even my scale has scale on the few remaining leaves

But, now that I'm working on the parking garden, which has a combination of half-day sun, and full light shade areas I have a space in which to add a few large bushes where they will have room to grow.   I've already placed 10 or so daylilies up near the front where the sun will shine, as well as a Carefree Beauty rose bush.  On the left side, by the white picket fence (you honestly can't get away from white picket fence-lines on my property) I've finally landed a few azaleas too.  What the area really needs are some large shrubs to hide the other neighbors hideous blank wall and the cars, and that is indeed the topic of this post, should I every decide to get to the point here.

Now, you might be wondering how it is that my one house can be surrounded by so many other houses, and you'd be right to wonder!  In Charleston, because it was built when we used to cook over open flames, the kitchens were often housed in their own building, as were carriages, and even the in-laws, if at all fiscally possible. This means most of the properties have dependencies, and most have long since been split into separate residences for us hoi palloi.  So anyhow, this explains it.  Both my house, and the one next to me, with the massive garage on the shady side of my garden, each are part of old urbans 'estates' that have dependencies.  Between me and my neighbors original properties there are six total houses, on very deep lots.  The lots here, tend to be very narrow and have no front yards (zero lot lines), but are about 3 times as deep as you'd expect.  One of these days, I'll have to draw it out for you, particularly as I start gardening on some of the 'shared' spaces.  (i.e. they are getting all my pink knockout roses that I want to replace with something else).  This also explains why there is such an abundance of fencing.  Good fences, as they say....

Now, to the point, finally: camellias.  As a rose lover you'd think I'd be all over these things, and I am, just they are expensive and I am slow to dig big holes.  But I have been planning on lots of camellias eventually, once I get around to some good shady spots.  Plus, they really are 25 to the block in every single color imaginable so I honestly can look out my living room windows and see some without having to plant anything.  Who was it that said something about incorporating the 'borrowed' views?

I brought my first camellia home today though, and its a beaut!  The local nursery's around here are chock a block with varieties because the bushes are so popular, so it was actually difficult to choose just one, but recently coming to peace with myself over the "buy large plant and wait 6 months to plant because dread digging the hole which takes hours" syndrome, I have decided that I can only buy one at a time.  If I plant it, I can go and get another.   Seeing as I'm not one of these people who wants another of the same kind, this really has no downside.

This is camellia "Pink Perfection", a japonica with nearly perfect flower form.  The buds are huge and heavy, the leaves larger than average, and the hole digging is going to be a doozy (its in a 7 gallon pot).    This is a relatively easy to get cultivar, supposedly a prolific bloomer, but very susceptible to root rot, so I hear, so not a good choice for clay soils.  My sand for soil on the other hand... will still need sphagnum to keep the thing from frying, I'm sure.

Here's what I hope mine looks like in years to come.

But for today, it still looks pretty good.  Though, its hole is not dug yet!

Throwing In The Towel and Lifting The Spade

Workday!
As the sun wains on today, it is 76 degrees outside.  Mild with a light breeze.  A top 10 day of the year, weatherwise, and on a Sunday to boot.

This morning with my coffee, I was sitting outside and taking a look at the roses, which I hadn't pruned at all, and...they were all breaking dormancy!  Those that went into dormancy, that is.  Marie Pavie has been blooming throughout the winter, in total shade.  So, I threw in the towel and pick up the trowel and decided that today was first real garden day of the year.   I probably worked for 5 straight hours out there!

The remains of the blooms from Marie Pavie

I planted the bulbs that have been hanging in the refrigerator (southern solution to no frost), hard pruned the roses, raked up the leaf cover, put several bags of compost and mulch all around, and potted up the stolen rose cutting which is now on its way to bush-dom.

Rosa "Church Heist"

And finally, after sitting out there in their nursery pots all winter (I don't know how it is I don't kill more stuff doing this), I planted the Encore Azaleas out in the parking garden.  That process is an hour in itself, because it involves digging through the gravel, then sawing out the roots of various trees both dead and alive to make some room.  Then of course importing some decent soil mixed with sphagnum so that some water is retained.  Then, planting time.  I often wonder what it must be like gardening someplace that hasn't been an urban center for hundreds of years and doesn't have mature 70 foot trees all over the place? Are there places with fertile workable soil?  Really?  Anyhow, the parking garden is a big work in progress.  Mostly still the work part, with a lot of the progress forthcoming.  One thing that is looking pretty good is the 'hedge' of liriope outside the garden gate leading to the parking garden.  It gives me hope that 2 years from now the parking garden will be looking as established, and not, well, like this second picture.

"Evergreen Giant" Liriope along the driveway... looking good even in winter

New Azaleas looking very small in their new home

My garden, still mostly sleepy, has turned a big corner in the past week... the no going back corner.  Our average 'last frost' date here on the peninsula is Feb 11, but things are way ahead, and if we get a freezing night this year I'm hoping its not til next December.   I think the latest ever is March 8, and thats a full month from now, so fingers are crossed.  It is hard to imagine though, as the entire winter has been in the 60s and 70s minus a handful of days.  Snowflakes are up, muscari nearly there, and even the tropical brugmansia has unfurled a few leaves.

Early Pink Trees and Daffodils

Well, things are blooming a month early.  I have spied with my little eye white Lady Banks starting to bloom and the saucer magnolias are out full bore at this point.  We haven't had even what we would call a winter down here, and I can't help myself... I'm delighted.  Nothing like a few extra months of 60s and 70s, no?

Here's a few pictures from around my neighborhood yesterday, come take a January walk with with me:

On the sidewalk..those Lady Banks are about to break

Saucer Magnolias are VERY early...

Of course the camellias are out too

Daffodils about to break through crazy vines

And here's a more wintery looking picture, taken on my walk to work a morning last week when it was actually foggy in Charleston.  Thats a pretty rare occurrence here, anything resembling fog usually burns up by 5am in the summer, and its usually too breezy in the winter when the correct atmospheric conditions are at hand.  It happens less than once a year, I'd say.  This little lake down at the corner (an old mill pond back in the day) provided the perfect showcase.  The night before I was sitting on my upstairs porch watching it roll in, thick as a blanket.

Love & Hate Relationship With The White Garden

One of my favorite colors to wear is white...despite the pale skin and fair hair.  Maybe not the best suited but, to me, it either looks sharp and cool, or dainty and girly.  I probably own 10 white sundresses.  Or maybe 20.  2 white suits, and a few additional white jackets.

Now my house has absolutely no white walls.  Not a one.  Blue, green, even Tiffany blue and purple brown, but no white.  I would never, how boring, I think.

So in the rest of my color world its all very clear... very black and white (wink!), but in my garden I cannot make up my mind.  I both love and hate white flowers in the garden.

Love, for example, is cohesive, dreamy and like my favorite white sundress:

But the ugly side (reality) is what stops me from planting much white in my garden:

The issue is that having a moon garden would be something worthwhile for me.  My garden is at its best in March, April, October and November, when the days are short and it is twilight most weekdays before I get a chance to enjoy.   But those dead white flowers. ick. they kill me.  Nothing dies in the garden quite so ugly.

{please excuse the above use of these photos, they have been stolen off the web as inspiration many moons ago and I have no idea who to attribute them too.  If they are yours, please let me know!}

How To Root Stuff Every Time

I suspect every gardener has their thing... something that seems to come easier than to most people.  Just like real life, I guess.  You can't be good at everything, but every so often you realize that you indeed do know how to do some stuff.

As most of you know, I have just entered my 3rd year as a real gardener.  You know, with dirt and all, and I have made a lot of mistakes.  There is only so much you can learn from books and advice... eventually you just have to plant a plant, see it die and realize that it just isn't the right plant for the space!

Now in this short amount of time I have noticed that indeed I have a knack for something.  To the tune of 100% success at doing this with absolutely no failures.  I suspect, like much of 'skill' it comes down to a little bit of skill and having the natural circumstances be ripe for the doing.

I can root things.  Any things.  I hear and read about so many people having trouble rooting things such as roses or camellias and I just can't imagine why because, like I said, no matter what I try and root, it roots.  Always.  I know there are lots of competing opinions on how to do this, but I'll just add in here how I do it and why I think I'm so successful at it.

What you will need:
-cutting
-small clear plastic container
-roottone
-sphagnum moss
-gallon baggie

First I start with the clear (see-through) container in which to root... something small that will easily fit in a gallon baggy.  I like to take the bottom of the either small milk containers or 16 ounce soda bottles... cut either about 3 inches deep and put a few drainage holes in the bottom.  Nothing fancy and bigger is not better.  Either for the cutting, or the container.  Take it and run in through the dishwasher.  The reason we want clear is because we want to see when the roots get established without the guesswork.

Second, after the plastic container has come out of the dishwasher, fill it to half an inch of the top with straight sphagnum moss.  Not a mix, not with a little compost, not dirt.  The reason for this is we are about to create a permanently extremely humid moist environment and we need a 100% sterile environment.  For rooting purposes, the little plants do not need nutrients.  I know that there is a lot of debate on the web about this, but let me repeat, I have 100% success this way, so I know this won't be the limiting factor.

Okay, water your container thoroughly, and leave it for a minute or two in the sink to drain a bit.   Now, go find a pencil and stick a hole in the middle of the container about 3/4 of the way down.

Next, pick up your root cutting, which should be sitting in water at this point.  Make a little diagonal cut at the bottom.  The cutting doesn't need to be more than about 5-6 inches tall.  Remove all the leaves but two.  Dip the just cut tip into roottone and immediately stick in the pencil hole and snug up the opening if there is space.  I have never not used roottone so I don't know how much help this gives, but hey, its cheap, and if it ain't broke....

Final step:  Place the entire thing in a gallon zip lock baggie, and leaving as much airspace as possible, zip it up.  Thats it.  You will not unzip it until it is a rooted plant.  Period.  Not once.  Don't do it.  I'm serious.  Leave it alone.

Pretty easy right?  The other piece of the puzzle is where to put it.  And it needs to be in a bright spot with absolutely no direct sun.  Not even for 2 minutes, or you have created an oven.  Mine all grow in my kitchen window which stays in moderate temperatures between 68-78 degrees throughout the year, and is opposite a wall that gets good sunlight, but almost all light coming through the window is reflected off of that building.  It works great.   If you grow orchids successfully, you'll realize that this is the same quality of light.  The holy grail of "rooting stuff" light.

Most things root in between 2 and 5 weeks.  Once I see roots in the container, I give it a few more days to grow a bit more, then I take it carefully out of the bag.  Often, you'll also be clued in from the new growth on top.  Water it and let it drain thoroughly, and then place it back, bagless, in the same spot for the next few days.  Check the dirt moisture every day and make sure it stays moist.   After these 2 or 3 days to acclimatize to the reduced humidity it is time to plant your new little plant in a bigger container.  I usually move up to the standard small nursery pot (5 inches) and fill with regular dirt, around the sphagnum and 'rootball' of the new plant.  I leave it in its place in the winter, or move it out into the outdoor shade during the rest of the year.  After a few weeks out in the shade, and keeping it extremely well watered, I move it to part sun, and then a few weeks later to where I think I want to plant it.  And voila. I usually keep mine in successive containers until about 6 months old, but I'm not really sure that it matters that much.  I have a Zepherine Drouhin out there that I planted while still in twig status and it's done just fine.

I guess a final note is that the cutting should happen when it best suits your climate, and clearly the plant that the cutting was taken from can't be in a dormant stage.  For some of you, thats most of the year, others, only small periods of time.  I have taken cuttings from pieces ending in a flower, one that had just finished blooming, and right before blooming.  I have had a mophead hydrangea root from the flowerhead and stem alone!  I see no difference at all in the end result, so I suspect all those rules are made up to explain away why this or that cutting didn't take.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas, and eat lots of bad-for-you stuff.  I hope for no cats in the trees, a warm fire in the hearth, and snow in places that can handle a white Christmas without causing city services to shut down for a week (like, not here please).

I wish for a perfect weather year for all of us for 2012, and wonderful perfect flowers, with well behaved bugs and a massive reduction in the squirrel population at my house through divine intervention.  I hope for rain for Texas and less rain for NJ, and a new year with no hurricanes, tornadoes, nuclear power plant melt downs, floods, or earthquakes.  I wish for peace.

No matter how many times I take this picture she looks like an evil dictator..
But Merry Christmas anyway.

So Merry Christmas to you!  And may all your dreams come true.  (unless your dreams involve squirrel proliferation).  

Last Call

Its the December garden saying goodbye til February, giving this gardener a little break from watering and weeding and clipping, and some time to daydream and plan and get the ol' garden fantasy juices flowing so I'm totally jumping the gun come Spring, and primed for another season.

Most have died, save a few roses and the evergreens.   We are 'supposed' to have a 40ish degree night here about a week from now, so all the begonias are heading indoors for another harrowing indoor season with the cat.  The last of the roses, have set their very last buds till spring too.

Bermuda's Kathleen, Last Gasps

Who'd ya think? Unstoppable, in full shade

Marie Pavie with the Star Jasmine

Marie Pavie, the most floriferous for late Fall, beating even Knockout

Sharifa Asma, being huge as only fall can create here.

I am gorgeous, and I smell good

Sharifa Asma, barely opened one.  Baseball sized blooms in the perfect weather.