Mistakes I have made in my gardens

turning purple...

seed in the making. Check out the green star pattern: I guess I'm easily smitten!

OMG, that is so beautiful. How tall did it get? Do you prune it to get it bushy? I love it. It starts white, and turn purple.

Ivy would be my #1 mistake - even that tiny, sweet, innocent looking Needlepoint ivy. Hey it's a tree, eventually!

letting certain things go to seed or continue unchecked, such as Dandelions, thistles, nettle.

i do not have any love for Sweet Woodruff in MY garden - it took years to get rid of it. But it looks great in other gardens!
I grow lots of Penstemons & some of them want to be best friends with neighbouring plants, hugging & draping themselves promiscuously. I have since learned to contain them - they behave better.
Euphorbia robbiae - careful! Placement in dry shade will keep it in check. Do NOT introduce this badboy to a lush place...you've been warned.

Most of my mistakes were the result of planting too close, or insufficient formative pruning, or my fave:
Incorrect plant tags. Case in point: I have a gorgeous Slender Hinoki Cypress that was tagged as a dwarf variety. It was too expensive a specimen to move after the 4th year, which is when i realized the error.
OK - so I'm pleased that it's slender, but.......

Lynn - I planted it into the garden & kept it "warm/dry" with plastic. Other than that, I did nothing. Well - water & an occasional song.

This message was edited Jan 25, 2010 8:05 PM

Water and an occasional song... beautiful! I love the thought of that, Kayte!

Ladybuggfan, this garden is planted almost underneath my neighbor's cedar tree. It would actually be beneath it but I keep the branches of said tree trimmed back on my side. Cedars have a lot of feeder roots just under the surface. These roots can be pulled up in small areas without harming the tree. So I pulled out a ton of reddish roots, then I dug a trench about 18 inches deep and lined it with heavy plastic and backfilled. Then I bermed up the soil. It's not a permanent solution but it keeps the little feeder roots at bay so I'm not pulling them out every year. I do have to water this bed every day in the summer, though. you'd probably have good success if you planted beyond the dripline, too. It can be done, you just have to improvise.

Julie, it's a deal!

Lynn and Kayte, I got a variety of cup and saucer vine called 'royal plum' from Hortus Botanicus in their seed grab bag this year. I separated out a couple of trade bags for that variety if either of you is interested. I've never been successful with this vine, but I'm starting to have hope that many of my failures were because my soil wasn't as good as I thought. Lynn, I ordered 10 yards of Tagro today. It will be delivered on Friday morning. Yahoo!

Lynn I had mine on an obilisk and it was about 6 ft tall, however I had to keep wrapping it around and around the obilisk because it had no place else to go. I think the vines actually would be about 20 ft tall. Yes, all in one season. But, if I remember right, and Katye will know, it doesn't seem to me that they had any tendrils or anything to cling.

I love the vine and I have a Key Lime that I think I will plant this year. I think it starts out a lime green and goes to white where as the purple ends up purple. Starting out white. I think mine might have bloomed more than I realized because I had it wrapped around so many times that the blossoms might have even been hidden by the leaves.

Jeanette

OOH, that sounds lovely!

I was just looking at Katye's again. It looks like it does have tendrils. I just maybe don't remember them. You know, it's been a while since I had mine so maybe it did.

Katye??

Thanks, Melissa! I just looked it up in PF, I like it.
Jnette, It's too bad you can't make it to her Seed Swap this Saturday. You would have fun.
10 yards of Tagro, that is great! I think I have Joey almost talked into letting me order a truckload. I love having "stock piles" of materials on hand.

Pixydish, love the garden. That's in line with what I hope to have. I will be using garden cloth and back filling with compost to plant into. I can lay a soaker hose for watering in there as well. Now I just need to find and move the rocks needed to contain the "new" dirt and plants for this area. Never a small project idea!

Yes, I would love to go to your seed swap Lynn. Oh well.

Julie, you must have a lot of patience to grow things under cedar trees. Altho, one thing that can is Achillia, (yarrow). I have terra cotta crowing under the cedar. Actually, I also have a Heleborus I have had growing under the cedar, or near it, for several years. It doesn't do much tho. Maybe if I moved it, it would do better.

yes - tendrils with vining material strong enough to swing on.
They're purple-red, too.

Pixy - yes, i would love to grow Royal Plum. This vine has so much interest (well - for me it does!) that it is worth growing.

Jnette - i did nothing - it twisted & turned up one side of the arch & down the other. It can grow over 30' with enough heat. Mine was about 12' or so. I love the way it flowered on top of the arch - like a whole bunch of bonneted heads checking out the view...I almost put those little googly eyes on a few.

Now I will have to plant a cobaea for sure this year. Who can resist a plant that calls for googly eyes? Pixy, I would love to try Royal Plum as well (told you I am a sucker for things that climb!) My last attempt was most likely not in enough sun to thrive. I have a wonderful hot tub gazebo that I do morning glories on every year, but like to mix it up a bit as well. It collapsed in the snow several years ago, so DH built a new roof for it and now it would hold an elephant, so I am not worried about what I plant on it, and would love to have something that went crazy!

Jnette, I have a lot of gardens under cedar trees because it's either that or not have enough gardens. I am surrounded by forest made up mostly of cedar, with a few hemlocks, fir, and lots of maple tossed in. It tore my heart out to take down the trees that we had to to build, so I refuse to take any more away.... I just incorporate them into my landscape.

This is a sample of my "edge" gardens. All are under some kind of a tree or another, but many are in full sun most of the day, and all do fairly well.

Your gardens look wonderful Julie. You are lucky. I had a lot of trees taken out also, but I still do not have the sun because I have a mountain right up against the house on the West side so after 2 o'clock I have no sun at all. And that is the time of day when you get the best sun.

I have a perennial bed right now on the only ground that is at all possible for me right now. I am going to try to plant some of the plants I hope to get thru winter sowing in an area where they are going to be competing some with wild huckleberries. I do like the native things so don't want to take too much out.

Got your names on the 'royal plum'. Julie, that's a winner for sure.

So a weekend project brought to mind a mistake that Mom and I have made in the past as well as the solution that we have found for it.

Mistake: Planting bare root perennials directly in the garden with a tag.

I have had so many things "disappear" this way, and I will never know if I got a bad plant from the vendor, if weather damaged it, or if the slugs found the fresh growth too much to pass up and it was killed that way. If you plant these things in pots temporarily, where you can watch them closely until you see good healthy growth coming up, you have a much better grasp of the success of your purchases.

Brought to mind because we just had a combined project of potting 61 one and two gallon pots with new purchases for this spring (including dahlias which have to stay in pots until we find out where the holes are that they need to fill and 18 'bulk' columbine that she got at Costco. My trilliums and epimediums were included in this mass planting, so I know that I will at least get to see a bit of them before they go in the garden.

This message was edited Feb 9, 2010 8:18 AM

I like that method myself. The only problem, of course, is the problem of the "watched pot". I obsess just a little bit more when I know exactly where they are . . .

That is surely a mistake I have made over and over, and I kick myself every time. Since I belong to that wholesale buy group, I do tend to sometimes 'buyt' off more than I need and I just stick things in the ground. I'm fairly certain I have lost 5 new Echinacea 'tomato soup' to slugs because they were really too small to make it on their own. I don't know why I continue to make that same mistake over and over, except to say that the pot ghetto, filled with pots of lilies saved from voles, takes my breath away.

Could be that because it's less of an investment-and there are so many tiny plants to deal with all at once-that getting them settled in their "forever" home right away is a reasonable risk.

My problem is that I often frequent nurseries when there is a sale going on. The mental state I enter when shopping at such sales leads me to think that it could be my last chance to get a particular plant at such a good price, so I tend to buy more than I actually have a place ready to set them in the ground. Then I plant them too close together, or leave them in pots too long.

You are both right. Very right, and embarrassingly so. The problem is, I should know better, right? Just like I know better than to buy plants that are potbound at the end of the season, on the 50% off sale, because I know that they are compromised by their long tenure in those little pots. Yes, I've had many survive, but I've had many more die. I think we all just get into a 'zone' of denial and take out our wallets! Bleh! And then the seed catalogs begin arriving!

Oh my..it's like looking in a mirror. I don't have room for anything more. They are climbing every wall, hung them from every overhead surface, potted in every open space I can find. My house is a jungle. My grass keeps shrinking and if I don't get help soon.....

Who needs grass?

Grass? What grass?

LOL. My grass has shrunk to a 12 x 12 foot area. My husband wants some grass and since I have taken the entire yard, front and back I guess he deserves a liitle space, He does a lot of my heavy work. Problem is that it's such a small area I don't take care of the lawn.

Well, i know this doesn't sound really fair, but around our place, dh takes care of the lawn. Otherwise there would be no lawn. Lawns are crops in my HO. So if there is going to be one, he'll have to be the farmer. If it's just going to be 'blank canvas' to rest the eyes, and sit, etc, I would be fine with a nice flagstone patio or something.

I like a bit of lawn. Feels good on bare feet, and there is nothing like a fresh mow to make things look well tended (even if there are weeds in all the beds).