That could be what I am seeing from my 'Argentina Skies'. I have it in what I named my NewYork bed. The soil was so bad and lots of rocks when I first started planting that I said it they "can make it there they can make it anywhere!" It has thrived nicely but never spreads, it gets 4 1/2 to 5 foot tall though.
Do I want to be black and blue?
Correction: upon re-reading that, I realized I mixed up Mystic and Indigo. Indigo Spires is the one that gets so big. Mystic is the one that struggles. I guess it's supposed to be considerably smaller, though, so maybe it doesn't struggle as much as I thought.
I just purchased one today and so excited. I LOVE the deep, deep blue-purple color and nearly black. I'm not sure which one I have... will have to check in the morning. I wouldn't care if this thing spread all over the yard as it is the most beautiful colored flower I've ever seen! And the big bonus is hummers adoration. I'm planning to use only blue and purple flowers in most of my beds so it will become the "backbone" to other flower additions.
Do ya'll have any suggestions of other blue-purple, easy to grow perennials? I recently planted a Vitex and the butterflies love it. I especially want plants that attract hummers or butterflies.
And my last question for now...does the BB need any staking assistance?
Please show us some pics of your New York bed Sheila. Very clever!!
No staking required in the sun, I have found those in the shade droop a bit, but not enough to bother me.
As for the NY bed....not gonna happen.
If you want something to attract butterflies, you should plant a butterfly bush. They get big, but from late May on they are literally covered with butterflies.
Here are the plants the hummers like best in my yard: hot lips salvia, black & blue salvia, flame acanthus, dwarf pomegranate. They go to several things, though. This year I saw one at the butterfly bush, and even had one that visited the hostas.
How did I miss this thread? My favorite sun plant! If its too aggressive for you I will take it. :)
Sylvia....did you find anything to cover those stumps in the front? I remember you mentioning them when you first moved in there. The B & B would do the job for that area in the summer any way.
thanks for the suggestions, pbtxlady. I've been interested in the dwarf pom, will now have to find one at garden center.
and Sylvia, you'd have to fight me to get this plant away from me. ;) Maybe I'll have some to share next year though.
I'm just trying to keep it watered in its container right now cuz I can't plant in ground yet. The spot I want to put it, we're expecting a satellite guy to do some maintenance and I know he'd crush it with his ladder.
I'm planning to mix in some cow manure with soil. Is there anything else it needs? This may sound like a strange question but does anyone else use the osmocote slow release for new transplants? I've always used in my indoor and outdoor pots but wondered if it would be useful for something going in the ground?
osmocote is the only fertilizer we ever use in the ground. It is such a slow release, it is almost like organic. I have composted big time for several years now and we have almost stopped using any fertilizer at all. If you get on the Brug forum, they talk about how much the fertilize every week, we don't fertilize at all and we grow them as well as most. I do use some osmocote here and there for special plants that I want to push for some reason.
thanks Ken I'll check out that forum. Your advice is always helpful!
the plant growers supplying places like Lowe's and Home Depot, etc, have a stock of tags, these are not plant specific, just plant general, and when they run out of the old stock, they buy new ones-after they use up the old. Many many people dont get as plant literal as many of our trained botanists here, will never notice the tiny things, and don't worry about anything more than it was a color, or form or growing habit they thought they wanted. That is why a lot of your plants are tagged not quite specifically true, guys. Your education and caring are what makes the difference in learning what you have when you go shopping.
Ken, you don't fertilize your brugs? Hmmmm... interesting. You know, I'm organic, so I use organic fertilizers, and some people have told me that's why none of my brugs have bloomed (until last fall). Maybe it was just those nematodes, though.
Or it could be just Texas heat. In years where we do not have a Spring ( this year ) and it turns real hot, real early, the Brugs just shut down. I could not count the times where people from the north post pictures of their Brugs first blooms and can not understand why we still don't have any yet, thinking we have such a long growing season. It is long but some years they stop growing for three months. It is funny when people come here and see the jungle and then when we tell them we do not fertilize and some years we don't water. I read all the time were people water Brugs in the ground every day. We went three months this Spring with only 1&3/4 in. of rain and we only watered our brugs two or three times all year.
My secret is compost, compost, compost. It was so cold last Winter, that some people did not rake their yard until Spring. I gather leaves at a gated community near us and this Spring I have already gathered somewhere around 1,500 bags of leaves. By next Spring that number will climb to 6,000 and I do this every year. This year my compost pile is around 18' wide and 45' long, open at one end so I can back up the pile. It was already 6' high at the far end but has started breaking down and has settled down to about 4&1/4'.
My goodness, that is a LOT of compost! You don't screen it, do you?
I don't have anywhere near that much room. I do have large trees, and unfortunately, more leaves than I have room to compost. Most of mine are oak, and take a couple of years to really break down the way I'd like. But it doesn't take a couple of years to get new ones, so there's always a backlog. I've always tried to save them all, but this year I'll probably have to give some away. In the city, you can only stash so many bags of leaves before the skeeters get to them and the neighbors start complaining. :(
I didn't get any blooms this spring either, even from my one that was big enough to flush last fall. It Y's like crazy, though, and now I have little ones that are Y-ing. I hope it's going to be a great fall for them. By the way, the cuttings you & Maggi gave me at the spring RU are doing great. No Y's yet but growing like crazy. I've been giving them an organic high-phosphate fertilizer for tomatoes, and they seem to love it.
You guys mentioned brugs and the "y"...do you have to pinch the center growth to form the "y" or does it do it on it's own?
I'm sure Ken or someone else will have a better answer for you. But it's my understanding that the Y thing is a matter of maturity. Genetically, they have to reach a certain point before they will switch over from vegetative growth to bloom growth. LOL--this is really a scientific explanation, isn't it! If I understand that correctly, they Y when they are good and ready. Pinching won't do a thing to help.
Thanks Pattie!
Do not pinch the center, it will take even longer to Y. The plant will Y when it feel right. Also stop giving Brugs high phosphate, they like phosphate at about half of what the Nitrogen is.
I do not keep the leaves in bags, it takes up way too much room that way. You would be surprised how many bags of leaves would fit in a 6X6X6 ft. compost wire pen. And after a few months you can even add more, try it.
Oh, I only keep the excess in bags. That's because I have limited space with only so many manageable bins. When they are full, I have to hang on to what's left. Did you know, though, that you can get great compost with nothing but oak leaves and a plastic bag? Throw some alfalfa or coffee grounds in there, and you may not need to compost it. :)
I had a pile once. Frankly, I loved it. It was a whole lot easier to manage the pile, and a whole lot easier to screen out just a small smidge of finished compost. But, you know, when you live on a 1/3 acre lot in a large city, you can't always do things the way you want. We had critters digging around in the pile for last night's leftover tomatoes. You can get in big trouble for that. I mean, seriously--our city wrote us a ticket this last spring because our climbing roses were 10 inches out over the alley instead of just 6. Imagine what they'd do if they thought we were inviting rats, possums, and rabid raccoons with real chow. AND, that's even without an HMO to worry about.
Sigh. I need 10 acres in East Texas.
I would say it's time to get out of the city. I live near a gated community called Holly Lake Ranch. Maggi and I both work in HL and people are always asking 'do you live at the Ranch?' Heck no, could you imagine all the neighbors calling the security when my peafowl start screaming, not to mention four big white dogs that bark all night, they are predator dogs, that's what they do. I lived in the city most of my life but I will milk cows before I return.
Patti I want to go to East Texas too ... any pine country .. back in the woods. I am tired of paying the city for water, trash pickup, sewage and stuff! My water bill was 250.00 this month. I do have a leak, but I have always have leak!
Why is your bill so high, Sylvia? I had a leaky faucet that ran a couple of months before I could get a plumber in here. Even still, my combined bill for water/sewer/garbage was only $250. Are you still watering 2 hours every day?
That drip irrigation that she had us do has immitters about every foot! If I did that in my yard, I would sink up to my knees when I walked out there.
I think most of hers runs down her alley! Sylvia, I run my drip systems about 20 minutes a day during the very hottest days. The rest of the time it's 30 minutes every other day.
Wow, pbtxlady, that's a heck of a water bill. Mine was over 200 last year, only once though. I was running the sprinkler system for 10 minutes per zone (11 zones) every day. Unless the water per gallon cost there in Garland is way more than Houston's, you must have a leak somewhere. I assume you've checked this though, so maybe a faulty meter? I think if it's a common occurrence that your bill is that high, I'd have the city check the meter.
Crow
my combined bill for water/sewer/garbage, I pay for the for the same thing Patti.
Patt, it is running down the alley, I cant find the source! You and Sheila can come over I will do lunch ... dinner, whatever:) Linda is going to be here the weekend of the forth!
Seriously the whole thing need to be redone. I want one square foot of 1/4 inch dripping tube all over. I want the half inch tubing one foot from the fence. Oh, I got a plan!
Come guys we can do this in an hour. :) lol
Sylvia...you know the size of my lot and ours is only 250-300 at the highest peak usage. Of course sewer/garbage included also. We have the sprinkler system and run it 10-15 minutes a day at the most. Then we have the pond that has to have water about once a week added if no rain. Your whole yard would fit in ours three times. Something is definately wrong. I don't know that I am up to helping like I did before, but if the others are willing I will try. Are you pulling out what you have now and getting new?
Sylvia, let me know what you'd like to do. We had a full-size sprinkler system put in and I pulled out most of my drip systems. So I have equipment that is still usable, and I'd love to get rid of some of it.
Crow, I think I said that we had a leak? And yes, it did raise the bill a lot before we could get it fixed. But, even so, I don't think $250 is a lot higher than most folks around here. Last summer some people were posting that their bills were $350 or more.
That said, last year I paid $50-75 less. Garland raised its sewer rates (not water) quite a bit this year. But I'm not complaining. We have the best garbage/brush/bulk/recycle program I've ever seen.
My monthly bill for just water is around $150. for this year and it has been dry. Keep in mind I compost big time and I do not water until I have to. For that reason my plants are not growing as they should but it's still a jungle. The Compost King.
I guess I am very lucky...I water heavily every day for 2 hours....do not compost at all, and my all time high bill for this summer was $75.00 for water and sewage
But you guys don't live in big cities like we'ins do. Would love to have your space and low water bills, but give me the big stores to shop in and services we are spoiled by.
this is true Sheila, but I am right by Tyler and it is full of large stores and services only a 20 minute drive away from my country home ;)
Then I am lovin' my $0 water bill! OH I would die if i had to pay y'alls bill every month!! TG for a good well, cause I've been watering 1 hour each every day in 3 different beds with the new sprinkler system my DS just put in for me, but before that when I was dragging that yard snake around I was watering 3 hours every other day that really needed to be done every day!
Pattie and Sylvia... come on down.. we have 22 acres.. 10 we mow, LOTS of Piney woods, $0 water bill and 1/4 mile off the "main" road which is a farm to market road..LOL... then 2 miles to a major highway. It's an hour's drive to go to the "big city", but I wouldn't want to live anywhere else in TX. I am the 5th generation to steward this land, the land owns me, not the other way around!
Hello to all you good TX folks I know .. I'm looking forward to the fall RU so I can see y'all again
ON topic..lol.. I love the B&B! I have one in better soil that has grown leaps and bounds, but 1 in poor soil that hasn't done much so that might be an answer of where to plant it. I love it too!!
Speaking of the brugs, I don't fertilize like I should, but this is a pic of a NOID I dug up last fall and put in my green house. Then the breaker tripped on the 2 coldest nights of the year in January. She had to come back up from her roots. I counted 32 buds on her... talking about a proud Momma..LOL
That bed looks beautiful Becky, so glad to see you posting.
We are looking forward to seeing you again this fall the RU.
Josephine.
Thanks Josephine.... all my beds are young, and I have a lot of work to do to ever get them looking like yours though!! I lurk often...so I do see what's going on..LOL
Hello Becky....(((waving))))! That is a beautiful pathway of color! Looking forward to seeing you again, missed your smile at the last couple of RUs.
Becky, the St. Peters Wort that you gave me is blooming and looking really pretty, thank you so much.
lour sprinkler system has not worked for several years--in fact for as long as i have "gardened"
i've lived here for 20 years but have only gardened for 4 or 5
i am planning on watering less rather than more and not due to the cost so much as due to conserving our resources and also using plants that don't need as much water and are more native to our conditions--also i think the more you water the more you make your plants expect you to water--i do water potted plants almost daily
i am enjoying the black and blue talk since i am now growing my own black and blue from sheila
My water and sewer bill for last month was 93.00 not so bad.
Beck, your NOID is a Datura. I have them out front and love their morning blooms, and that the deer won't bother them. They come up from root, and re-seed.
Your pathway is gorgeous!