What will you grow with your Clematis this spring/summer?

Thanks, Claire! Will Claire de Lune get a special place of honor?

When we removed our grape vines we had an awful time with roots coming back so if you find a young, handsome, strong, tanned, virile gardener, anxious to help you, please let us all know his name and number!

Wonderful Claire! :) Glad you got some!! :)

Susan

LOL Pirl, Claire de Lune is just planted in with the others.

Grape Vines are hard to kill. When I cut them off I soaked the stumps with Roundup. I had another cut off several years ago that sent up sprouts regularly for two yrs. Spray each shoot with Roundup.

I thought you'd give it a place of honor, considering your name.

Round up and a shovel both come in handy for those grape vine roots!

Way up above, Shirey mentioned a link to Arlene's garden photos but it was never posted. I'd love to see them!

Gwen

http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/528730/

Above is the link to our 2005 Garden Tour. The middle is boring but persevere and then come daylily photos. Not much, if any, of clematis - probably just Blue Moon.

Oh my gosh, I'm only on the third post of that link and already I'm sooooo impressed. Not only with the garden but with your little letter, scavenger hunt, and the welcoming feeling you greeted the guests with.

Gwen

I can't believe you count your deadheads! LOL I'm just loving this....back to reading....

Gwen

I was hoping there would be a photo of the sweet baby at the end! What a head of hair. Is he about two now?

Gwen

Now I see he's more like just turning one. What a cutie. As is his older sister!

Thanks for the wonderful tour. It made for pleasant afternoon reading!

gwen

Thanks so much! I wish you had posted so I'd have your comments for the some day when I print it out.

Charlie turned a year old last week and Megan will be Sweet Sixteen July 28th. He loved his carrot cake for his birthday party.

Today I was out working in the rose garden and the one clematis looked dreadful. It's 'Royalty' and climbs up on 'Queen Elizabeth'. I cut it back to the ground and there I saw all new sprouts. Since I was feeding the roses with a combination of 5-10-5, Milorganite, a smidgen of Ironite (granular) and a lot of alfalfa I gave the same food to the clematis. We'll see how it likes it.

He is really adorable. Thanks for sharing that recent photo of him.

I'll pop over to the orignal thread and post those comments there, in case you ever get around to printing it out!

Gwen

I saw it - thank you very much. I added photos there, too.

It really was a fun tour and I wish more garden clubs did it. Funds raised are used to support the society.

How many people would you say you had come thru your garden on that tour?

Gwen

The first tour was the best with 212 people. This time I'd say less than 100. The towns around us stupidly scheduled all their tours for the exact same day. Normally it's one tour each weekend.

Has anyone seen clematis, besides the ones we've come to expect, in garden centers, nurseries, etc. for this spring?

LOL Pirl, the only thing I saw at our rather large nursery is tulips, hyacinths and Easter lillies.

Haven't been to the big city recently. Too much weeding. It is supposed to turn cold again next week, maybe some onion snow.

Onion snow? Do tell us what that is.

pirl, most people around out area plant spring 'pulling' onions ( Scallions) by St. Patricks Day. When the ground is frozen you just just a pointed stick, make holes in the ground and drop them in and cover.

Ours weren't planted until Mar 19th. LOL.

The next snow is the 'onion' snow. More of that Pa. Dutch stuff, I guess. Supposed to be in the 70's for the next two days, then in the low twenties this coming weekend. Think I'll put pots over those new clematis, they are growing nice green leaves. ;-(

Aha! Thanks for my new bit of knowledge for the day. Jack likes to rototill before he'll plant anything so the shallots (we both bought them and never mentioned it to each other - double the joy) will have to wait along with the scallions.

I still have plastic bags, opened at the bottom, over my tree roses (per directions) and from what you've said about the weather I guess that will be their Easter bonnets.

Hi everyone;
How are things coming along with your Clems? Seed_ed. Here is mine growing on the Magnolia.
Kim
p.s. oooops wrong pic. but similiar idea. :-).

Thank you, pirl..

This message was edited May 6, 2007 12:51 PM

So lush and so lovely.

Wow! That is a big plant. Mine are all growing well, but up here in the north we are still a week late and a day behind. (giggle) The last two days our highs have been in the mid 60's with a stiff wind. Lows are averaging 37-40 degrees and I still cannot plant out tomato plants.

I was at WalMart yesterday and found a little clematis called "Proteus". Grown in a 2-1/2" X 4" deep pot for less than $5.00. I tried to look it up on the Clematis on the Web - site, but kept getting error messages during the search function. Perhaps it was very busy, this time of the year. "Proteus" is supposed to be a double pink surrounded with darker pink petals.
Roots looked good, just was a small plant.

I had planted most of my clematis in August ( From Debbie). Most of the vines have buds on them.

I also ordered two for this spring. Debbie shipped April and they are going gangbusters, but no buds.

Seems like it is better to plant them in spring, for my area

Proteus is a pale violet and is double in the spring and single in the fall. The flowers are huge. I'm growing it with a pink rose (Portlandia) although I've had to replace the rose it was with so I'm waiting for the rose to climb up to it again.

I grow Niobe with an Iceburg rose, and Ramona with a Peach Silk Rose and I've got another portlandia with Negritianka and Duchess of Albany. The white climbing hydrangea is planted with Etoile Rose.

Doss, the flower looked pink on the label. So much for WalMart labels, etc. I don't have a pale violet. Why is it that once you have 6-8 clematis, you just can't resist adding another?

Your rose and clematis combinations sound glorious. I don't do roses. Just clematis and daylilies and all sorts of annuals like coleus, sages and flowering tobacco for inter planting.

I was wondering what to plant in combination with the clematis, but they are really growing well ( the ones from last Aug. and the April ones). I had pictured a single vine, by itself.
These plants have multiple vines from each plant and are starting to weave in and out of the trellis. Dr. Ruppel is half way up a 5 ft. chain link fence and was just planted in April.

Each year in late April I spray all my daylilies with Orthonex, a combination systemic for thrips, aphids and earwigs and also a fungicide. I find this helps with any that have spring sickness as well. I hit the clematis with it too. It makes lush green foliage on the plants, but has to be used carefully( long sleeves and pants, eye protection, gloves, etc) plus strip and wash clothes afterward. By mid June I use Neem oil on everything and that usually does it for the summer.

I am not an organic gardener but try to use what chemicals I need to use responsibly and according to label directions.

LOL about Walmart labels. I have a clematis that grows in a nandina too. :-) You can plant them anywhere.

Here's Josephine climbing on the nandina.

OMG, that's beautiful. Hope my little plant grows. I got my others from Debbie out west and she sent great plants.

Do you know what group Proteus is? - for pruning purposes? I am fairly new to clematis so I keep a notebook on what the cultivars look like and the pruning instructions. Bear in mine that most stuff freezes to the ground in winter.

se_eds - you can also copy each photo from a site and label it with the pruning class and then keep each group separate from the others. I do that with dahlias, daylilies and other plants.

Last Summer I bought 3 clems at Walmart that were labeled "pink" in a decorative plastic pot that looked to be a 3 gallon size. They were half price because they were a little past their peak. But there was at least one flower on each, and they looked an awful lot like Josephine. The roots filled the pot.

But some years ago I bought a Louise Rowe there that turned out to be Madame Julia C. At the time I wasn't that interested in the smaller flowered varieties, and didn't know much about caring for clems, so it died. I did get a good deal on MJC last year at HD. She is coming up nicely now, as is one Jo. It must have better light & warmth conditions. A lot of my clems still haven't broken dormancy yet.

HD finally got the small Roseville pots in this last week, but the only one I didn't have was Barbara Jackman. Nice 4" pot full of roots.

Marie

This is a closer look at my "Josephinish".

That's a 4" pot? It looks so big.

Ooops, didn't mean to post twice. My blank-blank ISP logged me off while I was replying about the size, and I must have picked the wrong firefox tag to hit send on.

This message was edited May 6, 2007 9:32 PM

No, that is the 3 gallon "pink".

Haven't taken a picture of Barbara Jackman yet, just a single vine, no buds.

I was looking for Jackmanni at Walmart yesterday, as I saw pirl's specimen. No Jackmanni. They had an awful lot of what was labeled Nelly Moser but the blooms were sort of a dirty white. I thought Nelly Moser had a pink central stripe as I had it many years ago.

Oh, and here is Proteus in the fall. By the way, Proteus (in Greek Mythology) was the guardsman for Neptune's kingdom. If you wanted to pass, you needed to grab him and hold him until he became human. In the meantime he turned into all sorts of ferocious beasts. So I'm sure that this flower is called Proteus because it changes so much between spring and fall flower.
Proteus is a pruning group 2 (Prune immediately after first bloom by approx 1/3). I have seen that it can be much more double than the one that I posted, by the way. Mine's never done that though.


This message was edited May 6, 2007 6:27 PM

Here's Nelly! She's lovely and better off with a little shade so her colors don't fade out.

Your Nelly is beautiful pirl. Wish that mine had that many blooms. Mine fades out fairly quickly even though it is on an east wall so I agree that it wants protection from the sun.

Thank you for the pruning info doss.

Pirl, that is another beautiful specimen. My clematis, Nelly, was in part shade here in Pa., and had that lovely pink center stripe.

Don't let the pictures on the box scare you off a clematis you know by name. I once bought one that was pictured as being lavender and it turned out to be the purple, The President. The box had faded in the sun while it was on display.