This is posted as a follow up on some of the plants I got from several people.
Brent--
Here are the two Salvias you gave me--blooming nicely. It just settled in with no problems at all.
Please take pictures!
And, Brent, here are the 3 Balloon Flowers from you. They have grown a bit. I don't expect much from them this year, but they are doing very well.
I think I will throw some leaves over them for the winter. What do you think? Do they need some protection?
Jill,
Here are the 3 "Not Chocolate daisies" from you--blooming away. Right in step with the Shastas right next to them in my "yukky" bed.
Hey, I'm in the market for balloon flowers. Brent, if you still have any by that point *and* are going to the Fall Swap, I will arrange a trade with you. I did just start some black hollyhocks, celeriac and rhubarb about two weeks ago and they are already off and running ...
And here are the 2 scrawny Tomato plants you gave me. I buried most of the stems lengthwise, and they are just now starting to take off. They are about 12"-14" tall at this time.
And--last one,
Here is how big my Double Yellow Daturas are now. Boy! Once you plant them in the beds, they just take off. They must like the cooler temperatures around their roots.
I have about 5 or 6 daturas in this bed. it should be pretty nice when they all start blooming.
I have some of my Double Purple ones mixed in with the yellow ones.
Hart--
Your Clustered Bellflowers are not doing much. I only got 4 stems from you and they look pretty sad. There are barely any leaves that still look alive. They look like semi-dead sticks. Is there some hope????
The Begonia Grandis is alive and holding it's own. Not much growth, but it is alive and OK. No picture to take--it is too buried in a lot of other stuff.
And--just so my Post to you doesn't go without a picture, I took this one today. It is a close-up of the Pregnant Onion bloom. It is on the end of a long, willowy stalk.
A bit fuzzy---but you all get the idea. It is also slightly fragrant starting in the evening.
Hi All,
I wanted to ask a question, is it to late to start balloon flowers from seeds?
Also someone gave my husband Kevin a purple plant and he said is a tree. Could someone and help me name this baby?
Also with the Pregnant Onion is there anything special I should be doing for it??? How do you start another one of these? Can I take a baby and put it in its own pot? I am sorry for all the questions but I am green behind the ears...
Told Kevin that a swap was coming and he said Great what days? I said I did not know and he said well I hope it is on my weekend off so we can both go...LOLOL Told ya he had just as much fun as I did..LOL
Susan
I've stuck my pot of clustered bellflowers in a mostly shaded, protected spot... the leaves look pitiful, but there's still some green on the stem, so I'm thinking there might yet be some hope for them. I figure if they were cuttings that looked like that, I wouldn't be quite giving up on them, so... :-)
Oh for crying out loud - I just looked up the 'Clustered Bellflower' and realized it's what I've been trying to ID for ages!
I love it, just an incredible blue. I was told it was some kind of Veronica, which didn't narrow it down too much. They bloom the second year for me. Definitely worth the wait, they look a lot like Hyacinths but a lot taller.
Susan, I had good luck winter sowing Balloon flowers/Platycodon...Tom Clothier's site says "sow at 68 F, germination slow". They seem like tough little plants, maybe they'd get big enough to make it through the winter if you sowed some now.
Claypa, perhaps the plant you've been trying to identify is great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica) which has leaves that look exactly like the clustered bellflowers and the flowers look very similar. It is much taller, though, and has blue flowers. The clustered bellflowers have dark purple flowers, not blue.
Purple, violet, blue... I don't know, but it's the same as the C.glomerata 'Superba' in plantfiles. They look just like poppysue's pictures. The leaves are very rough, like 200 grit sandpaper rough, Lobelia's leaves are smooth and the flowers are asymetrical and kind of pea-like.
http://davesgarden.com/pf/showimage/1023/
I had a great lobelia "Monet Moment" in my garden and the leaves looked exactly like the clustered bellflowers'. The flowers weren't clustered in the center but looked like the second flowering of the bellflowers' when they bloom along the stem instead of in a cluster. There was a little bit of a lip to them, but not terribly different from the points on the bellflower unless you looked closely.
It was a larger, taller plant and has dark pink flowers instead of blue like the non-hybrid great lobelia or purple like the bellflower.
If it looks like Poppysue's picture, though, that's probably what it is, except the blooms look far too blue in her photo. Look at dlgold's photo on this plant files page for the color.
http://davesgarden.com/pf/showimage/5708/
I hope it is the bellflower for you. It's a terrific plant and much longer lived than the lobelia was in my garden.
You go Gita! That Salvia (Salvia farinacea 'Blue Bedder') is just a great plant and it will flower all summer long. We are a little out if its hardiness zone rating but it has survived the past few winters for me. A little extra mulch in the fall might not hurt.
I don't think the balloon flowers will need any thing special over the winter. Wrightie: last time I looked I still had 4 balloon flower seedlings. I might make it to the fall swap. If not I should have seed as this is a very easy plant to harvest seeds from.
Susan: I have started plants from seed this time of year and they have all done fine over the winter. Keeping them watered during the hot summer days is the biggest challenge.
My clustered bellflowers are looking a bit ragged as well but I suspect they will bounce back. I would have cut them back when I put them in their pot, but they flowers were so pretty.
- Brent
Susan,
There's nothing "special" you need to do with the "Pregnant Onion". Sorry if I forgot, but did you get one from me at hart's?
Come winter, I just put it on my laundry room windowsill in the basement and forget it. Not saying this is what one is supposed to do, but that is what I do. I don't have room for all my plants by my windows. I imagine it would be happy to be taken in and given a nice growing spot.
Propagation?--Just wait until one of the babies sends out a tiny leaf-spike of it's own. They don't have to be big to do so. Mine are outside in this heavy. I have about 4 or 5 "onions" in there. many of the babies are also under the soil level and some are sending up small leaf-spikes.
IF I make it to the Fall swap (would like to...), I will have some small "baby onions" I can pot up and bring. I have several sprouting.
Just take one of them and put it in a small clay pot. It may be a couple of years before it is bigger size, but then again--you never have to fuss over this plant.
Last fall I turned out the whole clay window box to separate the plants.
They had been in there about 4 or 5 years. It was solid with roots! I had to BRUTALLY rip them all apart. The baby onions were falling off left and right. Rolling around like marbles.
Here's some pictures of the process.........This is a surface shot of how crowded they can get.
This message was edited Jun 25, 2007 9:58 AM
Here's another shot of the surface of the box.
Here's the root mass after I pulled the whole plant out of the box. It was quite a job to separate every onion out of it. Took physical, brute force.
Here's looking at the "mess" after I started ripping it apart.
I would suggest to others that you do not allow it to get his root-bound. Separate them sooner --before it gets this way.
Gita- LOL at that mass of white roots! You weren't kidding!!!!! That was an interesting looking potted plant though. Your 'stuff' looks better than my 'stuff-'- that's what I get for not fertilizing or amending routinely, I'm sure.
I have some Salvia farinacea which has gone thru several generations, from Pinetree seeds year ago(probably wasn't Blue bedder). It is pretty winter hardy for me, but usually gets mildew on the lower leaves after this bloom and drops them all. And I leave the seed heads for the goldfinches, so between that , it's not fit for my front beds. : ^)
Here's the suspected Campanula glomerata 'Superba' - the flowers have gone by already. I'm afraid I stepped on it earlier this year in some winter sowing maneuvers. The flowers were brighter, but you can see a tiny bit of what's left of them. The leaves a rougher than any other I can think of, trees included. Last year one of the flower clusters was almost the size of a soda can.
Gita,
Yes you gave me one at Harts.... Never heard of before you showed me yours.... I love it...LOL My 6 year old Grandaughter came over yesterday and also love it.. She wants one now... Told her she had to wait until the babies got bigger...LOL
Thank you so much for given it to me... It will be have allot of care here...
Susan
Claypa, that looks like it. I'm certain that's what you have. It's your mention of the blue flowers that made me think it might be the lobelia. You might want to cut the flower stems. Sometimes that will bring a second bloom.
I'll try to post some pictures of mine later if get time.
Brent, I have plenty of the bellflowers if yours don't make it. I should have suggested that everyone cut the stems back. They're pretty tough, as long as the roots make it they should come back for you next year. The foliage sometimes disappears after blooming when it's real hot and humid, too. If that's what it is, you should see new growth as soon as it gets cooler.
Thanks for posting the info on the purple flower hart. I am hoping to get some more from you though. Your hillside gardens were a delight to behold. I loved your secluded home place too. It seemed like a very relaxing retreat from the hustle and bustle that most ofus encounter each day. You are blessed.
Susan, you said that your grand daughter wanted your onion plant. Well, I am going to hide mine before my older son comes to visit. He told me one time that he was partial to plants that had some of the bulb sticking out of the soil. He will want it, and I ain't sharing. ha-ha
Anyway, glad to hear from everyone. Have a great day.
Ruby
4:34 am ?? maybe you had a night like me the other night I guess. Woke up at 3 for no reason and just did NOT go back to sleep. Well, shortly after waking we heard (DH bolted upright, and we went to the door to look for the bad kitties who had snuck out before bedtime) a bizarre screaming that I have never heard before. Not a cat fight. Raccoons? Kitties turned up OK.
Gita's onions will be making the rounds for a awhile , sounds like ! Mine had four little babies that fell off to root, and the side is bumpy like it will do it again soon.
Fox - they make a bizarro screaming sound.
Probably it then- It was bizarro ! They have been seen here. One reason we try hard to keep kitties in at night.
Yes, there are lots of fox in MD. When we lived in the sticks of Upper Marlboro we would often awake to those 'screams' ... that was back in the Blair Witch Project days.
Haha... that's nothing, we had Goatman at the Governor's Bridge road when I was a kid. He's probably afraid of the traffic now.
Sorry, no pictures.
Davidsonville? Is there any place that you have not lived, Claypa?
we were down there last week. Beautiful place to live- if you were born wtih property there, or have a million bucks : ^)
we have neither : ^(
No, Bowie, the other end of that road. Near 301 and US 50.
Right. I used to keep my horse near-ish there.
Sally,
Have you ever heard cars scream when one of them wants to mate (the Guy one) and the other doesn't (the she)?
It almost sounds like a baby screeching......Verrrryyyy eeeerieeee.....
Gita
(check spelling, LOL)
well, I've heard in the past what I assumed to be that. It is pretty creepy too!
Cars???? Haaaa....Ha.... Don't know they "mated".....What would be the result? A "Mini"?
I hope you know I meant CATS!
G.
: ^) LOL
yes
Okay, well, that makes *one* of you. I have been pulling my hair out trying to figure out the Car reference, but too askeered to ask.
It sounds like a bad steering pump on a '76 Vega anyway
LOL
w- re read Gita's first response......
c- or the belt on my '69 impala ? or was it really a steering pump? now that was a car......