I found about a dozen shasta daisies on the ground clipped with three inch stems in front of my house the other day. My guess the work of some little kids..you know they always cut the stems real short. I guess they either got caught by a parent and put them back or felt guilty after the fact.
The daisies I don't mind..as they are pretty stinky!
ohhh, beahive, how can you describe those as stinky?!!!!! Lovely.
Daisies were my absolute favorite, until I got on DG, now there are oodles that are my absolute favs!!!
I love daisies, but their scent is not pleasant compared to lillies or rose or just about everything else. When you have a lot of them and it is warm..oh my! Its stinky!
Found green string, but not before DH had gone to purchase 2 more rolls of twine so I could finish stringing the bean trellis. I forgot to specify color (not green), so what does he get? Green twine was apparently on sale. This time I hung onto the roll very carefully and did not allow myself to get sidetracked by all the other things that need doing.
Laurie! Welcome back! I hope you are posting photos of your spruced up garden. I will have to check the other threads.
Cameras - I love the canon line. Also Fuji is great. I've had both brands. Must have: good optical lens for the zoom. Digital zoom is secondary for me. Also good macro. Must, must have.
Brown finch is just finishing its bloom. I do love! the blooms on that one.
Tills, the rose is to die for. I agree with Laurie's comment about the dancing.
Garden don'ts: Do not succumb to all the enticing, seductive seed catalogs and websites during the long winter months. Put yourself on a strict seed diet and do not waver in your resolve. Otherwise, you will be sorry. Very, very sorry.
Also, do not bother to attempt to start heat loving annuals, such as coleus, from seed or, like colocasia, from tiny bulbs. Yep, they are extremely easy to grow. But making them big and lush enough to make a statement in the garden during our fairly short growing season is the work of commercial greenhouses. Just buy them at Fred Meyer. Nice selection, decent price. The same thing goes for most other annuals unless they are really, really different. Please make a note of this for next year.
Do NOT, under ANY Circumstances, plant an entire packet of seeds, no matter how cool the plant. When one plants an entire packet, the universe swoops in on dragon wings and makes every single seed germinate and grow like mad, and then you are left with 15 different acacias. You won't know what any of them are until they mature a bit, so you are stuck with them.
There is simply no point in planting bulbs when you have bulb flies. Also, please be aware that when you kill a bulb fly, another one will attack you as if it were truly a bee. Evidently they are this smart. It is frightening.
I leave you with this photo, done with the macro setting on my cannon camera. It is Martagon lily Mrs. R.O. Backhouse. I have saved it from the nasty, vicious vole monsters by putting it in a pot. I have determined that it's not that bad to have many potted lilies. I can place them as I like when they bloom and remove them when the bloomtime is finished. So take THAT you voles!
I like that, a Lily pot farm.
Pixy, You have listed a bunch of seed don'ts that I have learned (or would really like to think that I have learned) the hard way. I will add an adendom to the "don't start a whole seed packet" rule........ALSO....Don't assume that seeds that you have collected yourself in your own garden will have a lower germination rate than those sold commercially, and for this reason start way more than you want.....THEY WILL IN FACT MOST OF THE TIME DO AS GOOD OR BETTER! End result of this assumption is the same as end result of starting a whole seed packet.........
As for the lilies, my Mom and planted a bunch of pots with a lily/tulip combo a few years ago, and we really love them. We move them into focal points in the yard when the tulips are blooming, and then again when the lilies are nice. It lets us have beautiful lilies in the courtyard areas that they would otherwise not survive in, and then move them into a less prominant area when the bloom is gone. Perfect! Lily pot ghetto all the way!!!!!!
Amen!!!!!
Sounds like a plan to me!!
Thanks for the welcome Pix, and I'm so glad you like Brown Finch - I am working on a set of photos to add to the tour, and one is of my brown finch planting, which I just love love love.
May I add a slight variance on the sowing seeds situation: do remember to pot up a small number of those seedlings to keep for swaps, gifts, and charity sales - if you like them, its likely that others will too. We had a small 'nursery' set out to sell off our spares at the open day, and we could have sold 2x as many (garden visitors are mad about plants - even before we opened the gates, we had people edging their way forward towards the plants wanting to know "can I just buy a couple.....' truely an addictive response!). Great way to boost your charity fund raising.
BeaHive,
For what it's worth, my Shasta Daisy Becky doesn't have that stinky smell. I don't know if it's that particular cultivar, or something to do with our climate, buy mine are close enough to the house that I'd have to move them if they smelled like dog poop all the time.
Hi Laurie, Your string story is too funny!! I didn't tie mine to my finger, but I didn't let it go until I was done with the job, enlisted tall son to loop it over the top of the trellis, and gave it to him to put in the house in the string drawer before I wandered off to thin carrots. I would love to see pictures from your open garden day. If it was fabulous before, your garden must be absolutely gorgeous now. One thing I hope to see is what you planted with Dierama. You turned me on to those and I went out and bought 3 different colors...pink, red and white, and also a shorter variety that blooms in the spring instead of summer.
You are right about plants being a sure seller. My son's high school band had a rummage sale to raise money for a trip they are going on next spring , and I donated about 15 plants among other things. Most of them were gone in a flash.
Tall son proves worth his height in food, excellent! And well done your plants! Have plants, can travel.
I will definately definately sort the photos, and shrubs, mid height shrubs in front of dieramas, I've got mostly paeonies in front of the Pulcherrimum - but also Lobelia cardinale. They are just starting to blossom now. I also have a lovely stand of the low Dracomontanum, which starts blossomiing in late June, but for blossom in true spring - which one are using? Mine are all later - I'd love to know.
I think they are wonderful - and incredibly flexible in planting conditions.
I have several pink Dierama pulcherimum that first bloomed for me last summer, and the hummers and I both were thrilled. After viewing your pictures of them in different colors I was on the lookout, and got some more...Dierama mossii is supposed to bloom from March to June according to the tag (though it was on the later end of that this year being newly planted), reynoldsii is supposed to have 'wine red' flowers, and pallidum is supposed to be pale yellow (not white as I said above). They were very expensive mail order for tiny little stubs with miniscule bulbs and roots, but I am considering it an experiment. Right now they are alive, growing very slowly and still quite small.
I usually get bloom at 3rd year - but I do make sure they are in a place that stays damp. But it isn't until 5 years that they really are multistemmed.
Pixy,
I started some dierama from seed and highly recommend NOT putting it in the garden until it is a fully recognizable plant. I am not sure if I am nurturing a little bunch of dierama or some thick bladed grass.
Laurie,
When I planted mine, I somehow missed the part about liking damp. Maybe that is why they have just been sitting there for the last few years......
Julie, it is their only requirement - they don't like it dry, but otherwise they will tolerate full sun or a considerable amount of shade, light soil or clay. They really are very tolerant. Once they are established, they will go quite deep, so they can stand more surface dryness, but in the early years do keep them at least damp.
And here is a don't: Don't tell someone you have located their passion plant until you get it in your hands - Pix, I have been chasing Crocus monthly, and they have basically now told me 'cease and desist, we will call you, don't call us' - they still haven't gotten the Erngyium Pandanafolium Physic Purple. I'm so sorry I got you excited about this, but alas. I was too quick to shout. I'll keep an eye on their website, but I'm not sure I will be able to call them for a while. I don't think I can bear to listen to the grinding of the poor nursery guy's teeth when I ring up and say "Hi Mat, its Laurie, have you......' (grind) "Nooooooooo, we still....." "So, when do you think....", (grind) "Wellllll..........". Our conversations are bright and breezy on one side of the connection. That's a start.
This message was edited Jul 10, 2009 7:27 PM
Oh my! I wouldn't want your relationship with the local nursery to go amiss, Laurie! Please don't even fret one bit about it. It isn't as though I don't already have enough plants to fill my very own nursery.
I am glad to know that I am not doing anything particularly wrong with the dierama. Apparently they are just still babies!
I just had to resurrect this thread to offer this critical advice. Do not dig up the entry path to the house to renovate a week before out-of-town guests arrive. Yes, I have done this (hides face in embarrassment). Of course, the project is taking much longer than anticipated and they will likely have to leap across a sand pit to get to the front door.
MHfarm, thanks for resurrecting the thread. I am sure that there will be lots of fall-type tasks to add to this soon. Am waiting for the kitchen floor to dry, so have a very brief break here, don't think Lynn will have a chance to read this, but if she does, I know she is saying "AMEN
Holly, you didn't!!!
I have one too, glad you uprooted the tread.
Never plan to but a flower bed where your DH wants to park the truck. I lost the battle, for now but its not over YET!!!!
I finally have Do to share! Scrape a little soap under your fingernails before going out to dig in the dirt. It makes clean up later on ever so much easier, and you won't be going to work with impossible to clean evidence under your nails that even a good scrubbing doesn't remove.
Don't lug that really big rock that's way too heavy for you to carry just because it was free. Free rocks are lovely, but you'll actually pay for it in back pain. For days.
(It really is a nice rock, though.)
(And the big pile of broken concrete pieces didn't help with the back)
Who am I kidding... I'll never learn. ;)
Must have garden tool--a handtruck.
Have one. Nice big-wheeled kind. Wouldn't go where I got the rock from. (had to weave through piles of rubble.)
Whoops!
But it is a very nice rock... LOL (ow)
Let's see ... I know that LOL is short for Lurching Over, Lifting but ... "ow"???
Um... "old woman"? ;p
^_^
What really annoys me is that the rock doesn't look all that big. Probably someone with a happy spine could chuck it around with no trouble. Me? Not so much.
(My two lowest lumbar vertebrae are bone-on-bone. The disc has gone bye-bye. It hurts.)
Don't ever go away for 10 days and expect your garden to look exactly as you left it. Mine has been under the care of my wonderful neighbor the garden designer so all is well, but things have grown substantially! It's thrilling!
Ten days can indeed make a big difference. Not so easy to see when we look at it every day.
I'm glad you had someone to take care of it for you. :)
Glad it wasn't the 'other' neighbor.
LOL Jan!
