WS#4

I don't agree, Kyla. OK, I concede that there are the occasional instances where an annual survives a 2nd year or where a biennial hangs on for a 3rd (and there are very short-lived perennials), and there are also significant variations where a plant is subjected to severe or significantly different climatic conditions than in its native environment, but these variations from the "norm" are the result of human intervention, whereas the "conventions" that name them annuals, biennials or perennials are pretty straightforward:

An annual plant completes its lifecycle (germination, vegetation, flowering and seed production, death) in one year. Annuals always naturally die after flowering and producing seed. Interestingly, many plants we "think" are perennials because we live in "temperate" climates (such as tomatoes, peppers, datura, petunias) are actually perennials!

A biennial plant completes its lifecycle in 2 years. This normally means it will germinate and produce vegetation in the 1st year and will flower, produce seed and die in the 2nd year.

A perennial plant completes its lifecycle in more than 2 years. It normally lives on after flowering and producing seed.

Variations we note from these "conventions" are almost always the result of growing a plant outside its natural environment.

There is some chance that, especially in the colder parts of Pennsylvania, digitalis purpurea could be induced to flower in its 1st year. But, because it is a true perennial, that would also be its last year. If anyone succeeds in getting digitalis to flower 2 years in a row, I want seed and detailed info on the conditions! We could have something in that case!

Jim

Okay. I think we are actually perceiving the same facts from slightly different angles, is all. The exceptions you noted in your post were exactly what I was alluding to when I said the terms are conventions. Of course, each plant has a life cycle determined by its genetics, and by the seasonal conditions where it evolved. Within species there are the same kinds of variation as to life length as there are among other kinds of creatures -- and because most of what we grow is in fact removed by several steps of cultivation and geography from its original natural environment, sometimes there are surprising variations both possible and observed.

and no, can't cite you specific examples right now. ;-) I will say that this concept of those divisions being primarily a human convention -- meaning a categorization created to help us organize how we perceive what is actually going on, not meaning that it is false! -- this concept is not original with me -- cannot recall where I first encountered it but it took me by surprise at the time to hear the idea from a source I apparently considered wise...... and then I began to observe exactly the kinds of variations you mention.

language is tricky.

Thanks for making all the specifics so clear, Jim!

Kyla

The Digitalis I've wintersown have waited till the 2nd year to flower. The seedlings did get a head start from the naturally reseeded ones, and produced larger plants with more bloom stalks. At my last home that was in a moist, woodland setting, I had the occasional Foxglove that would live for 3 years, blooming the last 2. But they really loved that environment, and the soil was the best I've ever gardened in.

Forgot to say I did my first wintersowing of the year today! Just over a dozen jugs done, and soooo many to go. I did the stupidest thing; grabbed the wrong marker to make my labels. Didn't realize it till I watered the first ones and the markings completely washed off! Thank goodness I noticed!

A nice thing about biennials is that you can have them perform as perennials. If it's a plant you love you can keep it around for years.

Consider this. You sow and grow digitalis in 2008. That year, it remains as leafy basal growth. It blooms in 2009, (it's second year of life) you let the seed mature and drop from the plant, germinate in summer, and become seedlings. It grows and winters over. In 2010, those seedlings are now second year plants that bloom, drop seed, germinate and become seedlings, winter over, bloom as second year plants in 2012... and the cycle of life continues. Thus you have a "perennial biennial".

Karen

Thanks for the answers guys. That helps me figure out which garden I will plant them in.

Btw, I have gotten digitalis purpurea to bloom 2 years in a row by cutting the flowers off before they went to seed. (Got that tip from Tracy DiSabato-Aust in "The Well-Tended Perennial Garden").

Karen, I love it when they get going in a cycle like that. I have really good luck with Sweet William behaving like that for me.

Yes, that can help. Setting seeds signals plants that it's life cycle is complete. That's why deadheading during the growing season urges the plant to produce more flowers- it has to make more flowers to set seed to reproduce itself. Deadheading perennials can give you flowers most of the summer on a lot of perennials. My butterfly weed bloomed pretty early last summer, and starting growing seedpods. I deadheaded the pods almost daily for about a week or two, and it prompty bloomed again, bigger and better. It was it bloom most of the summer. (Avoids those nasty old milkweed bugs, too. I think they gross me out only because there are so many at once)

Karen

Good to know that about the butterfly weed. That combination of colorful plants is gorgeous, and a site for winter sore eyes!

Thank you, they're all wintersown- my attempt to hide that ugly heat pump.

Karen

It is an extremely well-dressed heat pump!

Your butterfly weed it beautiful! I planted some last spring, and they looked like they were struggling to survive. I hope they have a better year.

pgt me too about the butterfly weed. Hope they live and do much better.
kqcrna I have foxgloves that I ws'd last year. Sure hope they drop seed and do as you tell us. Can't wait for them to bloom

pgt: My butterfly weed didn't do much the first year, either. The picture above was a third year plant. Remember the rule with perennials: first year they sleep, second year they creep, third year they leap.

Indy: To get new foxgloves you have to be sure to let the seeds mature on the plant. If I'm going to harvest any, I wait until the pod opens naturally. Then you can pick the pod and save seeds or just toss in the soil where you want them to grow. Those really fresh seeds sprout fast in my yard.

Karen

I haven't had much luck with my butterfly weed. I have had it for several years and it is just about 1-2ft tall and leggy with sparse blooms. I have been afraid to cut it back as someone told me it blooms on old growth. If I cut it all back to about 6 inches will it fill out and bloom better?

I don't know what it does in your zone, but here it dies back to the ground in winter.

Karen

You know, I'm not really a rigid, cranky old man.
Well, probably I am, but that's not the point here.

The point, as I see it, is that beginning gardeners (and, because this thread is meant for first-time WSers, I'd guess it includes some beginning gardeners) need some specifics to guide them. All the "exceptions" can come later.

Karen has presented an approach that has been used by gardeners for millenia: alternate year seeding of biennials. It works and it is great. I would hesitate to call it "perennial biennial" planting, however, because then I could call my irrepressible Rudbeckia hirta's reseeding "perennial annual".

Humankind messes with plants to get them to do what we want. I understand that there are now petunias that are "almost" genetically annuals! And, of course, given our sedentary nature and aesthetic concerns, we "deadhead" plants. Maybe, in good soil, with careful attention to the garden, you can get a biennial to survive for a 3rd year. But, again, that's human intervention having nothing to do with "definitions". I bet you can't do that for a 3rd or 4th year. Once again, if you can, we have something marketable here.

I am really NOT trying to be difficult, but I do think that the "conventions" have clear definitions based on millenia of study and understanding and that most variations are due to human intervention (most of it historically recent).

I especially think that it is important that beginning gardeners understand these conventions (and even take them as 'rules') in order to be successful; and, further, that those of us with wide expreience do not forget the basics in our rush to generalize our immediate experience (especially if it involves experience with late 20th-21st century cultivars created for our gardening delight).

Karen: That is a really lovely base/border planting. That looks like Asclepias tuberosa, not Asclepias rubra, the Monarch butterfly host. Am I correct?

Jim:It is A tuberosa. Most, if not all, asclepias sp. are monarch host plants.


I had some monarch caterpillars on one of the tuberosas in my back yard last summer.

Karen

Jim I think you sound like a nice grotchy old man! ;) NO really the discussion/debate helps me understand EXACTLY what yall are talking about. I am a newbie, a newbie to gardening especially in my new found climate.

One thing I definitely understand is how a plant is a perennial in one zone and then an annual in a different zone. Finding out the reasons why has been fascinating.

I guess my point is YALL keep talking cuz it sure is helping me understand some things.

And Karen..........what heat pump? :) Really it is a nice cover and looks great.

Hi Karen,
I have a friend who runs a "Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary". Please go visit : http://www.happytonics.org/ She & I simply disagree on GMOs. The work she is doing to preserve habitat for Monarchs is reMonarchable! But she has always given me the impression that A, rubra was the host plant, not A. tuberosa. I am pleased to hear that this also a host plant.

We have other species here, but I love to have "butterfly plants" in the garden.

I think there are different species/varieties that work better in different parts of the US (you know, we Americans often forget just how HUGE our country is!). I have A, tuberosa seeds that I am WS this year that I bought from Alplains.com with this note : "This familiar, orange-flowered Milkweed is much more common back east in the Ozarks than in the western states. This seed, from a population growing in an extremely arid part of the Colorado Plateau, should yield plants much more suited to our dry, alkaline soils of the west."

If you are into this stuff (American native plants), please visit : http://alplains.com/

In any case, we are all gardeners, and we have so much to learn from each other!

Jim, I think you are dead on. I believe it is important to understand the basic building stones of horticulture. Without it why bother.

I failed to say say how much I love your nifty garden, Karen

Thanks, Anita
I do think that we need to understand these principles.
If we do not, we just cannot garden as well as we could.

Thanks, Jim. I have 3 clumps of A.tuberosa, all in different flower beds. I do love them for their many good features- beauty, long bloom time, drought tolerance.... I wintersowed them in my first year, 2006, so next summer will be their 4th year. I'm hoping they'll be even bigger and better.

Some asclepias, while beautiful, are a little tall to fit into my beds. The tuberosa seems perfect for me.

Karen

Jim, you wrote:
If anyone succeeds in getting digitalis to flower 2 years in a row, I want seed and detailed info on the conditions! We could have something in that case!

A lot of my Digitalis purpurea blooms 2 years in a row. A few years ago I digged up 2 plants in de woods here (purple), it's a native here. The next year appeared also 2 white ones and a lot of purple ones and now I have about 30 plants white, pink, purple.
When I cut of the flowerstems before they set seed, they will most times rebloom in the 3rd year. You can predict it on looking if fresh leaves are formed after blooming. If you want I'll send you seeds.

Weli, we are close neighbours, so can I have seeds?

I am serious: if this can be a proven trait, this could be a marketable variety.

How long will your plants live?

I think they die after the 3rd year, but I'm not sure. I have so many now and they also selfsow freely. But I'm sure a lot of them (not all) will live 3 years (2 years bloom). The 3rd year they are bigger than the 2nd year.
I think it is a wild species, I never bought seed of it.
Are you in the address exchange? If not, d-mail me your address, so I can send you the seeds

Jonna,
I am in the address exchange.
Potagere

Jonna: What a beautiful garden. The digitalis is spectacular.

And, like yours, mine self sow so that I easily lose track of how many years each has been in the garden. Often it's speculation based on the size of the plant and proximity of the seedlings.

Karen

In this case I'm sure, because I replanted a group on a row in another part of my garden. Must see what they will do this year. Some of them made new leaves, but not so much as the year before.

Is asclepias rubra the wild (native) one that grows in the pastures and along the road sides?

Here's A.rubra:

http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/91856/

Wow! My head hurts a little, but I love how much I learn when I check in here. Thanks Karen and Jim for the explanation and for presenting your differing viewpoints in such a respectful way (SUCH a breath of fresh air!). I didn't understand until now about perennials and biennials only blooming their second year (even though Karen's "sleep, creep, leap" refrain sounds familiar).

I'm pretty bummed to learn that my foxglove won't bloom this year, but perhaps a lesson is patience will be good for me. Besides, if they grow up to look like Jonna's, they will be worth the wait! Now I need to go and rethink where I am going to put them. How awful would it have been to fill an entire plot, only to not have any color at all there for a year!

I got my Park's Seed order yesterday (woohoo!) and separated all my seeds (traded, gifted and purchased) by WSing dates. Maybe I ought to go through one more time and pay more attention to Annual, Biennial and Perennial...

-GB

I love this thread, and Jim, crotchety or not, your precision of expression and depth of knowledge and willingness to share it is always appreciated!

Regarding beginner gardeners and the need to communicate clear guidelines, I am grateful also that there are many approaches out there. Honestly, when I first began, the plethora of "precise" information, and the way it seemed to contradict itself over and over just made my head spin. I took as my guideline Ruth Stout's attitude, which translated as, don't listen to the experts, they often talk out of their hat. Nature will teach you; try it and see.

I did, she did, and I was off and running.

I do realize this approach does NOT work for everyone! Finding a source of trustworthy teaching that DOES work for you seems to me essential, and, Jim, you are most certainly not one of those Ruth Stout was referring to as not worth listening to, just to be completely clear here.

Okay, I am done with this little comparison of differences, let's return to the garden. ;-)

I am so excited my 'freebies' seeds came from wintersowing.org and I already have them labeled and ready to sow. I just need some more containers! :)

A few are seeds I wouldnt have bought myself......which is what I like so much about the free ones it stretches you. :)

I think yall are all smart.....give me a year or two then I might actually have an opinion! :)

Hi all..was reading thru some of your posts and thought some of you might like to refer to this site.....it says your columbine (refers to them as
Aquilegia ) take 30-60 days
http://www.backyardgardener.com/tm.html

That's a good general rule for Columbine, but they can take much longer. Always a good idea to hold on to the container they're sown in for a few months, even if you think they're duds.

that is exactly when i did Neal... when i was complaining of no germination, everyone kept saying, "Dont dump them" and i didn't ..... out of all my containers, 2 did not germinate.

also, i read on Clotheir's info ... he also said they can take months and to be patient.

so i just stuck them in the shade and asked my kid to keep my containers watered....

So I finally got some containers planted. :) YAY. Only 5 but now that I got everything out I can do a little each day. I have my label maker, and labels next to my computer. I look at my spreadsheet and decide what to plant, make a label for it, find the package of seed in my seed drawer and then take them to the kitchen . In the kitchen I have my cordless drill and scissors for preparing containers and I can line up the containers that are ready to sow on the counter. (We do have a huge kitchen so that helps). I put the seeds and the labels into the waiting containers until I can actually plant. Then when I get time like today, I can grab a huge bowl of soil from my MG right outside the kitchen door. I moisten the soil, put it into the containers, plant the seeds and put the label in there, number my containers, update my spreadsheet and then out they go.

Today I had helpers. :)

I was quite productive today. I am also taking on the task of clearing the gardens so that I will have somewhere to plant out all my wonderful plants. I thought this might be a gigantic task, so I had better get started. The gardens have been neglected for most of 10 years. There were tree seedlings and weeds as tall as the fence. So I went out there today and the ground is surprisingly easy to work. The soil looks beautiful, and I was turning several inches of leaves into the soil as well. The soil at our other house was pure sand, this had a nice color to it, and looked much more like soil than sand. I was so surprised, I was able to turn over 10-12 inches with just my shovel. It is still going to take some work, but it isn't going to be as back-breaking as I originally thought.

I do wish you could attach more than one image to a post.

LOL especially when i forget to attach the pictures.

This message was edited Jan 21, 2009 3:05 PM