Waste Not Want Not ~ #freeplants

 Do you remember the little Coleus cutting that I broke off the day I transplanted them?

It was rooted under a grow light and has spent the last week or so in the partial shade of the potting bench hardening off.

In the background is the base of the plant it broke off of.  That poor thing looked pretty pitiful up until this week but now it is putting on some growth.  The cutting is large compared to the original plant.

Today it got planted in the border of the pink Dahlia bed.   The little plant to its left is a cutting I pinched off of one of my new Dahlias back in April.  The little Dahlia is about ready to bloom.

Free Plants!  Yay!

The Celosia Fire Pit

 One of my favorite displays of Annuals year to year is my Celosia firepit.  We had purchased this firepit with the intention of using it as a firepit, but then we built a larger one into the ground.  Besides, this one is too small.  My husband only knows how to build ceremonial bonfires, and this little firepit wouldn't hold them.  It was my husband's idea to use it as a planter instead.  The first year I planted Dahlias in it but then I landed on the idea of Celosia.  It took me a couple of tries to find a variety of Celosia that looked just like I wanted, but after that I was able to let them reseed themselves year after year.

They just got thicker and thicker, but over the years, the soil level got lower and lower.  Every fall when I pulled them out the root balls took more soil with them.  It got to the point where I needed to add two or three inches of soil to bring the level back up.  I have the fire ring filled half way with gravel, and the thin soil was becoming difficult to maintain.  Celosia do not require much water, but still, the shallow soil and little watering made their roots hotter and hotter.

Adding three or four inches of potting soil would bury the existing seeds too deeply.  The seeds are about the size of poppy seeds.  They need to be scattered on top of the soil to germinate.  But that's OK, because as you can see, the red color was beginning to take over.  The planter was due for a total reset.  So I ordered two packets of the Century Mix that I started with and decided to direct sow them instead of struggling with them under grow lights.  I just wanted to replicate what nature had been doing.

The thing about Celosia is that it does not transplant real well.  The root systems are small and delicate and do not recover easily.  Many times I have planted transplants from the greenhouse and had them do not too much.  I have tried starting my own seeds, and sometimes the plants do not make it to planting size for me.  But obviously, in a reseeding situation, the plants thrive.  So starting in March, I began sprinkling a few seeds here and there and I covered the soil with a polycarbonate greenhouse panel to keep it warm and prevent heavy rain from washing the seeds away.

I kept the cover on until mid-May when the plants got too tall, and I watered the soil lightly every time I was out there.    The germination has been slow and I have actually scooped up and relocated a few of them to evenly distribute the plants.  But in the end I sowed 100 seeds and I am getting happy plants.  And, just as importantly, they are not all red!

The seeds are still germinating.  After the last rain I counted almost a dozen baby plants popping up.

It won't be long until the plants are thick and blooming again and they can go on reseeding themselves for years to come.

Perennial Optimism

 Every year I lose a few perennials, and last year I did away with a whole bunch of Day Lilies and a few Hosta because I was tired of fighting the deer for them.  Most of this happens in our big Dry Creek Bed.  This area is pretty challenging to plant because it is both a hot, dry area and a wet area, depending on the season.   Below is an example of one of the planting spots vacated last year by a Day Lily.  The Day Lilies and grasses push a pretty sizeable root ball up from grade which seems to help them deal with the soggy season.

Because when it rains, some of these holes can really fill up with water!

When I first planted this area, I started with dependable plants like Decorative Grasses, Day Lilies and Hosta. Over the years I have also tried and failed to add some color with Blanket Flowers, Salvia, several varieties of Echinacea and newer Rudbeckias.  I tried some things that don't do well for me anywhere in my garden:  Candy Tuft, Sedums, Plumbago, Coreopsis and Caryopteris. I've planted four or five different varieties of Butterfly Bush.  Only one variety of these does well, but I am tired of replacing them every two or three years with volunteers I have collected up and groomed as under studies.  I tried some things that the deer absolutely obliterated like Irises, Asters and Marshmallows.  I still haven't gotten around to some of the brighter things like Phlox.  Some of the planting spots I have replanted three or four times and failed with every new idea.

Instead of going for colorful flowers I have switched to texture and colored foliage which brought me to shrubs.  Some of these have done well and some haven't.  I've discovered a few new to me plants like Amsonia and Penstemon which, so far, seem unstoppable in difficult locations.  When online perennials get discounted towards the end of each spring, I buy the smaller pots at half price, pot them up in larger pots, and grow them up to a retail size before planting them out.  This year, to fill the holes left by the murdered Daylilies, drowned Butterfly Bushes and finicky Echinaceas, I needed a dozen new Perennials and Shrubs.  I chose all new varieties concentrating on plants that look like they belong along a natural creek bed.  When searching through possibilities, I filtered for Deer Resistant and Wet Site Tolerant.

Physostegia Summer Snow (Obedient Plant)

Lobelia Starship Scarlet (Cardinal Flower)

Cimicifuga Black Negligee (Bugbane)

Aronia Berry Scape (Choke Berry)

Clethra Sugartina Crystalina (Summersweet)

I also got a few more Amsonia, Brunnera, Carex grass and Niagara Falls grass because I know those will work here and what I have is still too small to divide at this point.  I topped off the empty holes with fresh soil and got rid of all of the opportunistic weeds that had tried to take over.  Some of these new perennials were already getting root bound in the pots I put them in last month.  I hope this means they will root in fast and take off.

I love having a fresh new perennial in a tidy planting space.  So much promise.

Unless you were to walk through the creek bed, you really wouldn't have noticed those dozen empty holes.  What survives from year to year looks beautiful in June.  Here are a few shots from the last week.

Early Morning Sunshine

The Layered Look

Hosta corner in the dry shade of the Black Maple

Penstemon Onyx And Pearls (Beardtongue)

So now the vegetable garden is in, all of my annuals have been planted, and now all of the new perennials have been placed out in the dry creek bed.  I think I am, at last, done planting for the year.

A Plan Comes Together

Here is my successful planting plan along the brick walk between the two Dahlia beds.  Last year I tried to do this and it didn't turn out the way I had hoped.  To the left are all of the Dahlias that are in the copper, bronze, peach color family and I seeded and grew out the white Marigolds and Apricot Profusion Zinnias to border them.  On the right is the Dahlia bed with the pink, burgundy, purple color scheme.  I chose the Double Hot Cherry Profusion Zinnias to alternate with the white Marigolds.  Today is the first day when enough color is showing on both sides for me to see my vision.

It will still be another five or six weeks before the Dahlias begin to show their color.  I can't wait!

Cool Weather

 This growing season has been a challenge because of cool weather, especially at night.  Today's forecast high is 59F (15C) and that will be brief.  Tonight's low will be 48F (9C) and there are several things in the garden now that do NOT like to be velow 55F.   It is very overcast.  We got a wonderful drenching rain yesterday evening which was much appreciated, and now the rest of the week will be cool but mostly sunny.  

I still have my sweet potato vines covered because of the night time temperatures.  The first batch planted in May, gave it up pretty quickly.  I didn't cover those because I was being stubborn.  Their leaves dropped off pretty quick, despite being hardened to the sun, but the stems remained green and I thought maybe they were rooting in under the soil.  But then one night a racoon climbed the fence and rummaged through the entire grow bag.  I only found two of the five stems and they were not so good looking.  After that the electric fence went on.  I replanted (always save backups!) and covered them and they are doing well.

Looking a little pale and shivery this morning, but putting out new leaves.

Another do over was the sweet corn.  I had great germination from the replant so I must have gotten the seeds too deep the first time.  I planted the second batch with a marked dibber so I got them exactly 1.5" deep.

Third replant of the day:  the grape vine.  My Dad told me that he tried growing grapes and they "died back then came back up and the grapes were awful".  Yup, his must have come up from root stock also.  This one is safely growing above the graft.

My first Dahlia bloom of the season.  This is a border height (2 foot) Dahlia which reach mature height and bloom much earlier.  I need more of these for annuals.  A few years ago I planted Pablo in front of the house but all of the tubers had leafy gall so I tossed them.  I had planted Geraniums in that area several years in a row so the leafy gall was probably in that soil.  Next year I'll try Pablo again in a different area.  Border Dahlias are a pretty efficient way of getting annual color and not spending a fortune year after year.

Border Dahlia Art Deco

Marigold Cuttings

 Late last summer when I took the Coleus Cuttings, I tried a few Marigold cuttings as an experiment.  I didn't grow them on, I just learned how to get them rooted and stored the info away.  This year, I took cuttings from the Marigolds I was not planting front and center.  It benefitted the plants, causing them to branch out more, and it gave me some extra plants.  I took a dozen, and treated them pretty harshly. Had I brought them indoors under grow lights, they would probably have all done well, but I just put them under a dome and stuck them in the cold frame.  

Out of the twelve, I got five good plants all from the Star Spangled variety, and none from the Vanilla Cream.  

When they began to show roots at the drain holes of the cells, about two weeks, I potted them up into 3.5" pots and gave them another week to get settled.

They were quite happy, even beginning to bloom.

That's a nice, compact, free plant and it didn't take up any space under the grow lights.

Now that I've begun cutting back the foliage from the Daffodils, there are a lot of areas that could use a little color.  This edge beside the apple tree is one where I have often thought I could use some annuals.

Besides the Marigold cuttings, I alternated some extra Binky Dahlias that I also had going in pots.  The Dahlia plants will be about the same size as the Marigolds.  I'll let you know how they turn out.... if the deer don't eat them.  That is a path the deer use several times a week.

Binky

Strawberry Jam

 This is why we work so hard. The most perfect bowl of strawberries I have ever picked.  No slug damage.  None rotting in the soil.  None stolen by chipmunks or pecked at by birds.  And its not easy.  There is trimming and weeding and fertilizing and watering and outsmarting pests.

There is nothing better than fresh Strawberry freezer Jam.  This is my second batch this week.  I would like to make three and it looks like that won't be any trouble at all.  Last year the plants were too young and I only got one batch, had none to share and I ran out back in February.  I've been eating honey on my toast since then.

This makes the hard work worth while.