Other Annuals and Containers Review

 So how are some of my other annual containers doing?  Pretty well overall.  We have had a cooler summer with an average amount of rain.  The wildfire smoke has blocked some sun, and plants are affected by air quality too.  I have religiously fertilized all of the Petunias and Supertunias once a week with Proven Winners Water Soluble Fertilizer and that really is a necessity for containers. 

The Supertunias are looking great.  If I plant this combination again I will double the number of the Latte color because they are not as vigorous as the Black Cherry or Royal Velvet varieties.

But Supertunias are a great product.  They have a nice mounding habit and they do not need seed pods removed.  The blooms are smaller so they just dry up and go away.

The Dreams Series in the Deck Planters are a really nice plant too.  But they do require deadheading.  Maintaining traditional Petunias are something that I am up to every few years.  Because you can get seeds for the Dream series in several colors, growing them out myself is a possibility for the future.

While the bloom to green stem ratio is not as nice as Supertunias, these plants still have a lot of buds on them.  They just keep expanding.....

The black Sweetunias in this planter are a fail.  They petered out.  As you can see the Licorice Plant and Rediculous Coleus are doing well.  I am going to take cuttings off this coleus soon and that will invigorate it.

I will also take cuttings again from my El Brighto Coleus.  I was almost going to say I was done overwintering Coleus, but it is really nice to have a stock of "extra" annuals on hand and they just perform so well.

I have decided I really like the Blue Tiara Supertunias.

I also have some new annuals tucked in a bare spot here in this bed.  Romence put their annuals on 50% off and free shipping.  That's a good way to try out some plants for a reasonable cost.  And they don't have to throw them out.  Win win. These are the Cobalt Superbena and the Unplugged White Salvia.  Both of these are doing well despite the fact that they are really "seconds" and needed some intensive care to get them up and running. I would like to use them again.  I also got a few of the Persimmon Supertunias.  They were not very vigorous, and I have already pulled them.  I liked the color.  If I could buy them locally I may work them into the plan.  But I will not be going out of my way to get them.

My Vanilla Marigolds and Zinnias are a win.

The Marigolds in all the photos are not covered in blooms because white flowers... even Marigolds... just do not hold up to rain.  They brown very quickly and I have gone around and trimmed them all daily to get rid of the yuck and to encourage the fresh buds to open.  Not having to water every other day is nice, but it does not make for lush annuals.

The Supertunias in the ground under the pear tree are nice.  Once of the Latte plants died.  I think its roots rotted from too much rain which is what the Persimmon plants did too.  Gee we haven't had THAT much rain.  Wimps.

Mid Summer Reset

Very few combination pots make it through the whole season.  Often you can trim them back hard and the plants will put on a lot of new growth.  Some of them you may just be tired of.  I took the two green containers that I had begonias and a dahlia in, got rid of the tired plants and did a reset using the Celosia that I pulled out of the stones.  One container also had the Peachy Keen Superbena in it.  I divided those between the two.  

I usually wait to transplant something until I can see roots coming out of the drain holes, but these were starting to bloom so it was time.  They have really good root systems for Celosia that was ripped up.

I transplanted right before a rainy day and when the rain stopped and the sun came out they were ready to grow.  The Superbena didn't even mind being yanked out and moved mid-season.  I thought this color scheme might look better come fall in place of the red, white and blue planters by the deck.  Those can go somewhere else, and when I move the peppers and pumpkins and corn stalks over there, the red, orange and yellow Celosia may look good too.  If not, there are plenty of spots for them.

Here is a plant that is getting in the spirit of a mid season rejuvenation.  I trimmed a few faded leaves away from this Changeling Heuchera to let the new growth shine through.

The deer have finally decided to taste the pumpkin vines.

She ate 10 leaves but stopped when she got to the prickly stems.

I don't mind much.  I resprayed with repellent and I am glad that I took the time to protect these plants when they were small and more appetizing. 

Late Lunch

 The Sweet Corn is Ready!

Summer Rains

 We have entered a rainy period which is fine.  It cuts down on worry about how the plants are coping with high heat and turns your focus to tidying up every day.  I just cleaned these Petunia planters up yesterday morning.

That's the thing about traditional Petunias.  They don't handle rain well.  The deep purple blooms shed water and seem to hold up the best, especially the first couple of days.

The red ones - not so much.

At least they aren't white, which would be translucent and ultra icky.  No matter.  They need to be dead headed anyway so they don't set seed and quit blooming.  I just have to wait for the plant to dry out a little.  You ought to see my fingers after 10 minutes of Petunia trimming.  Thankfully, Hydrangea flowers don't do that.  

Little Lime Punch Hydrangea (planted 2024)

Little Quick Fire Hydrangea (planted last month)

The thing about rain is that it gives all of the weeds a quick boost.  You will come out in the morning and an area which looked fine yesterday will have all of these happy little weeds.  Below is the pea bed that was mulched.  It won't take long to pull these weeds, especially with moist soil.

Eww!  This pea bed with no mulch is a different story!  Purslane!  The best way to deal with this is to pull the more mature plants at the far end and then rake over it with a garden rake uprooting all of those tiny babies.  I will leave the garden rake right there and every time I walk past I will take 30 seconds to rake it again so that the roots dry up and die.  A nice hot, sunny afternoon would help cook them.

Here is a little update on the grape vines.  The first one is growing like crazy.  It has a really nice growth habit that will easily lend itself to a multiple vertical cordon style.

In the spring, I will prune it as diagramed below.

Right now I am just making sure I tie up the stems that I want to turn into cordons so they are protected and will harden into the form I want.

The second vine has one main leader.

It may require a different form just because it fits this particular vine's growth habit.  Maybe next year's growth will provide what I need for two opposing cordons.   We shall see.  It's kind of fun.

Planting Bearded Irises

 My Bearded Irises arrived yesterday and I planted them out today.  In the rain.  When you wait for months for a plant, it doesn't matter what the weather is when it arrives.  Bearded irises always arrive cut back and bare root.  I don't want them hanging around in a box any longer than necessary, but it is still delayed gratification because you order them in April, they arrive in August, and they don't bloom until next May or June anyway!

I have had Bearded Irises before.  I think the few that I still have here and there were ordered 20 years ago.  They are not in the best locations, they have been swallowed up by other landscape and they rarely bloom.  In fact, the nicest one got left behind at the neighbor's house back when my husband used to live there.  I still get to enjoy it as I have visitation rights!

 When I was thinking of some sort of colorful plant for this landscape bed, I thought - "well, Bearded Iris would probably stand the deer pressure."  A little pepper spray should be all that is needed to discourage them.  And it is a good environment for irises.  They can handle shallow, well drained (let's face it, it's dry) soil with not much mulch.  We blow leaves across this bed in the fall so I needed something that can take the abuse.  A cut back Iris that doesn't need deep mulch will be a perfect compliment to the rugged, ornamental grasses.  And they will provide some interest in the early summer before the grasses grow tall.

Dodging raindrops I went out with my auger and prepared enough holes.

I had already ordered and sorted the varieties with a particular layout in mind and had been tweaking a spreadsheet for months.  I took into account the mature height of each, as well as their bloom season.  I want the tallest ones in the back of course.

I ordered 16 varieties representing a wide range of colors. That is the nice thing about iris.  They do have a pretty good color pallet.  Red and Orange are poorly represented, but they have just about every other shade.  Ironically, my least favorite iris colors are any purple and yellow combinations that end up looking muddy brown to my eye.  And that seems to be their most natural color combo.

Bleh.

Irises are rhizomes which sit at the surface of the soil.  They do not like to be buried too deeply.  That makes it a little tricky to get them securely placed.  Until they start to root in, they can easily be kicked over, pulled up, or otherwise molested by wildlife and general weather and traffic, so I pinned a wire cloche over each of them.  These will probably stay in place until after leaf blowing season, at which point I will need to reassign the cloches to the Primroses for the winter.

I just don't know what I would do without these cloches.  I always seem to have a use for them.  Now - we wait.

Pumpkin Patch Update

 This is a zoomed in view out one of my bedroom window's each morning.  The pumpkin flowers are awake and ready for business.

Pumpkin and squash flowers only open up for a few hours first thing in the morning and if pollination does not occur, the flower is done.  No day two for these.

And we have a lot of flowers.  They are a hive of activity.  Honey Bees galore.

Despite having planted these a week or two later than I would have liked, we already have some good sized pumpkins cooking in there.

We have short round ones and tall thin ones.

Once I have located a pumpkin I usually try to stand it up on it's blossom end so it will develop evenly and not with a flat back.

They are still pollinating and this week's babies will have time to develop.

A couple of plants were obviously cross pollinated with the zucchini plants last year and are Alien Squash Beasts.  All the seeds I planted were either older seeds from the store bought pumpkin, or second generation seeds from the ones I grew last year.

No matter.  We will have plenty of "normal" Jack o' Lantern style pumpkins.  And now that this growing experiment is a success, I know how any plants this system can support and I know that I can protect the plants from deer destruction and other critters, until they are large enough to fend for themselves, I will actually spend a few bucks on "good" pumpkin seeds next year.

The fabric can be left out over winter and the seeds planted earlier and we should be in the pumpkin business in a big way.

First Tomato

 I picked my first tomato today.  It still needs a couple of days to ripen fully but I don't want to miss it!  It is beautiful!  I also tried a couple of ears of sweet corn today.  It was a little immature but still sweet and tasty.  It needs another week to be in its prime but it is so hard to wait and it isn't possible to eat it all a once anyway.

My Dahlias are beginning to bloom well now.  This one would have been in its prime yesterday or the day before when it was overcast and rainy.  I want the whole flower garden to look nice when they start to open so I spent some time deadheading the Marigolds and Zinnias today to bring on some fresh blooms.  I am looking forward to some beautiful color.