Planning a Container Planting

 This is the time of year when we plan for the season ahead.  I have often said that the month the garden gets totally out of control isn't August.  It's January.  That's when we are tempted to wreck perfectly sensible plans that we made last summer when we were thinking clearer.  As we get more experienced, we are less likely to do that.  We realize that months of cold isolation, lack of growing things and the bad influence of mail order catalogs (and now internet examples) can make us susceptible to flights of fancy and grandiose ideas.

Here is something I've been thinking about for awhile.  My whiskey barrel planters along the river bed.  They turned out really beautiful last year.  I didn't even mind deadheading the Petunias.  Traditional Petunias is something I succumb to every now and then but they take a lot of maintenance.

There are several things to consider when planning a container:

• Growing conditions (Sun Shade Heat)
• Color Palette
• Growth Habit (Shape)
• Cost
• Availability

I have addressed container combinations before.  It is something I put a lot of thought into but I am beginning to run out of ideas that excite me.  Proven Winners has a great site tool called Recipe Search where they put out all of their recommended combinations and give you the list of everything that goes into them.  Growers use these when putting together hanging baskets and combination planters.  You can also assemble them yourself.  The problem is that you can't always find all of the exact ingredients.  This has only added to my frustration.

There is a slight problem with these two planters. of mine  One is in full sun and the other is in part sun.  Can you see in the photo below how the petunias seem to be full and lush on the left (east) but there are no blooms on the lower right (west)?  This is because this planter only gets sun until 1:00 pm. About 5 hours.  Then it is in full shade for the rest of the afternoon.  Obviously not deep shade.  It is picking up a lot of surrounding light.  But the maple tree shadow hits it at 1:00 and the maple tree is only getting larger and thicker.

Having Petunias in these planters in the first place happened by accident.  We had them both in full sun locations elsewhere in the landscape, but they were in out of the way places and we needed something to fill in the wide strip of gravel along the river bed.  We wanted something colorful we could enjoy from the fire pit patio where we sit most afternoons.  One of these planters had been full of Daddy Mix Petunias a few years ago.  There is something they don't tell you about traditional Petunias.  They reseed.  At least half of my volunteer weeds are Petunias.  Violas are also a bit pesky this way.  Portulaca is a suprisingly reliable reseeder (because they are so closely related to that PITA Purslane).  Sadly and curiously I have never had a volunteer Marigold.  But I do deadhead my Marigolds pretty regularly.

Original Daddy® Mix Petunia 

Petunias are determined critters.  The next year after the Petunias I planted red Durango Outback Marigolds in that planter.  The Petunias came up anyway and pretty much took over.

Volunteer Daddy Mix coming through Durango Red Marigolds

When we moved the Whiskey Barrels in 2020 I hadn't planned for any annuals in them.  That was the first year of Covid so spending a lot of money on annuals seemed like it might be a little foolish.  Instead I had put my leftover sweet potato slips in them.  I also used fountain grass as a centerpiece. The Petunias came up anyway.

They actually looked kind of nice.  The other planter had only sweet potato and fountain grass, but the one with the Petunias looked like I had had a plan all along.

So in last year I planted Daddy Mix Petunias in both of them.

Over the years the whole annual flower thing has become a little tiring.  We've lost a few older nurseries in our area and the Big Box Stores are not dependable.  Finding what I want year after year has become more difficult.  It is frustrating to make a plan and then not be able to source the particular varieties I want.  For instance, last year I wanted to put Euphorbia in all of my planters.  That's usually easy to find.  Scaevola would have been nice too.  I had first tried that in 2021 and loved it.  Do you think I could find either one in May?  Nope.  I waited well into June.  I asked at my main nursery and the owner said his supplier kept telling him those plants would be on the next truck and they never were.  I gave up and planted lime green sweet potato vines instead and the darn things took over everything.

Instead of buying annuals I am leaning towards starting my own from seeds as I sometimes do, or just skipping them all together.  My budget for annuals is about $200 a year.  The Geraniums I plant along our driveway are taking up more and more of that. This year I am going to add Marigolds to my list of seed annuals (snapdragons, zinnias etc) just to save money, and I am also leaning towards tubers.  I already save my Dahlia tubers, why not add Begonias and Caladiums?  Tuberous Begonias might be great in that shady whiskey barrel.  

Begonia Hanging Golden Balcony

My color palette in and around the garden in hot colors (red orange yellow).  In the river bed I have some accents of blue but pinks are strictly around the house and purple I only put in the whiskey barrel one year because it was far removed from any other color planting and I could put whatever I wanted in it one year to the next.  So I have chosen the Golden Balcony hanging Begonias to try.  

Of course there is just one thing.  The shade container should coordinate with the sun container.  Good luck with that right?  I can't put Begonias in the full sun but I want a similar color.  What I would really love is some Peachy Keen Superbena.  Of course I cannot rely on finding that variety and I am not going to drive all over the county once a week searching for it.  I'll just have to splurge and mail order it.  If I am starting all of my Marigolds and other annuals from seed I'm saving money there and I can justify a splurge.  If I change my mind I can fill the planter with Marigolds or Dahlias or something else I have lots of.  But I think it would look really nice.

Superbena® Peachy Keen

Another sun/shade problem I have is the planter in front of the chicken coop.  This faces due east and gets full morning sun but come noon/1:00 it is shaded.  I've put a lot of different things in this spot over the years from sun lovers like Calibrachoa or hanging Geraniums, to shade lovers like Coleus.  All have done fine.  Out of pure lack of imagination last year I just put the sweet potato vine in.  There was also a geranium in there but it was totally overwhelmed.

A sun loving Geranium just couldn't battle a sweet potato vine with no help from the sun.

For this year I have ordered Caladium tubers.  I've never grown Caladium before but I thing the bright white will stand out in this location and I can save the tubers for future.  There are a couple of other shady locations I could put these too.  I want something bold because I walk past it several times a day and it is visible from the driveway.  I need something eye catching there.

Caladium Fancy White Queen

That takes care of three of my planters.  The other four are close to our side door.  They will also have to be coordinated.  Last year I used Geraniums and they looked nice.  This year I plan to replace the salmon Geraniums with border height Dahlias.  I am replacing $100 worth of Geraniums with $60 of Dahlia tubers that I can save year after year.

That's what I've been thinking about lately.  I have all of my plans drown up, the seeds and tubers are ordered.  I've estimated how many gallons of potting mix I need and how much I have already.  I have my planting calendar filled out.  I know how many trays of how many pots of what kind of everything I have room for in the cold frame.  And now... we wait.

Got Snow?

 We Do

Snow Removal:  First you do the snow moval.  And then you do the snow re-moval.

But it never actually goes away.

Ten inches of heavy powder on top of our existing substantial snow cover.

Walking across the lawn it was knee deep.

Pest Management in Deep Winter

 Even with a foot of dense compacted snow on the ground there are gardening things that need to be attended to.  Right now the main problem is deer.  They're hungry!  This is the sort of winter that brings out the worst in deer.  It has been cold for weeks with night temps in the single digits and they need calories.  The snow cover has not let up and it is getting dense and hard to dig through.  We are expecting another foot or more tomorrow on top of this.  When we drove through town yesterday I noticed that people's rhododendrons are taking a real hit.  In a normal winter deer usually leave those alone.  In a hard winter they will strip one down to the trunk.

My particular problem is our landscape bed with the myrtle ground cover.  This isn't the only place we have myrtle, but it is the largest and lushest patch and every year the deer trim it down.  This isn't normally a worry because the myrtle is very vigorous and can take a trimming.  This bed started out full of perennials with just a clump of myrtle under the plow so I wouldn't have to crawl under there an weed.  My Dad literally gave me a shovel full.  Took a spade and dug a clump out of his garden, and I used a spade to take a chunk of ground out from under the plow and plopped it in there.

Over the years the myrtle has spread and I've had to remove the things I really wanted (the hostas, astilbes and veronica) or lose them forever.  There are still some day lilies and an iris in the back corner, and the wind flower persists in a scattered sort of way.  But everything else has gone.

And now it is a big wooly mound of myrtle.  

You can see why I don't mind the deer mowing it a bit.

Deer are low on good ol' common sense. With the deep snow they have gone beyond mowing and are now in the excavation phase.  I do not want the knuckleheads digging up deep mounds of mulch.  The myrtle store is closed for the season. We had some wire rings that we weren't using and I opened them up and lay them flat over the open areas of the bed.  The wire is woven in one inch squares so they are not at risk of getting their hooves or legs caught in it as they would with chicken wire or something similar.  This should stop them from destroying the bed any further.  I use this method throughout the summer to divert their paths.  I have squares of wire I move to areas they start walking through.  They don't like to be surprised by something springy under foot.  This barricade should at least slow the digging during this next blast of snow.

Time for a walkabout to check the other defenses.  We put rings around all of our evergreen shrubs.  Even those that are supposed to be deer resistant because a hungry deer will eat just about anything and everything.  Each night they walk through and check again.  Just in case....

Although they don't like stumbling through uneven footing, when they are really hungry they will walk up the creek beds.  Here one has stopped at each exposed butterfly bush and deemed it unpalatable.  But I see the deer on the left took a left turn at the top of the creek bed so I want to go up there and check my pear tree.

Luckily she turned here and headed out of the garden area.

But I sprayed the pear tree well with deer repellant anyway.  You can see I have a lot of trip hazards set up around here to divert their wandering.  But if they are really hungry that won't matter.  We've even seen them climb up and stand on deck railings to reach over wire rings.

While I can assure you there is plenty of rodent activity going on under the snow, sometimes you can see what they are up to on the surface.  This must be a fat little field mouse coming and going from the shelter of the lilac bush to the wooded area.

Sometimes the only help the tracks can give you is to figure out where you will have to trap or protect next year.  Sometimes the damage will only be revealed when the snow melts.  But you still have to check and see what can be done.  Sometimes you can catch  problem before it gets too bad.

Parting Shot:  Supertunias in the myrtle bed whiskey barrel 2017

Winter Musings

One of the YouTube channels that I enjoy passing the time with is Time Team Classics.  The show is about archeologists who are quite expert and colorful characters (and in general very poor dressers as far as TV hosts go LOL!) who go around Great Britain excavating historical sites.  It appears that in Britain you can't swing a cat without hitting layers and layers of past civilizations from the Bronze age to the Roman occupation through the Angles and Saxons and so on and so forth.  That is quite an interesting concept to a native New Yorker where the indigenous peoples left only a faint footprint of mounds or flint arrowheads and a building is considered ancient if it has been standing a mere 300 years.

I've watched hours of trenching where they study the composition of the soil and the building methods of stone piles.  Even without finding bones or pottery or weapons or coins and jewelry they can still tell a lot about a site just by the soil qualities. They can spot the site of a timber building by finding a pattern of dark soil where the posts rotted in their holes.  They can age a wall by finding the undisturbed soil beneath.  They can find a cooking hearth by noticing a pattern of charcoal and scorched clay.  All these subtleties makes me wonder what they would imagine went on here at our site if it were abandoned for two thousand years and they were unfamiliar with our lifestyle.

Here are some of our garden features and my archeological guesses.

Roadside watering hole?
Or elaborate drain?

Simple brush pile or ritualistic sacrifice site?

Gathering place or summer cooking?

Poorly built stone rampart destroyed by invasion?
Water filtration?
Certainly not a garden folly....

Animal enclosures?
Market stalls?

Location of muck pile? that would be a far out guess
Or shady lounge area?

Small scale agriculture or animal pens?

As a parting shot:  Remembering Warmer Days

Waiting for the Winter Storm

Here we sit, with chest colds, sipping hot soup, waiting for the winter storm developing in the south east to make its way here over night.  We expect to wake up to a foot of snow.  The past two nights have been bitter cold, single digits.  I brought my dahlia tubers into the basement because in single digits the bulkhead gets into the low 30s and I didn't want any nasty surprises.  Other than that it maintains around 40 degrees.  I need to go down there and put them back out now that is warmed back up into the 20s.

On days like this its nice to look back over garden pictures.  I chose the one above because I remember how cool and lush the irises looked that day - a warm June morning.  These irises are at the entrance of the drive so they are right at eye level out a car window.

That got me into looking through my "history" file where I keep milestone photos of our property.  It is amazing how much has changed in just the past 5 to 10 years.  These aren't even early, shocking "before" photos.  These "before " photos are more like "midstream" glimpses of the changes this property has gone through over the past 19 years.

Our side entrance was quite bare for many years while we worked up the energy and inspiration to finish its transformation.  The new deck gives it quite a sleek modern look but I admire it all the time for its clean and orderly atmosphere.  It is both utilitarian and welcoming.  I am excited to see the new perennial bed in this, its third year, because it will really take off.

If you look back to the very beginning you can see how much the house and plantings have changed. 

The plantings have moved on even further now, but this photo below  from a few years ago shows how colorful it has become.

Our furthest side yard has transformed the most.  This started as scrubby woods and at first we just cleared the undergrowth but the ash trees remained.  These ash trees were gone before the Emerald Ash Borer really got started in this neck of the woods.

We replaced them with the London Plane trees which have done so well here.

Our firepit area also started out as an ash woodland.  The larger tree on the left became my kitchen countertop and when the stump rotted leaving a sinkhole, we turned that into the firepit.  The Maple tree shown just to the right of where my husband is sitting in this photo has survived all of the transformations and now gives us shady afternoons for sitting and relaxing.

You can see that Maple in the photo below.  It has extra lawn chairs stacked around it and is now surrounded by gravel.  It took us a long time to decide how we would manage the ground around that tree so it would be low maintenance and keep the tree happy.  We finally decided on a thin layer of gravel over bare dirt so the roots would be mostly undisturbed and so far it has been a good choice.

The lawn immediately south of the garden shed has undergone a lot of changes too.

This little area where my dahlia bed and apple tree are now has become the hub of my daily gardening activities.

Another view of the fire pit area before...

...and after.

Those photos represent about ten years of summer projects.  We only have one project slated for this coming summer.  We have to do something about the backyard drainage (again).  We haven't gone far enough with our dry creek bed.  We will see what develops.  Of course, we didn't intend to do any major projects last year and just look what happened.  

Its a beautiful sunny day out today.  And when I look out the window I don't see snow...

I see flowers.