What is happening in your garden right now?

[Pen]

Nm

 

 

Edited March 2, 2020 by Pen
Reached WTM photo limit

[Amy in NH]

It's been raining and raining here, but we've been working on it slowly but surely on the off nice-days.  So far we've:

put lots of discount perennials in the flower gardens.  We'll see what makes it!  We were excited to see a bunch of clearance stuff from last fall actually took this spring - yay!

shoveled the 5-year-old manure out of an old barn and put some on the raised beds.  Turned, covered with landscape fabric, and planted yesterday.  Only a couple more things to go in the beds on the next sunny day.

weeded the asparagus patch which is producing about 5 pounds every other day.

pruned back the old raspberry canes.

Not in that order.  Looking foward to watching everything grow...

[Pam in CT]

Well past: forsythia, salix, hyacinth & galanthus & muscari & daffodils (so, yellow and white and blue)

Fading: rhododendron, kousa dogwood, pieris (though the new leaves come in scarlet, ahhhhhh), boltonia, aquilegia (so, blue/purple or white)

____

Currently glorious: white deutzia, azalea, weigela, viburnum, lilac, red stick dogwood, bleeding heart (so, everything except lilacs = pink or white).

About to pop: regular and golden spirea, early hydrangea, pink deutzia, sunny-side achillea, potentilla, clematis, foxglove, racemosa, astilbe, allium, coreopsis, naturalized geranium (so, everything except spirea & pink deutzia = purple & yellow)

____

Still setting buds / emerging: hibiscus, later & Pee Gee hydrangea, buddleia, roses, perovskia, monarda, vast fields of liriope  (so, mostly white & purple)

 

... and lots of contrasting foliage: berberis Ruby Glow, berberis Golden Pillar, miscanthus, red and yellow heuchera, artemisias and herbs of various sorts, and vast quantities of ferns.

 

This list may also serve as the curated results of my 20 years of ongoing war with deer, LOL.

 

 

Edited May 29, 2019 by Pam in CT
overrode autocorrect of "muscari" to "mascara" THREE TIMES

[mathnerd]

@Spy Car in addition to iceberg, which seems to abound in every strip mall in my area, Caltrans plants a reddish groundcover rose near all the freeways in NorCal. Would you happen to know what the name of that red rose might be? I will try to ask my son to snap a picture from the backseat next time I pass those flowers. Thanks!

Edited May 29, 2019 by mathnerd

[maize]

6 hours ago, Pam in CT said:

Well past: forsythia, salix, hyacinth & galanthus & muscari & daffodils (so, yellow and white and blue)

Fading: rhododendron, kousa dogwood, pieris (though the new leaves come in scarlet, ahhhhhh), boltonia, aquilegia (so, blue/purple or white)

____

Currently glorious: white deutzia, azalea, weigela, viburnum, lilac, red stick dogwood, bleeding heart (so, everything except lilacs = pink or white).

About to pop: regular and golden spirea, early hydrangea, pink deutzia, sunny-side achillea, potentilla, clematis, foxglove, racemosa, astilbe, allium, coreopsis, naturalized geranium (so, everything except spirea & pink deutzia = purple & yellow)

____

Still setting buds / emerging: hibiscus, later & Pee Gee hydrangea, buddleia, roses, perovskia, monarda, vast fields of liriope  (so, mostly white & purple)

 

... and lots of contrasting foliage: berberis Ruby Glow, berberis Golden Pillar, miscanthus, red and yellow heuchera, artemisias and herbs of various sorts, and vast quantities of ferns.

 

This list may also serve as the curated results of my 20 years of ongoing war with deer, LOL.

 

 

This sounds lovely!

Can I grow up to be you? I dream of someday having a nice succession of perennial flowers that will carry through spring and summer and fall. 

[Pam in CT]

3 hours ago, maize said:

This sounds lovely!

Can I grow up to be you? I dream of someday having a nice succession of perennial flowers that will carry through spring and summer and fall. 

Everything good in my garden is SHRUBS, not flowers.  

My attitude to flowers in the beds is strictly Darwinian.  I dig a big old hole, I plonk in some compost, I plant you, I water you thoroughly, once, and thenceforth you are on your own, spanky.  Life's too short, and my yard is too big, to fuss with individualize-plant deadheading or staking/tying things up or whatever.  If plants can deter the deer, survive my dog's prancing through the beds, and manage despite my intermittent/slacker approach to weeding and watering, they will survive; if I can figure how to propagate them they will prosper and spread and *eventually* I may become devoted to them (astilbe, foxglove, naturalized geranium).  Otherwise oh well, we're not meant for one another...

I do have a lot of containers on our terrace with small flowering shrubs (that I nurse along until they're big enough to be visible out in the beds the following year) and flowers that I tend with rather more care.  But out in the yard they're strictly on their own.

 

I got nothing that blooms past end-August, even though our Septembers are lovely.  Anyone with any deer-proof ideas (i.e. no aster)?

 

[Innisfree]

1 hour ago, Pam in CT said:

deer-proof

Don't know if you have a sunny sheltered spot, but hardy lantana blooms beautifully until frost for us, and the deer never touch it. Or even just get some tender lantana and let it be an annual.

Otherwise, maybe boneset or other Eupatoriums? Kind of tall and weedy, but works well in a natural, meadowy sort of garden. Pollinators love them, deer don't, at least here. I love joe pye, but it blooms earlier.

http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=c730#AllImages

Eta that there seem to be lots of Eupatoriums called boneset, which figures, given common names, but-- !!--

Just remembered Eupatorium coelestinum, what my mother used to call hardy ageratum. Perennial, gorgeous periwinkle blue end-of-summer flowers, not as tall and gangly as boneset, but still not eaten by deer here.

http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=j870

Edited May 29, 2019 by Innisfree

[Spy Car]

11 hours ago, mathnerd said:

@Spy Car in addition to iceberg, which seems to abound in every strip mall in my area, Caltrans plants a reddish groundcover rose near all the freeways in NorCal. Would you happen to know what the name of that red rose might be? I will try to ask my son to snap a picture from the backseat next time I pass those flowers. Thanks!

My best guess is that it is a rose called Knockout. If you do an image search, does that look right?

 

Bill

[maize]

15 minutes ago, Spy Car said:

My best guess is that it is a rose called Knockout. If you do an image search, does that look right?

 

Bill

I've got a yellow knockout rose, it isn't my favorite.

I have a lovely peach colored rose that I wish I knew the variety of, pretty sure I picked it up at a big box store as a bare root plant 8 years ago. It grows amazing blooms on long stems that are perfect for cutting and putting in vases.

[maize]

Found these eggs on my milkweed, hoping they are monarchs.

[Arcadia]

13 hours ago, mathnerd said:

@Spy Car in addition to iceberg, which seems to abound in every strip mall in my area, Caltrans plants a reddish groundcover rose near all the freeways in NorCal. 

 

Is this the same one?

[Amy in NH]

43 minutes ago, Dotwithaperiod said:

It sounds gorgeous. I was in Massachusetts last week and saw some of the most beautiful flowering trees. Most were pink. They resembled a dogwood, but I had no idea that those grew in the north. To me, dogwood = the South. My son has the pics on his phone, maybe I could send one to you and you could tell me what it is?

 

Crab apples

[Pam in CT]

4 hours ago, Innisfree said:

Don't know if you have a sunny sheltered spot, but hardy lantana blooms beautifully until frost for us, and the deer never touch it. Or even just get some tender lantana and let it be an annual.

Otherwise, maybe boneset or other Eupatoriums? Kind of tall and weedy, but works well in a natural, meadowy sort of garden. Pollinators love them, deer don't, at least here. I love joe pye, but it blooms earlier.

http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=c730#AllImages

Eta that there seem to be lots of Eupatoriums called boneset, which figures, given common names, but-- !!--

Just remembered Eupatorium coelestinum, what my mother used to call hardy ageratum. Perennial, gorgeous periwinkle blue end-of-summer flowers, not as tall and gangly as boneset, but still not eaten by deer here.

http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=j870

I tried a few fuchsia-pink eupatoriums (eupatoria?) a while ago, but they didn't survive the Darwin treatment -- dunno if it was deer, dog, or my slacker attendance to weed and water.  If they manage in Missouri they'd surely be hardy here (our winters are extremely variable but not sustained extreme cold, so unless things emerge early when we keep lapsing into hard frosts they generally do OK).  The Conoclinium coelestinum looks lovely; I'll try to track some down.  Thanks!

 

26 minutes ago, Dotwithaperiod said:

It sounds gorgeous. I was in Massachusetts last week and saw some of the most beautiful flowering trees. Most were pink. They resembled a dogwood, but I had no idea that those grew in the north. To me, dogwood = the South. My son has the pics on his phone, maybe I could send one to you and you could tell me what it is?

Sure.  There are definitely some types of dogwood that do just fine here; there's even one tree-form type that manages in pretty deep shade, both pink and white, and has essentially naturalized; you see it peeking out in untended / overgrown wooded areas.  I also have two (vase-form) Kousa -- mine are white but they also come in pink; as well as a couple of variegated-leaf shrubs (with unremarkable pale pink blooms that actually look sort of weird against the foliage; the point is the foliage and that they can take some shade) and a red twig shrub (also with unremarkable white blooms; its point is more that it looks quite cool in the winter).

[mathnerd]

4 hours ago, Spy Car said:

My best guess is that it is a rose called Knockout. If you do an image search, does that look right?

 

Bill

 

2 hours ago, Arcadia said:

 

Is this the same one?

 

@Arcadia, thank you! It might be this one! I have only seen it in passing so I need to double check, but, if memory serves right, the roses were smaller and had fewer layers of petals, but the color matches.

@Spy Car a little googling reveals that the roses that Caltrans plants are called Meidiland roses and they have been planted in many counties in NorCal.

Freeway gardening: https://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Freeway-Gardening-Southside-Nurseries-and-3302097.php

Meidiland rose description: https://meilland.com/en/garden-roses-collection/meidiland-roses/

 

Edited May 29, 2019 by mathnerd

[maize]

I have ripe mulberries.

And the cherries aren't ripe but we've been eating them anyway because we can't wait.

Corn and beans and peas have sprouted.

[Pen]

[maize]

I got my first handful of cherry tomatoes yesterday.

I need to remember to feed the tomatoes some Epsom salt to help prevent blossom and rot.

[BlsdMama]

On 5/29/2019 at 12:26 PM, maize said:

Found these eggs on my milkweed, hoping they are monarchs.

In case no one updated - no, sorry, definitely not.

A monarch egg will be laid as a single, absolutely white, slight conical egg.  It will turn ever so slightly gray before hatching.  I'm not sure what those are?

[madteaparty]

What’s going on in my garden at the moment is an absolute fury of raspberries. Because we are lazy and occasional gardeners, they’ve taken over, well everything. They’re rotting on the vine bc we can’t pick enough. Yes I’ve made jam already, it’s just tedious to pick berries...