Crabby Claws

Iris ensata, Japanese Iris are blooming in my garden right now. I used to have more varieties, now there are 4 or 5 different ones. A few years ago I didn't remember to remove the seed pods from one of them and it went to seed. There are two seedlings out there, one I forgot photograph because the other one is really strange.

What kind of form is this?

Here's what a Japanese Iris should look like, aren't they beautiful? Nice and graceful, amazing buds even before the flower unfolds.

The pale blooms on 'Gracius' are just as stunning even if they are a bit less lush.

I love the stripes and color breaks in this one.

So what do you make of this? Should it stay or go? I think it's really weird and don't particularly like it but maybe there's an unusual form classification in the Iris world? If so, I think I'll call it 'Crabby Claws'.

Hens and chicks and chicks and chicks

On Wednesday my friend Kim called me with a hot tip. A local nursery had pots with Sempervivum (Hen's and Chicks) just exploding out of them. Needless to say I got in my car immediately and headed over there.

They only had three varieties to choose from, a red named 'Pilioseum', a heavily webbed varieties named 'Cobweb' and a green variety that I didn't purchase. Kim was right, the pots were literally exploding with hens and chicks. The price on these pots were $9.99, if you wanted to spend a bit more you could get even larger pots for $11.99.

One tip I have for you if you are purchasing Sempervivum, look to see if any are blooming. You see the long stem coming up? That is going to be a bloom stem. Many people don't realize that Semps bloom. After a sempervivum blooms, it dies. Now if you have lots and lots of chicks like here, it won't matter. But, if you choose a pot with lots of bloom and not many chicks, you might not have any babies to carry you through the next year. Still, if you are looking for one year of interest, you might want the pot that was full of upcoming blooms.

Getting them out of their pots wasn't the easiest thing. Once I slid them free I removed the soil from the bottom half. Sempervivums don't have huge root systems and don't mind being disturbed like this.

It was easy to break apart the clumps just by using my hands, no need to damage the fleshy rosettes with a sharp tool.

Isn't this a pretty little division? I really like the cobweb variety although my daughter who was taking the photos wasn't as enthralled as me.

The red 'Pilioseum' was even more crowded in the pot but it also broke apart quite easily.

When working with Hens and Chicks, I like to have a tray underneath me to catch any babies. Here I'm using an old wine box.

You can split them down to single pieces with one "hen" and her "chicks" but I had enough plants to be able to leave a few divisions larger.


Next step was putting them in the troughs I just bought. These troughs will be for sale on June 12th and 13th at the Kissam House in Huntington Village. I hope they'll sell!

Time to cut the Sedum

Many things were worked upon in the garden today. After an early supper, I decided to spend my last few hours of daylight cutting some of the Sedum.

Now you might have grown Sedum for many years and never cut them back. There was a time I did not cut my Sedum either and some years I still just never get to them. I began to cut them when I only grew 'Autumn Joy' (or 'Herbstfreude' or 'Indian Chief'?) .

You see, that variety of Sedum was a flopper, it often opened in the middle of the clump and just looked awful as it sprawled there in the garden. I was told that if I pinched it back it would bloom lower and not flop open.

The next time I cut a Sedum back was with the variety Sedum aizoon 'Lemon Snowflakes'. That's an earlier blooming Sedum and I was trying to get it to bloom later in the season. It worked and it did bloom later.

What ever the reason, here's what I do with many of my Sedum. First I cut them back with a regular pair of household scissors. I find these kind of scissors easier than my trusty Felco clippers for this job.

At the last minute I decided not to bother wearing the gloves as there was little chance to cut myself with these old scissors.

Since my gardens are quite large, I just can't stand the thought of throwing away all this luscious plant material. In fact, the way I originally got this Sedum was by taking home old shriveled cuttings from a nearby perennial farm (yes, I had permission).

Here you can see that I strip off the lower leaves. You can cut them or use your thumb nail, I use my hands.

Gathering up 5 or 7 stems (odd numbers suit me), I take my cuttings to the pots I've filled with a nice loose seed starting mix.

You can also use plain sterile play box sand instead of the potting mix. Or, you can put your stems in a glass jar filled with water and wait until you see the roots. In my case, this method has worked fine in the past and so it's what I stick with.

The Sedum stems are rigid enough that I can poke them right into the soil (which was not tamped down firmly).

In the top right corner you can see a yellow variegated Sedum that I picked up years ago at a farm stand. It's ready for cutting too so snip, snip, off we go.

There's a curly gray Sedum in this photo, another that I don't have a name at hand but it too takes well from cuttings. I don't always cut it back though, it already is a sprawler which is part of it's charm.

How do you like my new Sedum in the round bowl planter? I found that pot on this property when we moved in and it's lasted outside through our winters for twelve years now. Wish I could find more of these beauties.


This entire row of Sedum telephaeum 'Ruprectii' was made by cuttings. A friend gave me a piece of this plant 11 years ago. I didn't even bother to pot up the cuttings, I just stuck them along the edge and soon had an amazing border.

They're not ready yet to be cut this year. When the time comes I need to devote a whole day to the task, it takes a good few hours to cut this row back and then I have to decide what to do with all those cuttings.

This is the hard part of cutting your Sedum. What was just a lush, beautiful clump looks like toast for a couple of weeks. This is not something you want to do the day before the garden club comes to tour your garden.

Another tip is not to take your cuttings in the morning when you are expecting a hot sunny day or a series of hot dry days. We had a nice rain fall this afternoon and our temperatures dropped quickly. Our forecast for the next number of days is for cooler than average weather with clouds and possible scattered showers. Perfect weather to keep these newly cut plants from going into shock.

Well, the light is getting low but before I came in to wrap things up for the evening I had to tuck in my new little babies. They will spend the next 3 days in a kiddie pool with lots of nice water to encourage them to push roots.

Once I think they are growing nicely, I can plant them out into the garden. I'm dreaming of a really great knot garden design to do with these beauties.

This post will have to cover me for all of Monday as I'm due up at the school at 6:30 a.m. to chaperone a trip. Tuesday is our school board elections so I'm not guaranteeing any earth shattering posts in the next few days.

Bye!
Melanie

An odd way to Propagate

It's my belief that some plants are not readily available at garden centers for one major reason...they look awful in pots. If a plant does not pot up "pretty", it's very hard to sell it.

Many years ago I was touring a local garden when I asked about a beautiful perennial that I was unfamiliar with. It was a hardy Geranium, to be exact it was Geranium cantabrigiense 'Biokova'. Luckily the gardener was really into botanical names and she made sure I had the name on a tag plus a nice healthy chunk she insisted I plant in my own garden.

I remember thinking it looked awfully scraggly when I got it home but I put it in the garden without much thought. The next year I was so enamored with this hardy Geranium that I began to search out more varieties. Local nurseries didn't carry more than one or two varieties at a time except for Roslyn Nurseries which used to be in the next town. I bought a pot of Geranium cantabrigiense 'Karmina' (shown in the opening photo) because it was supposed to be the same as 'Biokova' except for the color which was a deeper pink.



This type of hardy Geranium is evergreen, it does not die back in the winter and the foliage turns a nice reddish color. I loved how it cascaded out onto my gravel driveway so it was a natural to add to my raised perennial beds.

This photo was taken on March 24th, four weeks ago. You can see how a large piece of it just hangs down over the rock wall. Since I wanted to pot up some of this for our plant sale I had to address this cascading portion.


None of these photos will win a beauty contest but hopefully they convey my message. Here you can see that I just cut the Geranium along the lip of the rock. Now I could see the part that was rooted into the ground.

Here you can see my hand holding the "cascade portion" up before cutting it.


I dug out a huge chunk of the rooted portion to pot up and at the same time brought the cascade portion to the potting table with me. I hated the thought of throwing it away.

When I looked closely it seemed to me like there were little roots on this portion too but I know they weren't rooted to the rock wall as this piece was very loose, not stuck to the rocks.


The rooted part was a gigantic tangle of stems. It was impossible to tell what was supposed to go in the pot and what was supposed to stick out of the pot. I kept telling myself "green side up" as I tried to make some sense with the stems.

This is what they looked like potted up. I don't have a photo of them today because my husband is in Washington DC and has my camera with him. You'll have to take my word that they don't look much nicer than this, a bit more foliage but more stems than anything.

The odd thing? I put some mud into a plastic wagon and stuck the "cascade portion" on top of it. Every few days I go out and water it. Four weeks later and it still looks like this! Obviously it's not dead but now what do I do?

I'm thinking of filling some pots with soil all the way up, close to the rim. Then taking scissors and cutting this foliage into squares and sticking them on top of the pots. Kind of like sticking a toupee on top of a bald head.

What do you think? I think it's worth a try!

Propagating Sedums and Sempervivum

Much of the hard scape in our yard was poorly planned. One area, brick steps leading up to our ugly pool has been falling apart for a number of years now. It got to the point where I was worried that the step would give way when somebody placed their foot there.

Since this isn't an easy fix, the whole area needs to be addressed with big bags full of money in hand, I decided to disguise the problem with plant material.

Sedums and Sempervivums (hens & chicks) are so fascinating to me. I need to touch them, they're one plant I can't make myself wear gloves when I'm working with them.

These two steps and top ledge hold many of my mother plants and lots of the new babies in pots.

Last week I bought a pot of Sedum to my class with me. I wanted to show off how beautiful the newly emerging buds can be. One of the women asked me why it was in a pot over the winter. It set me off on a long talk but I don't think I actually answered the question. I keep them in pots over the winter because I can!

Sharing plants, trading plants, selling plants, they all make me happy. When children are in my garden I like to show them the Hens and Chicks and let them pick a variety. Then we gently pull one off from it's Mommy, pot it up and the child gets to take it home with them.

Nothing is easier to propagate than Sedum. Simply take a pinch (cutting) and stick it into some potting soil, or even in the ground right next to the mother plant. They root almost instantly and before you know it, you have another plant.

At this point I have quite a nice Sedum collection, unfortunately I don't have the names on some of the early arrivals here. Many of them were pass-along plants from other gardeners.

Yesterday 2008 catalog from a local nursery arrived in my mail box. I had to immediately thumb to Sedum to see what new arrivals would be coming in. Looks like I'll be adding Sedum 'Diamond Edge' to the garden and propagation step this year. Although there are 23 other entries there, I either have them or have passed some by as not required for my garden.

Still, as I drive around and visit different nurseries you can bet I'll be looking for some more succulents, after all, I don't have nearly enough of them yet.