Dahlias

This week I took a two day Horticulture course given by the Federated Garden Clubs of New York State. A number of different speakers were brought in to give us informative programs on various types of horticulture. There was such a broad spectrum of topics that any gardener would have found something of interest here.

Our first teacher was Steve Nowotarski and the topic was Dahlias. Steve and I have crossed paths many times over the past years, mostly at flower shows and various garden club meetings. We have a good enough relationship that we can tease each other constantly about the pluses/minuses of Dahlia collection vs Daylily collecting. As an afterthought I realize we probably confuse the heck out of the people who don't know what we are talking about :-)

While I'm not going to go into the various different forms and terminology we learned about Dahlias, I am going to post a few photos that I took after the class. Steve told us about one of the Dahlia trial gardens on Long Island at Eisenhower Park. Three fellow students and I decided to go there after yesterday's final exam and see the plant material up close.

There were Dahlias in a multitude of forms, sizes and colors to see. This time of year they are reaching their peak. I highly recommend that you search online and see if there is a trial garden near you.

The bloom colors were so beautiful, I only wish the foliage had a little less mildew. Unfortunately, this summer has been brutal on our plants with unusually cool temperatures, extreme water conditions (from flooding conditions to bone dry and back to flood) so there was a hint of mildew to see on the foliage. Of course, I can hear Steve telling me that the daylily foliage doesn't look so hot right now either, hmmmm, guess he's right.

This one was extremely pleasing to me. I loved the simple form and the pinwheel effect of the inside petaloids.

Here's a not-so-artistic shot of a corner of the trial garden. If you'd like to read more information on Dahlias, Steve has a great website at www.containerdahlias.com My one wish was that I had the chance to take photos of some of Steve's containers. He's a real master when it comes to filling them with Dahlias and other plant material.

What I really liked the most about Steve's program is that his gardens are totally organic. He's a big fan of aerated compost tea (something I need to learn more about).

There were a number of trial gardens at Eisenhower Park. Besides the Dahlia one, there was a Rose Garden (very small), a Butterfly garden (at peak), an Herb garden and an All America Selections Garden (featuring new annuals). I'll post about one of the other ones on my Melanie's Perennials blog in a little while.

It's raining outside now, guess I might as well attack the dustballs rolling around the house.

Cynthia's Garden

Cynthia is my neighbor directly across the street. She and her husband Rich moved in last year and I have been in heaven since then. I finally have a neighbor who understands the need to garden. Many a Saturday I have looked across the street to see Cynthia out there in a slicker during a downpour, swatting gnats while wiping sweat from her brow, or hauling around huge loads of compost. It sure makes me feel better since I'm usually doing the exact same thing!

No pictures of Cynthias garden would be complete without "the crew". On the right is Riley, in the middle is Boomer and on the left is a frequent family visitor.

Cynthia's gardens are all new and I'm always amazed at the wide range of plant material she boldly introduces to this piece of land that has not seen TLC in any recent time.

How cool is this Amaranthus bloom? I much prefer the nickname of "Love Lies-a-Bleeding". It's the perfect nickname.

Needless to say I was so taken by the Love-lies-a-bleeding that I had to take a photo of the blooms on the other side too.

In all the years I've been gardening (way more than I can count) I have never tried Colocasia esculanta (another cool nickname: Elephant Ears). This year Cynthia gave me two of them but hers appear to be much happier than mine.

I was so hoping that the sunshine coming through the leaf would translate well. It's as good as I had hoped for. What a wonderful spot to sit and sip your morning coffee.

Here's another pretty combination. Cynthia has Angelonia (the annual that I posted about earlier this week on Melanie's Perennials but didn't know the name) paired with this cream/yellow annual.


How do you like that, I'm stumped again with an annual name. It's a good thing one of my blogs is named Melanie's PERENNIALS :-) I thought this was Nemesia but after googling some images I think I'd better start to brush up on my annual names!

Cynthia, I'm so glad you're my neighbor. Thanks for the tour!

Praying Mantis in the garden

Early this past spring I found a number of praying mantis egg cases while doing garden clean-up. During the month of May I did a dozen programs on healthy gardening at our local elementary schools. Part of the program was to bring them egg cases which they kept in tanks in their classrooms until the young praying mantis hatched.

My only concern was that I would not have any praying mantis in my own garden but I kept assuring myself that I couldn't have found all the egg cases and surely there would be mantis young hatching here too.

Yesterday I was thrilled to find this Mantis in the flower bed around my pool. It had perched itself in an ideal spot, right next to a large blooming clump of Sedum. Normally I would feel bad that it was catching bees there but since I'm still itching like crazy from the sting I got on Tuesday, I'm not so upset. Of course I'm joking, I realize how much we need our pollinating insects. Still, I also love watching these cool praying mantis.

I do hope to find one in the front borders too but since that's where I got stung I'm working very slowly out there.

Last night I decided that I would definitely open for sales this Saturday. Guess I'll be working like crazy out there all day today and tomorrow!

Tricyrtis - Toad Lily

Finding good fall perennials require a bit of hunting. So many gardeners stop shopping for plants once summer heat hits but that's one way to assure yourself of having a boring fall garden.

Luckily, a few years ago I began to add Tricyrtis to my garden. Tricyrtis has one of those nicknames you'd rather not hear, it's Toad Lily. I think the name has something to do with the spots.

Anyway, I have a large clump of Tricyrtis blooming in my back shade bed right now.

Here you can see the whole clump. I've planted Tricyrtis in other spots and they've done ok but if you plant them next to something more aggressive, they seem to lose ground. Aparantly this one is in the perfect spot because it's quite happy there.

It took about a dozen trys to get a close up shot of the unusual bloom. Hopefully you get the picture. I do think I'd like to try a few more of these now that I've figured out what they like. Rich compost, shade and not too dry is my guess.

Do any of you grow Tricyrtis?

A charming scene

As I had hoped, this morning started out nice and cloudy, perfect picture taking weather. So, I grabbed my camera and out the door I went. My first stop was a little village just west of us, Cold Spring Harbor. I did manage to find a few good plant subjects there and you can see some of them on my Melanie's Perennials blog.

These shots came from another little village, Northport, which is just east of us. If you have a small town near you, this is the time to go and check out all the annual planters.

Backing up, you can see the corner that inspired me. The shop is Hengstenberg's Florist and the brick planters along the sidewalk are delightful.

Here you can see the wonderful colors of the Tropical Hibiscus and the lavender Cleome.

I didn't push aside any foliage to look for plant tags. This is not the old fashioned Cleome I'm used to growing. It's much more compact and the blooms are smaller. I really liked the way it was used in this planting. It also dropped it's bloom petals all over which is a plus for me as they looked like lavender snow.

Here's a shot of the whole planter. Isn't it wonderful? I had hoped to come around the front and shoot more photos but the sun came out full force and the few shots I took after this point are washed out with terrible shadows.

I plan on being on the hunt all week in hopes of getting more late summer images. The weather forecast is delightful for humans with temperatures in the low 70's and lots of sun. Not necessarily the best photography weather but I will still try my best.

What's New?

What's new here at Old Country Gardens? Well, I've got BIG NEWS!

Not only are my Egyptian onions sprouting, I've been working like crazy the last few days on my very own website.

It's hard for me to believe, I can be such a techno-dummy but on Thursday I bought the rights to a website and by that same night I had it up and running.

It's truly a work in progress, if you want to see my beginning efforts, simply go to
www.melaniesperennials.com

There are hyperlinks on the first page of the site to both of my blogs. Lots of surprised planned for the near future too.

Tomorrow looks like a good day for photos, I can't wait!

See ya!
Melanie

What's in bloom today?

So what's blooming in the garden today? Well, the biggest bloom by far is this one. What is it? It's a pumpkin and it's about to take over all of South Huntington!

Yellow is the predominant color in the late summer garden. The Ligularia 'Britt Marie Crawford' is just covered with bright yellow blooms today. If I have the time later, I will get tidy it up and remove one or two of the sunburned leaves.

People pooh-pooh the black eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida) plants but nothing beats them at this time of year. They've been blooming for at least 5 or 6 weeks now and show no sign of slowing down.

The solid green Liriope has sent up it's lavender colored spikes. I really like this plant as an edge to the garden bed.

Finally, not a bloom but how can you not fall in love with the amazing colors on the Coleus. The annuals are really starting to shine, it makes me wish I had planted more of them.

Off to do some weeding and take more photos.

Melanie

Got tomatoes?

Late summer usually means a bumper crop of tomatoes. Here at Old Country Gardens I only have two tomato plants this year (shhh, don't tell everybody). I'm growing two heirloom varieties, one has yellow cherry tomatoes and the other are these red plum San Marzano Lampada tomatoes.

When the plum tomatoes first ripened I was a bit disappointed with their flavor. You see, I was cutting them up and putting them in my salads and they just didn't have the taste that I was looking for. Of course that means that they produced a gazillion tomatoes and now what was I supposed to do with them?

This weekend I decided to figure out a way to use my plum tomatoes. I know they're good for sauces because they're meaty with very little juice inside. Instead of sauce though I decided to use them in a tomato salad.

First I cut them into bite sized pieces. This is when you are happy they aren't juicy, they hardly make a mess when cutting them up.

Next I added basil that also came from the garden. When cutting my herbs, I simply stack a bunch of leaves and use a pair of kitchen scissors to cut small pieces.

Can you tell I like lots of basil? At this point you could also add some onions, or garlic if you would like.

Drizzle some good olive oil over the top, add salt and pepper to taste and stir all the ingredients. Let the tomatoes sit for a few hours for the best flavor. If I'm serving them outdoors I like them at room temperature but you can put them in the fridge to chill them too. Make them the day before a party to save yourself some work and don't forget to add a few basil leaves as garnish.

You could eat this with some plain italian bread. Or get a bit fancy, brush the bread slices with garlic flavored olive oil and grill them for a minutes.

Last night I made chicken salad, added these tomatoes to it and rolled them in soft tortilla shells for chicken & tomato wraps. Delicious!

Tickled Pink

A few weeks ago I bought a beautiful piece of artwork. I rarely buy anything that would be hung on the walls but saw a piece I just had to have!

Those of you who know me know that I love purple cone flowers. One of my rants though is that in my eye they are pink and the cone is orange, so where's the purple?

At the top here you can see the original water color I purchased from Kathleen McElwain. Kathleen is a wonderful artist who paints many of her watercolors while riding a bus in Austin Texas.

Now here's the kicker, Kathleen subscribes to my blogs and this lovely watercolor was based on one of my photos. How cool is that!!!


This is the actual photo that I had posted on one of my blogs, Kathleen subscribes to both of them so I don't know where it was originally.

By reading her blog, I see that you can also commission Kathleen to paint for you. What a great idea for holiday gifts.

You can see Kathleen's artwork at her Etsy site just by clicking "Buspaintings". I think I need to go through my photos and see if there's something else I'd like painted before I decide on a frame and location for the coneflower piece I already have.

Thanks Kathleen!
Melanie

Late summer bloomers

Late summer is a difficult time for the garden. Many plants have finished blooming, others show signs of stress depending on what kind of summer has just passed.

Still, if you plan your garden well, there are all kinds of perennials that shine at this time. I have a few types of Eupatorium, this one is Eupatorium dubium 'Phantom' which was planted in the spring of 2008. The description states that it will only grow 4' tall but in it's second year now it's easily broken 5'. Then again, many perennials this year are taller than usual because of the extreme weather we've had.

One of the stars of the garden right now is this sweet little Sedum 'Lynda Windsor'. I've been a big fan of this Sedum from day one although very few people comment on it when they see it here. It has never reverted (that is, never lost it's dark purple foliage), stays small and compact and as you can see, the flower color is a perfect compliment to the foliage color. Combined with Origanum aureum (golden oregano) it's just stunning!

I don't remember planning this combination but I must say it's pretty fantastic. The extremely late daylily 'Royal Jestor' and the beginning blooms of Begonia grandis (hardy begonia). I'm in the mood to do a write up on this fantastic begonia and will post it today on my other blog, Melanie's Perennials. Just click on the blog name here if you want to visit there.

Here's a close-up of 'Royal Jestor'. A real beauty in my opinion.

The Ligularias are beginning to bloom, this one is 'Britt Marie Crawford'. At this time of year the foliage loses some of it's purple highlights but it still has quite a bit to offer as a showcase plant.

The Agastaches are still blooming. I think they might have been the "bloomingest" perennials in the garden this summer. I'm madly in love with them and will keep my eye on the perennial market in the future to find any new introductions.

Of course the Helenium 'Mardi Gras' is blooming like crazy. If I took the time to get out there and dead head it I would get an even longer season but right now any time I spend outside should be on weeding (check out the right edge of this photo...WEEDS!).

Hopefully I'll get some weeding done this weekend, unfortunately I tried to weed for a few hours yesterday but was almost immediately attacked by giant sized mosquitos. Might have to break down and use an insect repellant for now.

Off to post to my other blog and then outside in the garden (if the rains subside).

Melanie

Herbalicious

Heat and Humidity, it must be August. So what's a gardener to do when the mercury rises and all you want to do is stay by the pool?

Let's play with Herbs!

I grow a large number of herbs here at Old Country Gardens, some are perennials, others are purchased every spring. This summer though I learned a few new things about my herbs. First of all, they are just as happy (if not more happy) growing in pots.

In fact, as potted plants they are easy to maintain, rarely needing extra care. Just a simple pinch here and there and watering if we haven't had a recent rain. Better yet, put them in reach of your sprinkler system and you hardly have to do anything at all.

In this photo you are looking at a Thymus citriodorus (variegated lemon thyme), Mentha (basic garden mint that was here when we moved in) and Mentha suaveolens 'Variegata' (pineapple mint or also known as apple mint).

Just as an aside, I do not call them by their botanical names in the garden, I'm just including those here for readers in other countries that are looking for the same plants.

My mouth starts watering when I look at this photo. There are two different basils featured here (Ocimum basilicum in botanical terms) with the solid green leaf and the variegated Ocimum citriodorum 'Pesto Perpetuo' (let's just say citrus basil).

The citrus basil is a new variety and is patented so propagation is prohibited but what I've recently discovered is that most herbs have been around forever and of course, nobody holds a patent on them. This means that you can propigate most of your herbs till the cows come home and that's exactly what I'm going to do here.

It turns out that many herbs are quite easy to propigate with simple cuttings.

In this smaller pot are three plants, Cymbopogon (Lemongrass), Ocimum 'African Blue' (African Blue Basil) and Oreganum vulgare (true Oregano). Yum, all three are excellent for those fun summer dishes.

Here's a close up of the African Blue basil, a favorite of mine. I do admit that I let it go to flower as those blooms are just so lovely.

So tell me, what herbs are growing in your garden?

Container season

Heat and Humidity, that's August around here. Actually, this year the heat has been pretty mild but that darn humidity...

This time of year I find very little energy for the garden. Thank goodness for containers, they really start to steal the show now.

Not having huge funds to blow on container plants, I tried to use plants already available to me. Almost all of my containers have Hosta in them and I'm totally sold now on using them forever more as container plants. A single flat of Impatiens gave me enough fillers to add to all the containers and I still had enough left to plant a few in the front shade bed.

A single Hosta, one impatiens and a small slip of ivy is all it took to fill this upside down birdbath base. I love how the petals of the impatiens fall into the empty container resting below. Another good idea is to put a simple water feature underneath to catch the petals.

More simple containers, mostly with Hosta. The hosta in the garden have been inundated with slugs this year but the ones in the containers show pristine foliage.

Last week I left my camera at a friends house. It was like I lost my arm, I couldn't take photos for a week! We have perfect cloud cover today so hopefully I'll get to stop at a few places and take pictures of some of the great containers I've seen in my neighborhood.

Melanie