Ka-Ching! I heard the bell ring...

Today we shattered our heat record. Although I haven't seen the official temperature, we had thermometers around here read 89 degrees. It was just too hot to dig and divide anything, so many plants were fully wilted.

I decided to play around a bit and do some perennial pots. If you have pots that will over-winter without cracking, perennials are ideal to plant in them. I've learned that it's worth it to spend the $$$ and purchase concrete planters when I can get them. We've had one set for 25 years now and a few more for 10 years or so.

I have a number of plain green hosta that are hard to sell. I really don't understand why people shy away from them, they have a lovely light green foliage and flower like crazy. The name tag was faded when I divided them so I don't know their name but they are still lovely. I've learned that you need plain hosta to make the variegated ones show off better.

Two nice sized divisions were added to the two planters.

Next I went way back by our shed and mercilessly hacked out a chunk of fern that is native to our area (at least it popped up here on it's own).

The ferns are just starting to come up although with this heat I expect them to come on full force now.

There were a few pansies left over from another planting so I stuck them in to fill a spot until the Hosta foliage and the fern grows. The last plant though was the big surprise, it's the one that is terribly wilted on the right.

Not 10 feet away from these containers begins a wooded lot. There is a massive spot in the woods filled with Lamiastrum, another plant that arrived on it's own. I was wishing I had a variegated perennial to add to the pot when suddenly it happened, the bell began to ring.

The garden centers around here sell "specialty annuals" in 4 inch pots to make extra special, sophisticated planter arrangements. I'm positive I saw pots of Lamiastrum last year selling for $3.49 and here it is running rampent through the wooded lot next to us. So I carefully pulled out a few pieces. I say carefully because the woods is also filled with poison ivy. Rather than take a chance that I was taking more than the Lamiastrum, I did not dig it up with soil but instead just wiggled out the roots, that's why it's wilting so much but I'm sure it will perk up in a few days.

I bet in two weeks when I photograph those pots you won't believe how nice and full they look. Best of all, I know from past experience that those pots will be fine for three years before I need to take the plants out and divide them.

Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings :-)
Melanie

Piece by Piece

Sometimes, after you've had some plants in the same spot for years, they intertwine. In this photo are a few plants in what is only a foot or two wide.

The bottom left corner shows a Hosta 'Tea and Crumpets' which is a very small hosta. There's the Primula siboldii 'Alba' that I posted about the other day and poking up through everything is Polygonatum humile (dwarf solomon's seal).

This photo was taken last year, if I took it today it would have looked the same except it's almost impossible to find the Hosta 'Tea and Crumpets". I'd really like to divide out everything here without losing anything. Tomorrow or Monday I'd like to lift the whole area, pull out each piece and replace the Hosta with lots of compost.

This shot is taken closer to the Hosta. Those spiky plants are Tradescantia seedlings. I've grown a number of hybrid Tradescantias and on the whole have been ecstatic with their behaviour. Unfortanetly, the prettiest Tradescantia here, is also the most aggressive at spreading seedlings.

This is the same bed, just a foot or two away. The bright chartreusse is Tradescantia 'Sweet Kate'. I've written about her before, she isn't very sweet here at all. Last year I went around and dug up every one of her seedlings that I could find. It wouldn't be bad at all if they had the same coloring but every one of them reverts back to green with a standard blue flower.

It looks like this is going to be a job that eats up lots of time and only makes a change in a very small spot in my garden.

Double the Blood Root

Sanguinaria canadenses, that's quite a mouthful for this small, elegant perennial. The nickname is a bit easier although not very attractive, Double Bloodroot.

A number of years ago a gardening friend offered me a piece of double bloodroot. I turned him down. I didn't even know what it was but I wasn't interested in the name. A year later he gave me a piece and told me to just put it in my new shade garden.

The next year this amazing thing bloomed in my garden. It was the most ethereal white bloom, very fleeting, only open for a few days. The good news though was that the foliage was exquisite too so it really added so much to the shade garden.

As the years went by I couldn't understand how he had so much to share with me since my little piece of double bloodroot increased at a snail's pace. A few years ago I finally learned that there is a vast difference between dry, unammended shade and moist, rich, compost filled shade. I crossed my fingers and moved a tiny piece of the double bloodroot.

The first photo was taken last year. The second photo was taken this morning. The flowers only open when the sun is out so that won't happen for a few more hours. I think you can see what has me all excited, my double bloodroot has doubled!

Just in case you are wondering what the foliage looks like, it's the leaf in the top right corner of this slide. Underneath it is a dwarf Epimedium, top left is a small golden Hosta and bottom left is Asarum euoropaeum (European Ginger).

The Ginger has done a nice job in several spots in my garden and I'll be potting up a few of those later this afternoon. As for the Double bloodroot, well, I'm a bit greedy and think I will wait one more year before putting any in a pot. What I might do is dig out a piece or two and move them to another prime semi-shade location so I can have even more double bloodroot.

We're expecting a prime gardening day today so I need to get up, get ready and get out!

Mystery plant day

Today I was frustrated by not one, but two mystery plants in my garden.

The first plant is a charming Primula (primrose) that has naturalized in 5 or 6 different spots here. I remember the day I bought this plant, a friend who worked at a nearby nursery insisted I buy a handful of small pots of a bloomed out Primula. She said the plants looked sorry but would be so happy in my garden. At that point I had only bad luck with primroses but she offered them to me for $1 per pot and ever the optimist, I tried primroses again.

This plant is so wonderful, it has no problem in dry shade. Give it some moisture and it's even happier! The one problem is that every tag I have for it in my garden has the top portion broken off. I know it originated from Sunny Border Plants but I don't have the variety name.
How sad :-(
The second mystery plant is this one. It is in my shade garden and was given to me by the same woman who encouraged me to buy the white Primulas. This plant has seeded around a little bit (not aggressively). I think it might be Cimicifuga? It blooms in the fall with tall white candle-like blooms. If you scroll up to the first photo you can see what the foliage looks like a little later in the season. It is at the right of the Primula.

Any ideas?

Labels for the garden

Labels, blah, I so dislike looking out at my garden and seeing all those labels. And yet, during the growing season, it's so nice when somebody wants to know what something is and there you have the name right at your finger tip.

Now that I'm potting up all these plants to sell, I needed a quick, cheap way to label the many pots. As in previous years, my solution has been to use mini blinds. I used to use old blinds that people donated to me but I've run out of those. Now I run to a discount store and buy the largest size for the cheapest price.

The first step is to cut off all of the cords.

This is the size I bought. They were $5.00, the next size was almost twice the price and was only a few inches larger so I went with these.

Since they are 36" long, it was easy to figure out that I cut get three foot long labels out of each piece of plastic.

All cut up in under ten minutes, I had 218 pieces of mini-blind markers. Not bad!


When it comes to writing on the labels I have a number of different products. The sharpie marker doesn't last a whole season. The Nursery marking pen holds much longer than the sharpie but I haven't seen them for sale around here.

The winner though is the pencil. It is less bold, a little harder to read but it will never ever fade. Also, the markers are have fat tips and are hard to read too while the finer point of the pencil is easier to write with.

Do you label your plants? Can you recommend a marker?

Making Potting Soil

When you pot up plants to share or just to plant your containers, do you mix your own potting soil?

I do.
A number of years ago I listened to my good friend Gianna give a lecture on container plants. She shared her tip of mixing together potting soil and compost in a 2 to 1 ratio. That means that if you put two buckets of potting soil in your wheelbarrow, you add one bucket of compost (or top soil or aged manure, what ever you have).

I love a compost and manure mixture so that's what I order for my garden. Even though I have a huge compost heap, I just haven't been able to produce as much compost as I need. This compost/manure mixture is what I add to my potting soil.


Potting soil by itself is very light and dries out quickly. There are potting soils that have additives to retain water and even potting soils with fertilizers in them but I prefer to stay as natural as possible. What I add instead is a nice healthy scoop of Milorganite which is an organic fertilizer made from sludge.

This year I've been adding a secret ingredient, a nice big couple of handfuls of shredded leaves. They do wonders for the potting soil, making it so nice, fluffy and hopefully, healthy.

Time will tell how this potting soil mixture works but I think it's going to be fantabulous!

Sheer Exhaustion

After two days of perfect gardening weather there are only two words to describe the way I feel, Sheer Exhaustion.

If you look closely at this photo you'll see all kinds of tools and pots in the garden. Plants have been dug, weeds have been pulled, divisions have been replanted and compost has been spread. Yet, when I look at the garden all I see is a monumental amount of work still to be done.

Squeezed in between the never ending job of dividing and potting plants, I played a bit with the decorative accents in the garden. None of them are finished but they are ready for their finishing touches. This bicycle still needs a basket on the handlebars with some sweet spring blooms.

Don finished making a platform for one of my two iron beds. This one will be used to hold plants that are for sale. In other words, it's the "sale bed".

Out front near the street I've had this Whiskey Barrel planter for a number of years now. It's been filled with Hosta and backed up with an old wooden handtruck. Although I've received many compliments on it, I had envisioned it cascading with plants.

Now it's tipped over so it looks like "OOPS". As soon as I find an extra hour or two I'll go out and get a flat of annuals to make the cascade portion. I haven't decided yet if I want to buy a flat of pansies now or wait 3 weeks and get Impatiens. My guess is the Impatiens will be the winner but I hate having nothing there right now.

Tomorrow is the first of a dozen lectures that I'll be doing at the local elementary schools. I'm bringing along a praying mantis egg case, lots of soil samples, seeds and we'll be making pots out of recycled newspaper. I can't wait!

Melanie

The Zoo

Dear Mom,

Today we went on a class trip to the Bronx Zoo.

We saw Lions...

and ladybugs...
and bears...

oh my!

What a wonderful, glorious day I spent as a chaperone for our high school anthropology class as we visited the Bronx Zoo in New York City.

The lion was regal.

The ladybugs were photographed in the Butterfly house.

The polar bear exhibit struck me as surreal with the fake ice flows and a live flow of Forsythia cascading down the cliff face

And finally, the huge stand of Mayapples had me green with envy and made me wish I could sneak a few home in my camera bag :-)

Back to gardening tomorrow,
Melanie

Time to Divide!

This morning I only have a few minutes to put up a post. We are having our first perennial division work shop of the season here at 10:30.

I haven't decided yet what we are going to divide, for sure we will do one clump of daylilies as I have about 100 of them that need division. Besides the daylilies I will choose a few other perennials that people a growing around here. Hardy Geraniums like you see at the right in this photo will be a good choice. The Hakonechloa macra 'All Gold' (Golden Hakone Grass) is also due for division although I'm a bit nervous about this one myself. I'm only nervous because I love it so much I'm not willing to take a chance on losing it.

In the front beds I have Symphytum (pink comfrey in the bottom left) that could be divided, Coreposis (on the right) that definitely needs dividing and a very tall Thalictrum (seen against the pole) that desperately needs to be moved to a better location.

Actually the Thalictrum you see here is placed perfectly, I have another clump of it out in the middle of a border and it get's hammered by the wind when it's blooming. I want to move that one to a spot like this where it gets a little protection from a nearby structure.

Yesterday I divided the red daylily you see in this photo, it's name is 'Lana Ishee'. Today I think we'll divide the gold daylily with the red eye, 'Always A Pleasure'. The two of them make a perfect pair so if people buy one, I'd like to see them have the other availble too.

If you want to see what we use to make magic around here, take a minute and pop over to Melanie's Perennials. We've got a machine that makes gold!

Off to get ready, we're expecting perfect gardening weather for the next few days. Hooray!!!

Seating areas

One of my most favorite photos taken in a garden is this opening shot. It shows my daughter Lauren (now 19) quite a few years ago. We were touring the horticultural learning gardens at the New York State University at Farmingdale and Lauren was totally engrossed in one of the earliest Harry Potter books. Farmingdale has magnificent tropical gardens and I'll be touring them again in a few weeks with my garden club.

What you see here is the perfect setting for seating in a garden. Surrounded by lush plant material, it's a little oasis, a place to sit and relax while still being a part of nature.

My mom bought us this swing a number of years ago. It took a few tries before I had it located the way I wanted. Now, it is the crown jewel in my herb garden. I have spent many a lunch time sitting in this swing.

It's a perfect place to sit in early spring because the sun shines on you and warms you while you are sitting there. In the summer, you can only sit there with breakfast in hand or in the late afternoon when the roof shades you. It also is the perfect spot to take photos and we've had many people pose here exactly for that purpose.


The most used seating area in our yard is this one, by the swimming pool. For some reason visitors just gravitate to this spot. I think it's the subconscious thought that it's "OK" to relax when you are by a swimming pool.

Now I have to add that none of these seating areas are the new super deluxe, break the bank, kind of furniture sets. In fact, this white vinyl set was bought second hand at least 10 years ago and still does it's purpose. While those fancy sets are fine, they don't really impress me. I don't need my garden to look like the inside of my house, shabby chic works fine when outdoors.


This is not a good photo but it's my gazebo out front and it's the one seating area that I rarely find people sitting in (and that includes myself). I know what's missing from here but I just haven't gotten around to getting it right. This area needs to be part of a setting, it needs to send out an invitation that says "come sit here and your worries will fade away". I guess I can look at it as another challenge in the garden.

Today's challenge though will be to get a few hours of work done without freezing or getting soaked. Maybe in the summer we will be longing for these cold wet days but somehow I don't think so.

It's spring, so think green!
Melanie

It's Here!

I think it must be great to work for UPS or one of the major delivery services. People must always be so happy to get packages. I almost hugged the UPS lady today when she came down my driveway as I knew from the long box she held in her arms that my sign had arrived!

My daughter Emily helped me tie it to the bed frame out front. Every time I looked at it there was another car slowing down to read what it said.

This photo was shot after sunset. My husband Don went out there and fixed the sign with plastic ties so it stretched flat and was easier to read. You can also see how the bed is set in the front of our property, near the road. Yes, that is a chain holding the bed to the tree, we've lost too many things in front of our house to trust that bed to stay there. One day soon I will be planting that bed, can't wait to play with that!

On the way back up the driveway I noticed that my Dutchman's Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) are starting to bloom. These are the sweetest little things. They don't increase for me, I don't think I have the perfect environment for them but still, I just adore them. I also love those little pink tips popping up all over from the Polygonatum. Don't you?

Almost Famous...

Well, my 15 minutes of fame has come and gone. Ppffffftttt...there it was and there it went. Unfortunately I don't think it even lasted 15 minutes, sigh...

Yesterday while I was busily dividing a Lysimachia infested clump of daylilies (more on that in the future), my neighbor called me. She told me that the local paper,The Long Islander, had been delivered and there was a "very nice" article about me in the paper.

Hooray! I dropped those daylily pieces right on the spot, got in the car (mud and all) and drove to the nearest Deli to buy two copies of the paper.

At first, while reading the article I had a big smile on my face. To be honest though, that smile went through a few changes and ticks. The reporter absolutely tried her best. I can't imagine how hard it is to write about a topic that you know nothing about. In fact, right at the beginning of our interview, the reporter told me that she "could kill a plastic plant". The warning bells should have gone on at that point.

Most of the article is correct and well written. Unfortunately, we seemed to have gotten our wires crossed on a few issues. I find it hard to believe that I recommended Black Iris for the shady Long Island gardens. Black Iris? I've never grown a Black Iris. I don't think that I ever even said the words "Black Iris" before I read this article.

My memory was talking about Hydrangeas for shaded gardens. To be fair, it must have been brutal to interview me. Those gardening words we are so familiar with such as Rhododendrons, Azaleas, Native Plants, Hydrangeas, Hosta, Daylilies, and so on just trip off our tongue but to a non gardener, they must sound like a foreign language. As a typical New Yorker, I speak fast and furious, so often I sound like somebody opened the top of my head and everything started spilling out.

All this would have been fine, the bulk of the material in the article was quite accurate and I could have simply posted a correction here since the article ended with this blog address.

Oops, just one problem, it was the wrong address. I'm going to take the blame for that one myself since it's a mistake I always make. My e-mail address ends with .net and the blog address ends with .com. I'm forever switching the two and apparently, I did that again.

Just in case you are reading here and want to know about the Iris I do grow and recommend, the first photo is of Iris cristata which is a small Iris that does grow well in the shade. The second photo is of Iris Siberica (Siberian Iris) which is one of the easiest Iris to grow and will also take some shade. Sadly, neither of them are black.

So now the poor gardener-wanna-bes of Huntington New York are wandering around, lost in cyberspace, in search of that shade loving Black Iris. And me? Well my 15 minutes of fame didn't feel quite as good as I anticipated.

Melanie

Hole-y Hosta

How are your Hosta? Are they hole-y?

Although this is Easter weekend, this is not a religious post. While many people certainly feel that Hosta have been heaven sent, I'm writing about the Holes in them.

Hosta are amazing plants. If they grow in your area, you should never garden without them. There is such a huge selection of foliage patterns, colors and sizes, I don't even consider the blooms but they can be lovely too.

It's no wonder that Hosta tours are generally in early June around here. The foliage has fully flushed out by then but it's still clean and pristine.

A wonderful thing about Hosta is that they are still beautiful months later. There's only one thing, they usually have some holes in the foliage by then.

At the very right side of this photo you'll see the plain green foliage of a Hosta. I have quite a bit of this variety. It was given to me by a woman in my garden club. Stuck in the middle of the three huge clumps she gave me were tags from the nursery she had bought them from. While I could read the name of the nursery, the name of the Hosta was obliterated.

See the holes in the leaves? Most people would blame those holes on slugs. Ewwww, slugs! I hate slugs, in fact, I'm a slugaphobic. But as much as I'd like to blame those slimy creatures, I have to confess that these holes were probably not caused by them. First of all, I have few slugs here. Secondly, this location is out by the street, around my mailbox. The soil there is gritty from the sand the town spreads during winter snow. It's also very dry out there, the worst conditions for slugs. So why the holes? Well, little twigs falling from the trees above will cause those holes.

I do have some Hosta in the garden that seem to beckon and call the slugs to come and dine. Those leaves look like swiss-cheese by late summer. I couldn't find a photo of one of those today but will keep looking.

In this photo though you see one or two larger holes. Again, this type of hole is more likely caused by twigs falling from the trees above. If your Hosta are planted under trees as so many of them are, then you will just have to live with those holes.

Of course there are also the holes caused by Calie-the-wonder-doodle chasing chipmunks through the Hosta bed. I decided to spare you from those photos as there's very little Hosta left to see.

Still, aren't they beautiful?

Iberis sempervirens - Candytuft

Well, today I planned on writing about seating areas in the garden but all that went out of my head. It's all because of those darn weather forecasters. Being a gardener, the only person I can blame for this crazy weather is a weather forecaster.

Today's feature is a perennial named Iberis sempervirens, it's nickname is Candytuft. Why am I writing about it? Because it's white and looks like snow. Snow? Did you say snow? It's snowing outside!!! What's going on here? The first time it started snowing this morning I called my husband who is in an office only 4 miles from here. It was not snowing outside his office. Are the weather gods only mad at me?

Now it's started snowing again. I came inside, checked the local forecast for our exact zipcode. According to the national weather channel website it's 42 degrees and cloudy outside. There's a 20% chance of precipitation. Don't they look out the window? Don't they even scroll down and look at the rader just inches below which show almost all of Long Island under a green band of precipiation? Duh?

So, back to Iberis. I have Iberis in my garden. I know it's easy to propigate but I just haven't had the right luck with it yet. I haven't figured out if I should take cuttings before it blooms, after it blooms, layer the long pieces on the ground or if there's something better.

One thing I can say about Iberis is that it's beautiful when it blooms here in late April. I'm lucky that it's in a spot where the biennial Lunaria has selfsown. Don't they make a wonderful combination!

Ok, the snow has stopped for now. Back out to attack the garden, brrrrr

If you have any tips on dividing Iberis, please leave me a comment!

The "To-Do" list

Do you keep "To-Do" lists? Sometimes I need to write list after list and other times I just don't bother. Right now I've got a list of things "to-do" that's a mile long.

Much as I'd like to accompany this post with some inspirational new photos, I'm stuck with the old photos. Once again it's raining cats and dogs out there. At this rate I'd better learn how to build an ark.

Yesterday we worked from sun up to sun down out in the garden. We made great strides in cleaning out the shade beds, setting up the potting area, putting out the birdhouses and so much more. Unfortunately, today all I can do is dream up more things to add to my to-do list.

While not on this weeks list, the stairs shown above have been decimated by chipmunks. Right now there's no plants charmingly spilling out, just lots of displaced dirt. It's something that will have to be addressed later this month for sure.

This weeks' to-do list has:
Divide, divide, divide
Finish setting up potting area
Start shredding last years leaves for mulch
Sift compost
Finish cleaning out the shade beds
Attack the early spring weeds that are just beginning to pop
Buy some pansies and get them planted
Create vignette in the garden that makes me smile! (more on this in a future post)

Well, ok, I'll leave it at this as there's only so many hours in a day.

What's on your to-do list?

Radio-Flyer-ectomy

Yesterday I spent all day outside but just felt like I didn't accomplish very much. The weather hasn't been very cooperative and all too often my fingers were so chilled that I had to come in and run them under warm water.

Today we are expecting perfect gardening weather, sunny with a high temperature of 61 (16 celsius). My first chore of the day will be to perform surgery on my radio flyer wagon. It's been filled with Sedum since the spring of 2005 and last year I noticed that they were a bit cramped.

When I first planted this wagon it also had several types of Sempervivum (Hens and Chicks) in it but they were quickly overrun by the two varieties of Sedum (Sedum 'Angelina' and Sedum
John Creech').
Here you can see what it looked like when it was first planted. Obviously the two Sedums listed above were the big winners in the "crowd-em-out" contest.

I look forward to starting all over again and will take a photo when I'm finished.

Then it's off to divide the hardy Geraniums and spend an hour in the compost area. For some reason, I just can't make myself spend more than an hour working on compost.

Hopefully I'll get to take some new photos also.