13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
Growing coreopsis for the first time this year but I'd imagine its like a lot of others - pinch them back before they even come close to setting buds. My heliopsis got kind of leggy and started spreading out in the center last year so I pinched them back by about an inch or two when they were a little over 6" tall and they're nice and compact right now
Here is a ground cover that might interest you. I personally love it as it gives you 4 seasons of color. It is a spreader so if it gets too big you simply remove what you don't want. It's an Angelina Sedum....
Here it's in it's chartreuse green stage changing from orange. It's also an evergreen. I like it as it adds lots of texture.
rfonte649, you want to start a new thread, either in the tree forum or in Name that plant, linked below. In each forum, the place to start a new thread is at the bottom of the list of threads, so scroll to near the bottom of the main forum page.
If you add where you are at least to state or city level, that will help also.
In my part of the country, redbuds and catalpa have heart-shaped leaves.
Here is a link that might be useful: Name that plant forum
This post was edited by nhbabs on Mon, Jun 2, 14 at 17:44
Fireants can be a PAIN to get rid of. They have developed an adaptability to a lot of stuff and since they are ON the plant itself, that creates another problem. I would try Cyper 8. It's an insecticide, but once dry, it is safe for pets and children, which means you can safely handle the plants once it is dry. It says it is good for ants, carpenter ants and fire brats (don't know if they are the same as fire ants), but if it kills carpenter ants, it will most likely be effective against those darn fire ants. Their bite hurts like the dickens and can easily get infected, so be careful.
Here is a link that might be useful: fire ant control
Mostly I ignore ants but If they make their hill in an inconvenient place for me then I use boric acid. I can buy it at the dollar store. I am not sure if they die or just hate it but the hill goes away. I don't mix it with water, I just shake the powder down the ant hole. I use it in the house too. A day or two later I sweep up the leftovers so I do not have mysterious white powder around my base boards.
This year, I had a 16F cold winter with another 19F snap late in March. My in ground Sago did just fine. I cut back ALL the leaves this spring and I was rewarded with a flush of 32 leaves. It is getting to be a good sized plant. The other one who is smaller has a 15 leaf flush with this treatment. I think it is smaller than your plant. Other small ones died. They were unprotected. They might just be slow in coming back.. Their leaves had gone all "calico" from the cold. So I cut them all off.
This baby has lived through cold fronts of 12F several years back when it was much smaller.
I do usually throw a warm cloth and leaves over the growth point to be on the safe side and I don't cut the leaves until they turn splotchy in the spring.I covered them with a blanket but it is too D@MN large and the horizontal configuration has the blanket always blowing off when the Blue northers hit. I am thinking about cutting them ALL the fronds off before the cold from hits and using them for insulation before the cold hits. God knows covering them with a blanket will be easier if one has just a stub. Also the old leaves are sucking energy that can go to the new young scarless leaves. Funny how they don't show the cold damage immediately. One thinks that you escaped the fire but then they turn on you. Maybe I will start collecting thatch for a chicken house or something silly.
Three cheers for arachnids! A few weeks ago, I noticed small black beetles doing a number on my sedums and was sick with worry. Then about ten days ago, I suddenly noticed small black spiders with white marks on the abdomen hiding in some of the sedums, too. They don't spin webs and I think they're nicknamed "wolf" or "jumping" spiders.
Most of the beetles seem to be gone now. I think I know why. :D
For what it's worth, I have a terrible dislike of earwigs. I see them crawling around and invariably reach out with the trowel and try to swat them into the next county. I know they can't hurt me, but the sight of them still freaks me out. :o
I don't know about seed. But H calycinum is a robust spreader which is easy to propagate by division. Seed would seem a long way around to get new plants and I doubt that this cultivar would come true. If anyone is offering seed I would be extremely sceptical.
It's probably time to divide the bulbs. Also, alliums reseed massively, so if you don't deadhead, they may be more crowded than you suspect. Mark the bulb places, wait until the foliage begins to die back and divide. A little bit of bone meal might help too.
A shovel may not do it -- my husband cracked the steel blade of a shovel last fall dividing a clump of Ceasar's Brother. No, it wasn't a cheapo Home Depot shovel, it was a good one from Lee Valley. An axe might be more appropriate for a ten year old clump.
Caesar's Brother is a tenacious ground gripper by the ten year mark - the "hole" in the middle is generally old dried rhizome stock. Once big chunks of it are out of the ground, a pruning saw works fairly well to get transplanting sized pieces - it just laughed at various types of knives.
The white counterpart, Snow Queen, doesn't seem to enlarge on that scale.
desert jewels which is a hybrid of firespinner and cooperi-firespinner does ok, is planted in gravel-desert jewels is 3 ft across from a 3 inch pot 2 years ago-the hybrids sold as desert jewels and mesa verde seem tougher-they are sort of evergreen here.
Ken - yeah, lawn-moving is not a big chore here :-) DH uses a reel mower and it takes 15-20 minutes or so - mainly because of the ditch in the front yard and slopes at the sides adjoining the neighbours' driveways slows him down a bit :-) We've pretty much gardened every available inch! Even the remaining grass is part of the garden by being shaped grassy paths, and the ditch has spring bulbs in the grass. We grow veggies in pots on the driveway so the driveway is part of the garden too....
This is a view of the house from the road in early August last year:
This one shows the 'moat bed' (narrow bed along the top of the ditch) at its showiest at the end of May 2013. Sadly, the brutal winter just past killed off the wisteria flowerbuds so no spring display this year :-( The clematis 'Henryi' that grows into the Chinese wisteria is doing well though - once it blooms we will cut the Chinese wisteria back a bit to remove deadwood and encourage a good secondary summer bloom. We miss the wisteria display!
Rouge - it's going to be a year or two before we can tell if the haskap experiment will be successful but I'm sure I'll have something to say about it whatever happens! And you're right, making changes in established plantings is exciting. I've been making smaller changes and will continue to do that, but removing the BB is the first really obvious big one - a lot of neighbours have noticed and asked about it!
I don't use hose guides unless you want to count the hefty shrub right next to one spigot that serves as a de facto hose guide. I don't often water the ornamental beds since we usually get fairly regular rain, but when I do, the spigot is placed so that with just a bit of care when I go around the corner of the house to one bed, I don't damage things, and in the other direction I am hauling the hose straight out down the driveway. I am more likely to water the veggie garden, especially during drier spells, but there isn't anything but grass between that hose bib and the veggies. I think that placement of the hose bibs is key to whether you need hose guides and since there were none when we moved into this old house which had little plumbing of any kind, we placed them where they would be of the most use with the least amount of fuss.
I've never though the commercial hose guides would work for me because they are way too short, so I use 1" copper pipe. I like the way copper looks when it ages, but regardless of my attraction to copper, the color doesn't jump out and detract from the garden plants. The finished height is an unmistakable 18" so I don't trip over them and I buy copper caps for them, thinking it makes them look a little better - though I wish I could find a more decorative topper instead. So copper pipe great for me.